Skip to content

Archives for

See all posts in the network tagged with

Putting Things In Perspective

No comments

As much as the media hype is annoying and excessive, my heart breaks for the parents of the first swine flu death in the United States, as well as for all of the other deaths that have occurred so far. As the parent of three young children, I can only imagine the pain that the family is going through and pray that things work out somehow.

However, as I was explaining to several people, and I have also said in my Twitter and Facebook feeds, we need to look at this situation and put it in perspective.

According to the Global Energy Network Institute, 35,ooo people die DAILY from starvation in the world.  Yet since these people probably aren’t subscribers to USA Today or have TVs to watch network news, I guess it’s not that much of a problem.

According to the American Heart Association, over 150, 000 people die each year from myocardial infarction (heart attacks, for you non-medical types).  The actual figure for 2009 translated into an average of 413 people dying per day, from a largely preventable disease, and a disease that we as EMS providers toil daily to educate the public about and secure funding for programs to mitigate against, but there is no media frenzy.  Now realize that number has dropped since 1980, so we are chipping away at the problem, but still, this is an astounding number of deaths from something we could work harder at solving.

Then of course, there is something much more preventable, that of death from injury.  According to the CDC, in 2006, people were dying at a rate of 490 a day from injuries.  How many times have we tried to get that message out, but have our PSAs relegated to after the 11:00 news when everyone has gone to bed?

I think we need to look at the swine flu situation carefully.  We need to take reasonable measures to mitigate against further outbreak and to minimize exposure to ourselves and our families.  But like the HIV hysteria of the ’80′s and every other crisis that comes along, the media has done a great job overselling the drama when it suits their purpose, and a mediocre job of helping us get the message out about many other efforts like putting smoke detectors in homes. It is our job to continue to bubble up the real message to our customers and it is our job to help the CDC and other parties to keep the effects of this pandemic to a minimum.  But the hysteria can stop already.  I have enough drama in my life, I don’t need this to make it that much more of a challenge.

Take universal precautions, eat and drink healthy and stay fit, and stay well.  Let’s not make this any worse than it needs to be.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 29, 2009 • Filed under: DHS, Media Relations, Uncategorized, customer service, education, fire service, funding, government, leadership, politics, safety • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Multiplicity of Command

No comments

2005-10111How many more times does disaster have to strike before responders finally learn the lesson of the need for unified command?  How many times do agencies need to experience a tug-of-war over resources, slow response to needs due to poor inter-agency communication, and lousy coordination all because the “powers that be” refuse to put their egos aside and agree to play nicely together?

As evidenced by disaster after disaster, when jurisdictions experiencing wide-spread disaster fail to work together to coordinate, their problems become exacerbated.

I know there are plenty of responders out there who have their own little bit of heartburn over NIMS.  Sometimes it is a little too clunky, and the feelings have been documented by researchers like Buck, Trainor and Aguirre.  Decision-making in disasters has been a problem for long before we began to study disaster management.  An interesting paper by Thomas Drabek in the 1983 International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, “Alternative  Patterns of Decisionmaking in Emergent Disasters“, indicated several qualities found in disasters that influenced decision-making.  The disasters were multi-organizational in that they exceeded the capabilities of locals and thus required outside assistance.  The disasters had a diverse array of resources needed, therefore there was much in the way of technical understanding that needed expert overview.  There were “loose couplings”, in that the players often had little to no interaction prior to the event taking place, therefore unfamiliarity with personalities and capabilities.  The organization that emerged from the disaster grew over time, often overwhelming the initial responders.  Finally, the disasters still retained much in the way of local control and for whatever reason, the AHJ maintained that control even when faced with being overwhelmed by the incident.

I found the last point to be an interesting one; while in my opinion it is important that the AHJ retain control over an incident, the incident commander must have the courage and the intelligence to determine when and at what point the incident is overwhelming his/her ability to manage the incident, and to not be afraid of developing a unified command.  With rare exception, local managers are generally lacking in the experience of confronting a managerial problem of this complexity, and instead of riding it out and insisting everything is “just fine”, they need to reach out to the assistance being offered from regional and state (and federal authorities, if indicated) to provide advice and resources to bring the suffering of their community to bear.  Failing to do so is tantamount to abandoning your community.

