I thought this was one of the better video pleas I have seen, even though I’m not a Rams fan (although we use a RamFan – a little truckie humor there). Buckle up and stay safe this year. Let’s reduce LODDs by concentrating on at least one very easily obtainable goal – insure no one rides our rigs without being strapped in.
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I was taking some time and doing some reciprocal reading (reading the blogs of those who read my blog) and on Tom Bouthillet’s ems12lead blog came upon this great link on the “Voices of Lifesaving”. Seeing as three of the featured people (Tom, with Audie Graham and Dennis Pavone) are members of my department, it gives me some pride to hear them talk about our organization and the service we provide.
I was saying the other day that we need to insure we pay attention to the experts that are around us and not discredit them because we are so close to them. You can listen to what Tom in particular had to say and judge for yourself; he’s on his game and a great person to talk to when you need to learn something about medical care.
Good job, man.
Here’s to hoping you have a great new year; that 2009 is more prosperous and engaging than 2008. Here’s to enlightenment and amazement at learning new things. Here’s to finding out more about ourselves and others so we can be better people. And mostly, here’s to hope; when I look at the picture we used for our Christmas cards this year, knowing that when you have hopes and dreams that everything done right has meaning, I know that when we do things right we do them not only for ourselves, but for one another.
SC-Tf1 at Mt. Pleasant Drill
What have we learned in 2008? Are we better off here on the threshold of 2009 having experienced so much in the last year? Or are we destined to repeat our mistakes? Are we advocating better cardiac fitness for our troops? Are we beating the seatbelt issue into their heads on a daily basis? Are we telling them that it’s silly to fight fire without using proper PPE and are we telling them that unoccupied buildings aren’t worth jeopardizing their lives over?
Are we using better methods for finding fires? Are we using more modern technologies for communicating on the fireground or at the scene of disasters? Are our communications systems interoperable and are we even speaking the same language?
Are we any closer to a National Mutual Aid Box Alarm System? How about working with the military on domestic disaster issues? Are we getting the typing and credentialing issues resolved? As much as we have learned about ourselves, our industry, and the environment in which we operate, how much of it has translated into positive change for the good of our service?
How much is dependent upon funds that are being eliminated? How much is dependent upon that ill-educated politician? How much of our mission is being sacrificed by the self-serving and the egotistical for their own gains?
If we can open our eyes in 2009, and we can look past our own needs and look to the greater good, the communities in which we serve and the brotherhood of the fire service, if we can put our egos aside and agree to work together, career and volunteer, rural and urban, North and South, East Coast and West Coast, labor and management, we can achieve greatness.
The fire service is as unified as it is finely divided. Until we can put aside our differences to realize that we DO have some common ground, and focus on solving those core issues, we will continue to fight these same battles. What’s more, we’ll be fighting them generations from now (if we still exist), because we have been fighting them for generations heretofore.
Have we really learned from our experiences? Or are we doomed to repeat the past? I guess 2009 will tell.
SCTF1 Personnel in the TFCC
Every now and then, I like to see what innovations are out there in US&R by simply plugging in some keywords and deep searching the net. I was doing this before turning in tonight and after repeated drilling down of particular terms, I found that the International Association of Structural Movers‘ home office is located a few miles from our US&R Headquarters. Here I am, supposedly a leader in the US&R community, dealing with all kinds of technical people and resources, and didn’t even know that a potentially amazing source of information is right there for the taking.
I don’t know if this lead will pan out, but it occurs to me, sometimes we don’t even realize the value of what we have right next to us. I was discussing the need for education to my troops today and I reminded them that we have multiple sources of expertise within our organization that most departments would kill to have. What lunatics we would have to be to not use that expertise to improve our own situation?
Unfortunately, it happens all the time. Chief Harry Diezel of Virginia Beach, VA, a man I admire greatly, once said, “Here, I’m an a**hole, fifty miles away, I’m an expert”. Our relative closeness to an individual sometimes clouds our realization of their contributions to the greater good. We may have known “ol’ Joe” for years, but maybe it’s time you stepped back at him and looked to see what expertise and experience he actually brings to the table.
