§ 78.151.Liability for Training Exercises

A 2015 addition closing a gap the chapter left open.

A person is not liable for damages resulting from the person's execution of a training exercise intended to prepare the person to respond to a fire or emergency to which the chapter applies to the same extent that the person would not be liable under this chapter for damages resulting from the person's actions in responding to the fire or emergency.

The protection is derivative and exactly coextensive. Whatever the chapter gives for the real response, it gives for the training — no more and no less.

The gap was real. Fire departments train constantly, and training is deliberately realistic: live burns, vehicle extrication, confined-space rescue, hazardous material drills. The risks are the same as the response, and the participants are the same people.

Without this section a department protected while fighting an actual fire would have carried ordinary liability while practising for one — which is an incentive to train less, or less realistically.

"Intended to prepare the person to respond" is the condition, so the exercise must have that purpose.

The disaster assistance chapter contains a parallel provision extending its immunities to training in identical terms, and the two were enacted in the same session.