The basics of NIMS are sound; the principal tenets revolving around division of labor and the unity of command are borne out on a daily basis on firegrounds and every other kind of emergency we can think of.  Multiple “commands” at a large, wide-area incident, absent the coordination of a local emergency operations center and a more centralized command structure, will only end up in the waste of valuable resources, time, and patience.  One unified incident command managing several Area Commands works.  Doing so will minimize the confusion and add to the  proper allocation of resources, and insure that the overall incident is managed.

When you don’t play the game, you are saying that it is your world, and we’re all just living in it.  I realize the intense pressure of having to deal with a rapidly deteriorating condition and the inability, sometimes, to just get your hands around it.  When I have had this happen, I have found that sometimes its best to take a step back, look over the situation, and take it one bite at a time.  But when you have entrenched yourself and refuse to plan in advance for disasters, thinking that you are going to handle everything yourself and that your community doesn’t need help from the outside, well, you are setting yourself up for a fall.  And when you stray from the basics of incident management, something will eventually give.

Don’t be afraid to let others help, especially in areas where you may not be as experienced.  If you have resources being offered to you to help manage things, consider them a tool to use, not a crutch.  And realize that in the face of a major disaster, it’s not just about you; your community has neighbors and they too may need assistance. It’s a good idea to work with them ahead of time so you know where everyone is coming from.  Realize that all resources are limited and that’s a good reason to be talking with everyone involved, because each of these stakeholders have a lot to contribute, but as stakeholders, they also have a lot to lose.  A unified command at a major incident is definitely the way to go.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 24, 2009 • Filed under: FEMA, command, fire service, officership, planning, politics, professionalism • Tagged: , , , , , ,

The Importance of Being Earnest

1 comment

2005-281For some reason today I was reflecting on two of the worst teachers I had when I was in school (back around the Ice Age) and just why they were such terrible teachers.  I suppose that other than their lousy personalities, it would have had to be their passive-aggressive nature when it came to the enforcement of rules. Since I know a few officers who run their crews with this same kind of behavior (passive-aggressive behavior, that is), I thought it might be a good issue to discuss.

When reflecting on both of these teachers, I realize did not comply with what they considered to be the norm. I am not defending my behavior in any stretch of the imagination- I was certainly wrong, but instead of providing early remediation and corrective feedback, both of these teachers continued to allow the problem to fester until the end of each marking period, in which case they lowered the boom with a failing grade.  It’s not like I was even failing in either of their classes because of my inability to grasp what they were teaching.  In each of these cases, my answers were nearly perfect on each quiz and examination- but it was a case of not following their specific rules, which in each case, trumped those of knowing the subject matter.  It should have been a lesson to me each time; when someone has absolute power and insists on your absolute adherence to the rules, the SMART thing to do is to comply (leaving the situation isn’t an option at that age, but it is in your career).  But like many people at that rebellious stage in our lives, I resisted those efforts twice and was twice rewarded with a round of summer school.

The whole point of that, however, was that had I realized what I was doing wrong was going to cause me circumstances I certainly did not desire, I would have likely changed my course of action.  How many times have you had an employee, at evaluation time, say to you, “I didn’t know you had a problem with that” when giving them a less than satisfactory score on a subject?  Why didn’t they know it?  If the answer is, because I didn’t say anything to them all year, then you are doing them and yourself a big disfavor.

Later in my life, I have seen officers that turn their heads when people do something wrong, then are upset later when things don’t work out between them and the subordinate.  Did you somehow reinforce that their behavior was acceptable by failing to address the problem directly and immediately? You bet.

Especially in this time of intergenerational conflict, as the young officers of tomorrow are learning their trade and those of us who have been around for years are planning for retirement, it is imperative that we establish our expectations and are clear with each other as to the specifics and the timelines in which we consider the job done acceptably, or unacceptably.