Just because you don’t recognize a diamond with your nose pressed up against it, doesn’t make it less valuable. Step back and appreciate the value everyone brings to the table and understand that in their sharing information, it makes us better if we can learn from it.
As Jamie Thompson over at The Kitchen Table points out, getting an education is an investment in your future. Yes, there are things that need cutting back in departments, but the training budget should be one of the last to go. As a chief officer in your organization, are you putting your money where your mouth i
s? As a member in the department, are you really concerned with providing the best service you can provide?
s? As a member in the department, are you really concerned with providing the best service you can provide?Education not only gets you a nice certificate on the wall; it opens your mind up to possibilities, it expands your horizons. And I’m talking about the benefits to the entire department, not just to the individual. When someone comes back from training, we don’t always do the best job of picking their brain for new ideas, or getting feedback on what best practices we are doing now and what we could be doing.
The training budget is to emergency service what the research and development budget is to corporate entities; organizations that fail to perform research and continually improve are likely to be lower performers than organizations who don’t.
Take advantage of the opportunities for providing R&D for far less cost than doing it in-house; send your people to school and if you are in a department that encourages you to go to training, take advantage of it.
One of my biggest concerns in 2008 has been the dwindling funds available for urban search and rescue programs around the nation. When things cut loose out there, these are the resources that everyone wants, but given the state of funding for these programs and the state of the economy, they may also be the first programs to see the axe.
When a few of us got together and developed the State Urban Search and Rescue Alliance in the middle of 2005, we had no idea that there was as much interest in putting together regional and state assets as there was. We found that virtually every state (and even some of our Caribbean neighbors and compatriots) were in the process of developing these programs, but people weren’t talking the same language (NIMS typing and credentialing was in its infancy), were “reinventing the wheel” in so many facets of their work, and most of all, weren’t communicating that they had things to share or that they had needs that could be filled by others.
The nation’s emergency service providers should learn a lesson from all of this: we can work together by reaching out to others, and find commonalities that can bring us together rather than to continue to stay in our “silos” and perpetuate the turf-guarding that keps us from solving our serious issues. In this day and age of stripped budgets, if we can show that we are willing to lay down our egos for the common good, we might have a bigger stick to wield when it comes to chasing the vultures away from our already scarce funding allocations.
I was interested to see this item in FirefighterHourly.com this morning on recommendations from a recent NIOSH report; how ARE we are doing in comparison to others relating to safety?
Fire Department NIOSH Comparison
Here are recommendations from a recent NIOSH report released on a Line of Duty Death. How does your department stack up?
- Fire fighters conducting an interior search have a thermal imaging camera
- Ventilation is coordinated with interior fireground operations.
- Mayday protocols are developed and followed.
- The Incident Commander receives pertinent information during the size-up (i.e., type of structure, number of occupants in the structure, etc.) from occupants on scene and that information is relayed to crews upon arrival.
- Fire fighters communicate interior conditions and progress reports to the Incident Commander develop, implement, and enforce written standard operating procedures (SOPs) for fireground operations.
In our department, some of the items are works in progress, but they are being performed and we are seeing the fruits of these labors. Our organization has TICs for a number of companies and has a plan in place adding more to the list until all primary companies have one; new and more comprehensive Mayday protocols have been developed and the final touches are literally being put on these so they can be implemented; and other procedures (guidelines in our department) are also either being implemented or are in various stages of development.
The other items on this list, however, are incumbent upon the personnel on scene. As part of our jobs on the fireground, we need to insure that ventilation is well-coordinated, that we get good size-up information, and that interior crews verbally send a good picture of what is going on inside the structure to the IC.
These items come from practicing your craft; by looking at buildings daily, rehearsing “scripts” of good size-up procedures, and knowing what conditions indicate changing conditions for operating crews and knowing when and how to describe these to command officers.
The Chief and his staff can get you all the tools in the world, but if you don’t have a proficient knowledge of fireground operations, they won’t do you a bit of good. Train often and train like your life depends on it – because it does.