Don’t find yourself wishing you had been more candid with your charges when evaluation time comes around.  Take a moment to have a discussion with your people about what your vision is and how you choose to see it implemented.  Avoid all the wailing and gnashing of teeth with a little chat now, and it will pay dividends multifold later.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 15, 2009 • Filed under: Uncategorized, education, fire service, leadership, officership, planning • Tagged: , , ,

Telling The Story

1 comment

south-beach-villas-6There’s all kinds of supporting documentation regarding the differences in simply sending a message and telling a story.  In doing the research for a paper I mentioned earlier on this blog, I found that some companies like 3M and Nordstrom used the art of telling a story to deliver their vision instead of simply outlining their goals and objectives.  USA Today ran an article on the use of storytelling in the boardroom back in 2004, and there’s a good article on Brandchannel.com breaking down the whole concept of storytelling. 

I probably don’t use storytelling enough, but instead I consciously try to break things down into analogous bites that people can get their heads around a little better.  In either case, getting your message out to your audience, be they firefighters, EMTs or the public, isn’t just the effort of writing down some bullet points and hoping they get the idea, it’s taking the idea and putting it into a context they can relate to, and giving them information they can use and share with others.

There is a reason why we can re-tell a joke we haven’t heard in years and funble sometimes with our phone number.  The joke has context and we can relate to the story somehow, but our phone number, well, is just a number.  But if you have difficulty remembering the number, try breaking it down into a story: the number 278-3324 for example.  For me, the first three digits, 278, are the main drag in my community.  33 is the number on the Rolling Rock bottle and 24 is my father’s first fire department ID number.  By putting these together into a little story in our head, we can remember it.  We can do this with other things as well: The five Great Lakes are “HOMES”; Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.

Take your mission statement for example.  Unless it’s a short phrase (which it should be anyway), can you remember it verbatim?  Maybe you should convey your message in a short bite and use some storytelling to translate what exactly it is you are trying to demonstrate and the direction you want your organization to move in.

We have an excellent homilist at my church, Deacon Joe.  Instead of getting up there and lecturing, he tells a story, and people can walk out of the Mass and recount that story, maybe not exactly, but they get the overall message.  You can see people leaning forward and focusing intently on what he is saying.  They laugh at the humorous parts and they can be seen nodding in agreement at some of the more salient points.  He does a great job of getting that week’s message across to his audience.

The next time you have an important message you want your intended audience to really understand, do a litle experiment; tell a story and see if people can recount what it is you are trying to get across more readily.  Maybe by doing so, you might be able to get people to understand in a way they never experienced before, or at least since their childhood.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 13, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, fire service, firefighting, leadership, motivation, officership, politics, professionalism • Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

It Can't Happen Here

1 comment

From yesterday’s Island Packet (my local newspaper, of all places), something poignant to discuss: If at any point in your career you convince yourself “it can’t happen here”, I’ll say to you “it’s just a matter of time”. 

 

Two people were arrested on the Island for child abuse when they left their two year old in their apartment with a pot on the stove and a lit candle.  Had either of these two hazardous conditions gone to their ends (the candle or the pot), my department might well have been fighting a fire and finding an unattended child in our primary search which hopefully, would have been found in time to be saved.

 

As it was, the child awoke and left the house (so which is worse, your home burning down or your two-year old wandering the neighborhood?).  Having a two year old, I know that if I take my eyes off her for a moment, she is likely to cut her sister’s hair or hack the National Security Agency’s mainframe, so I try to at least keep her in my peripheral vision at all times.

 

I don’t have any more facts than reported here, but I’m positive these are not the only two parents in our jurisdiction who aren’t going to the Parental Hall of Fame, so the question exists; How many other children are in hazardous situations like these on a daily basis?  How often do we go to “smells and bells” and expect it to be a nuisance alarm.  My point- complacency kills, which is something we have been telling everyone for years- believe it or not, the next one could be the real thing.

 

Treat every call with the seriousness and importance required and remember that as emergency service professionals, our job is to serve the public efficiently and expediently.  And while I’m at it, staying safe is one way that we can insure that both of those things happen as well.

 

Take the time to think about the possibility that the next call might be the one we talk about for years.  Make sure everyone in your organization is doing everything they can to insure that they will be talking about it as one of the department’s greatest moments and not as one of your biggest failures.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 10, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, fire service, firefighting, leadership, motivation, officership, professionalism • Tagged: , , , ,

It Can't Happen Here

1 comment

From yesterday’s Island Packet (my local newspaper, of all places), something poignant to discuss: If at any point in your career you convince yourself “it can’t happen here”, I’ll say to you “it’s just a matter of time”. 

 

Two people were arrested on the Island for child abuse when they left their two year old in their apartment with a pot on the stove and a lit candle.  Had either of these two hazardous conditions gone to their ends (the candle or the pot), my department might well have been fighting a fire and finding an unattended child in our primary search which hopefully, would have been found in time to be saved.

 

As it was, the child awoke and left the house (so which is worse, your home burning down or your two-year old wandering the neighborhood?).  Having a two year old, I know that if I take my eyes off her for a moment, she is likely to cut her sister’s hair or hack the National Security Agency’s mainframe, so I try to at least keep her in my peripheral vision at all times.

 

I don’t have any more facts than reported here, but I’m positive these are not the only two parents in our jurisdiction who aren’t going to the Parental Hall of Fame, so the question exists; How many other children are in hazardous situations like these on a daily basis?  How often do we go to “smells and bells” and expect it to be a nuisance alarm.  My point- complacency kills, which is something we have been telling everyone for years- believe it or not, the next one could be the real thing.

 

Treat every call with the seriousness and importance required and remember that as emergency service professionals, our job is to serve the public efficiently and expediently.  And while I’m at it, staying safe is one way that we can insure that both of those things happen as well.

 

Take the time to think about the possibility that the next call might be the one we talk about for years.  Make sure everyone in your organization is doing everything they can to insure that they will be talking about it as one of the department’s greatest moments and not as one of your biggest failures.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 10, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, fire service, firefighting, leadership, motivation, officership, professionalism • Tagged: , , , ,

What Is "Better"?

1 comment

2005-1132I was playing around with Twitter the other day and blundered onto a site that discusses social media, coincidentally named Social Media Insider, which of course, led me to a link (and to another) in regard to quality.  The title of the blog was actually “What Does Better Mean” and it was on a blog on marketing that Seth Godin writes.

He points out, essentially, that the consumer defines what is better, which in our business, seems to be counter-intuitive at times.  I have seen on the occasional post and heard on the street and in fire stations around our nation, a certain level of frustration with the whole “customer service” mentality of running an emergency services organization.  And frankly, if you live in a community where they have bigger concerns than their fire loss (like in areas with high crimes rates, high unemployment, or any other major emotional issue), the definition of a quality fire department might be that of one that shows up when someone dials 9-1-1.  My point being, that although YOU desire your organization to be the best, it hasn’t necessarily carried over to your customer base (i.e.; taxpayers).  Unless you do a better job marketing your organization, don’t go expecting them to hand you money the next time you ask for it.

If you live in a community like the one I live and work in, there is a certain expectation that things will be the “best”.  But just what is the “best”?  Is it defined as the best because we say we are the best?  Or is your definition of the best backed up by quantitative data that supports your claim, by having significantly lower reaction times, or significant numbers of neurologically-intact post-resuscitation patients, or excellent customer satisfaction as measured by surveys?  Or is it that you have shiny trucks and nobody says you AREN’T the best?