I’ve said it from the beginning- this blogging project is a work in progress for me, but I’m enjoying it and it’s apparently pretty contagious. As far as my writing skills, however, I’m quickly learning about how to catch your interest in sound bites rather than in paragraph form, which is a big transition from technical writing. Of course, I know that to put “Buy Cialis” as a title to a firehouse blog will get people to look, even though it has nothing to do with firefighting and then only to find out it’s a cheap ad, blog spam as it were. Maybe to increase readership I should title this “Buy Cialis II” and then move on with the sequels ad infinitem. Maybe posting a picture of a lot of fire will help. Who knows?
Over at The Kitchen Table, Bill Delaney brought out another method of getting the word out: by Twitter. I logged in and saw Webchief had beaten me there- he’s definitely got his finger on the electronic pulse of the fire service.
How do you use these forums and blogs? Are they a pastime for you or are they a useful tool. Or are they just more wasted space? If Santa gave you a nice saw for Christmas this year, would you build a china cabinet with it or would you use it to chock the door to your workshop? What you do with the tools you are given says a lot about your vision; where do you want to be in that continuum?
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The Hon. Michael Chertoff suggests that it would be a bad idea to reorganize DHS and bump FEMA up to a cabinet level, despite the different missions they have. I suggest that maybe its time to let FEMA (and by extension, the USFA and the National Fire Academy) get out of the broom closet and at least have a better seat at the table.
Although I agree one-hundred percent that “emergencies don’t come neatly packaged in stovepipes”, I don’t think the fire service is the group hoarding the information. How about a little love in this new administration for the fire service?
The Hon. Michael Chertoff suggests that it would be a bad idea to reorganize DHS and bump FEMA up to a cabinet level, despite the different missions they have. I suggest that maybe its time to let FEMA (and by extension, the USFA and the National Fire Academy) get out of the broom closet and at least have a better seat at the table.
Although I agree one-hundred percent that “emergencies don’t come neatly packaged in stovepipes”, I don’t think the fire service is the group hoarding the information. How about a little love in this new administration for the fire service?
Only 24 days of shopping left until Christmas. However, for something a little deeper, how about a discussion on keeping your head in the game. For my battalion’s quick training training today, I sent them a discussion on “sudden event” situations. Case in point: On Firefighterclosecalls.com, there was an article on a PA propane explosion that gave some interesting observations about the situation that unfolded after this sudden event. My question to my team was, “Are you prepared for a sudden ‘game-changing’ event during your operations?”
As responders, we go into so many calls with our own expectations as to how things are going to work. I am just as guilty of it as anyone else- it is human nature. We have to, however, shake loose some of our preconceived beliefs as to what we think is occurring vs. what is actually occurring. How do we do this? By getting facts through a proper size-up and maintaining good situational awareness. But even then, in the real world, the facts as we understand them may not be what is actually occurring.
Using a very real case in point from the other morning: While overhauling a fire the other shift, a number of us saw what looked to be an increasing smoke condition after we thought the fire was extinguished. Now there’s nothing wrong with that- the point in doing a complete overhaul is to uncover stuff like that (so we don’t have to come back later). If we had ignored the condition, or lied to ourselves about the situation and convinced ourselves that it was nothing, those decisions would have been wrong. But everything about the evidence led us to believe we had hidden fire someplace. We developed a plan to root it out, we had lines in place, but no matter what area we pulled, we found that the smoke continued.
Finally, we decided to increase the amount of ventilation in order to find out if we were dealing with pockets of smoke instead of a fire. This proved to be the case and the smoke ended. But it is a good example of seeing something you think is one thing and finding it to be something completely different.
It is almost contrary to human nature to see events unfold in a certain way 99 times, and not expect it to occur the same way for the next time. As a veteran firefighter, however, I know it will be on the 100th time that things go differently and Murphy will pay us a litle visit.
Like every other aspect of our job, we need to prepare ourselves mentally for how to overcome that complacency and act appropriately on the new evidence. This is appropriate not only for emergency response, but in our daily operations. Don’t assume for a minute that because you have seen something progress a certain way virtually every time that you have all of the facts.
Whenver you are working on solving a problem, use a good basic plan of action, know the strengths of the people who are working with you and challenge them to use those strengths, and most of all, don’t be afraid to roll with a revised plan. After all, situations change and if you fail to adjust, you are likely going to end up as part of the problem.
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