I had a short discussion with my friend/colleague Lt. Tom today (the author of the Prehospital 12-Lead ECG blog) and it revolved somewhat around the definition of “better” and this blog by Godin came to mind.  The thing is, we don’t get to define what is “better”, the taxpayers do.  And if they want something a certain way, we have to be cognizant of that desire and fulfill it.  If we as experts in our field see it differently, it is incumbent upon us to do some education.  Crying about it isn’t going to help, and unless you can frame the discussion into something the public can really get their head around, don’t expect an overwhelming outpouring of support.  Tom actually showed me a presentation he was doing that was excellent and even I could see that what he was saying made sense and would be a benefit to the community.  Now it comes down to getting an audience.

If you aren’t taking the time to visit your taxpayers in the schools, in their civic clubs, at the nursing homes, and in any other method you can get the word out there, you shouldn’t be surprised when no one is overwhelmingly standing in your corner at budget time.  And in this time of economic crisis, you really need people in your corner.  This is the time when people have to realize that support of public safety is essential and new plants in the median can probably wait.

The only people to count on for this task is your own people and if you aren’t motivated by the prospect of sitting down and having lunch at the elder-care center, think about the lunch you’ll be choking down when your budget gets shot down by 10 or 15%.  If marketing your organization is distasteful to you, think of the alternatives.  Get out there and hit the trail and show your customers what “better” really is; an organization that cares about its community and is willing to go and meet them and show them what they need to do to make themselves more fire and disaster safe.  We all love fighting fires, but at some point, somebody has to pay the bills.  It’s time to grow up and do some advertising for your department and hope it is good enough to win over supporters.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 9, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, fire service, funding, government, leadership, motivation, politics, professionalism • Tagged: , , , , , ,

Just Wanna Have Fun

2 comments
Did this get your attention?

Did this get your attention?

I started to title this, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, but no matter what I did, that title wasn’t fitting really well.  Soooo, as you may be able to tell from the title, I just wanna talk a little bit about being serious and not being serious.  On any number of occasions, I (and a number of you) have ranted uncommented upon about firefighter safety, incident command, leadership, and any number of issues that are real, tangible concerns for the future of emergency services.  Hey, wake up; I said THE FUTURE.

In the meanwhile, in the opposite corner, and serving its purpose (and I don’t want to take anything away from these posts, because they’re apparently what “the people” want), are forums on “The Word Association Game“, with 2320 comments at last check,  and “Practical Jokes“, with 161 comments.  These are two forums on Firefighter Nation, if you didn’t know.

Now first off, I want to commend these authors, because they have generated traffic like you wouldn’t believe, and they did it without running a picture of a scantily clad woman on the first page (which is also a guarantee for thousands of hits) and I think maybe this is a lesson we all need to look at and appreciate for what it tells us.

When I am going on about a subject near and dear to my heart – let’s take funding issues for an example – I find it relatively interesting, but admittedly it lacks the firepower of say, Firegeezer’s article on helmet types.  Don’t be swayed by the 13 comments (which I would kill for, by the way), this baby is taking hits like nobody’s business.  But people are PASSIONATE about their helmets (as I am, as you might already know) and they are interested in hearing more about what others think about the subject.

This all brings me back to the issue of marketing.  I don’t know what I can do to make firefighter safety and emergency service innovations and leadership “sexy”, but I can probably make it more funny, and hope it gets your attention.  I even hope it gets you to pass it along to others.  I MIGHT even hope it gets you to say, “Hey, that made me think”.  But the goal of most writers is to evoke some reaction (or even better, ACTION) in their audience and it serves the purpose of educating or enlightening others and the author gets feedback, which is important in determining whether they should keep writing, or find something else to do like Sodoku.

How would you feel if you were instructing a class, and you said something you really found important, and the whole class just sat silently and stared back at you (“is this thing on?”)? You’d probably be saying to yourself, “Did they miss that?” or “What part of that didn’t they understand?”  I understand that it’s different here on the blogosphere, but it’s really not that different.  Ask any blogger and they’ll tell you, what they really crave, more than the millions we make writing these things, is feedback.

If we all found ourselves in a situation where we had a message to pass along, but no one was interested in hearing it, we’d find ourselves in the same situation many of us are in as we try to advocate for improvement and for a safer workplace.  Honestly, I already know a lot about what I should be doing to keep myself and my crews safe, but I think it’s incumbent upon me as an emergency service leader to pass this stuff along to anyone who wants to listen.  The catch is, we (and I’m speaking for many of the authors of that deeper, less entertaining stuff) want to know if anyone is listening and there’s only one way we can know this, and that’s through feedback. And in providing this, not only do we know if we are getting it across to you, we ourselves also are learning in the process how to be better communicators and we are learning from you all through your experiences.  Let’s hear what you have to say and let’s try to have fun in the process.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 8, 2009 • Filed under: Firefighter Nation, change, customer service, education, fire service, firefighting, leadership, motivation, officership, professionalism, revolution • Tagged: , , , , , ,

Places I Have Been

No comments

So I was going to bed and I just wanted to look over the stats for Firehouse Zen.  You know, you all aren’t a really talkative bunch, so I do look over the numbers from time to time to see if I am reaching anyone (and maybe by looking at which pages are more popular, figure out what you all are interested in hearing me ramble on about).  Of course, I have a lot of fellow firefighters and EMTs from all over surfing in from Firefighter Nation (which if you haven’t come in that way, and don’t know about it, go check it out, as there’s a lot on there for everyone). Some of you have come in from my Twitter or my Facebook pages.

Firies in Queensland, Australia

Firies in Queensland, Australia

The other night I was finishing up writing an exhaustive after-action report on a multi-company incident for our department.  Our jurisdiction is built on a very eco-friendly philosophy (read: no trees were harmed in the building of this town) and so there is an acceptable amount of natural fuel around to burn.  But really, other than some of the forest preserves and parks, we don’t have any of those areas together in one heap and unbroken by a fire break (golf course), so you should keep in mind that “big brush fire” in our jurisdiction is really defined by the number of angry phone calls for smoke smells. Anyway, I digress.

The acquaintances I have made with blogging, however, are great. There’s a lot of you coming in from Dave Statter’s site and of course from Firegeezer.  There is some action coming over from my friend and colleague Tom at Prehospital 12-Lead ECG Blogspot, some hits coming over from The Kitchen Table.

But the really amazing thing (which just REALLY amazes me, if you can’t tell), is some of the places you all come from, and I wonder, just how amazing (there, I used it again) the Internet is, that someone on Hilton Head Island, SC, USA can reach out and talk to someone in Turkey and in Argentina.

Of course there are plenty of hits from North America and the Caribbean, as Canada and Mexico also have been checking in as well as the Bahamas and Jamaica.  And having actually traveled to Australiaon a work study, I met lots of firies over there as well and I have communicated before with some in New Zealand, especially through my US&R stuff.  I’ve got people logging in from the UK, France, Italy, Israel, and Portugal.  But having never been to Africa, and knowing that I am reaching people in places like Kenya, Angola (that’s probably my friend Mike), Nigeria, and Algeria is unbelievable to me.  And then there are those of you in Slovakia, Qatar, and Japan, places I never would have thought I would meet someone from.

I am so impressed mostly because I deeply desire the opportunity to learn from each of you what your fire and EMS is like, and about how you do things and how you see things.  I’m one of these people who, when they go to a foreign country, like to go to “where the locals go” and do the things the locals like to do (with the exception of eating sheep’s eyeballs or something).  I am just in awe of some of the local fire service traditions like those my buddy over at Planet Rescue have shared with me (he’s in Belgium).

 

We all do the same job and we all get up in the morning to deal with the same issues and as such, we are all in this together.  We all have to get up to go to alarms in the middle of the night and we all have to deal with the sick and injured.  We all share so much more than that which separates us, and we should embrace those similarities and our differences and learn about each other.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 5, 2009 • Filed under: Firefighter Nation, Uncategorized, education, fire service, firefighting, motivation, professionalism • Tagged: ,

To The Easily Offended

2 comments

sctf1-tx-060aIn another post, I mentioned a great homily by Father Chris where he spoke about getting the message out (you know, THE Message).  I specifically discussed one of his points about how, when someone in today’s society doesn’t agree with you, the expectation is that they have a “right” to be offended.  How if you have decided you don’t want Christianity in your life, you have a right to be offended by the manger scene on the corner, or if someone says that they believe that ___ is a sin, people have a right to be offended that you are talking about religion.

I guess where I am going with this blog is that there are a lot of people who should pretty much lighten up about some things, but it seems to me there’s a few people who should also lighten up and get with the program about things like firefighter safety, or more accurately, accountability, use of IMS, and not sending people in to fight fires in “lost causes”.

It seems that whenever one of these subjects comes up, there are always one or two out there who say, “Hey, we’ve been doing it this way for years, and I’ve been fighting fires since you were in diapers, blah, blah, blah, blah.” (I wrote that because that’s about where I stopped listening).  I remember one particularly spirited discussion on NIMS and what a crock of crap it was and that members of the XYZ (read: big city) Fire Department, by God, have been doing it this way without that NIMS stuff and maybe you all shouldn’t be a bunch of sissies (that’s not the word he used), blah, blah, blah.

So I guess what you’re saying then, is that despite any meaningful adaptations there are from the way we did stuff to the way the rest of us are doing stuff (in the 21st century) all of it is pretty much useless and we should go back to fighting fires with buckets and grappling hooks.  That would be fine, except that building construction has changed significantly and you aren’t going to pull much thatch off the roofs in my neighborhood.  Or maybe using single 2 1/2-inch supply lines and booster lines is really okay, except that in my city, we have large properties with huge fire loads that give off mega-amounts of BTUs that you won’t overcome with that red garden hose.  And being grossly out of shape is okay, except that now we carry more equipment than we did before, including the fact that we are going to have to go up and down stairs wearing SCBA and the heat being produced by today’s burning couch and other contents far exceeds the heat output of fires in the 50′s and 60′s.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s time some of you dug some of the wax out of your ears and listened to the voices of today’s fire service, and if you can’t fathom why change can be good, consider maybe it’s you that needs to change (a change in profession, that is).  Learn more about where we are going by studying the traditions of our past, but realize that tradition is nice when it comes to parades and retirements, but it has absolutely no place in the field of modern combat we call the fireground.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 4, 2009 • Filed under: "accident prevention", change, education, fire service, firefighting, leadership, motivation, officership, professionalism, revolution, safety, seatbelts, technology • Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Balance

No comments

webimg_0689It seems like everytime I speak with one of my colleagues, we have all got so much going on that certain things fall by the wayside.  Some of these things are important enough that allowing them to slip affects others, or an important project we are working on loses momentum.

One of the problems I see with people, however, is when people lose their balance and it becomes all about work, or all about play, or all about something in their lives, and their whole world is upended because they neglected the other facets of their life.

I have friends that recently worked a very stressful call and they were seeking some input from me in regard to their feelings afterward.  To each of them, in addition to the discussion of where to turn for help if necessary, was the discussion as to whether or not this was an opportunity to look at their lives and take some inventory as to what was really meaningful to them and to possibly use this moment to make some changes, and bring their life back into some balance, becasue there’s nothing like a witnessing a life-shattering event to cause to you look at your own priorities.

Work is important, but it won’t take care of you when you are old and gray.  Your faith is important, but charity, as they say, begins at home.  And if we stayed at home all day, we wouldn’t be doing much to develop some income, would we.  It is important to keep everything in perspective, but as with eating good food, or enjoying a nice cigar or a tasty wine, too much of anything can be detrimental and not enough, well, isn’t life at all.

Take a few moments and appreciate everything you have that you get to do regularly, look hard at making time for things that are important to you but you don’t seem to find the time for, and budget time for things that may be unpleasant, but necessary in order to manage your life.  But don’t neglect one for the other or else you might find your life spinning out of whack.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 2, 2009 • Filed under: Uncategorized, change, fire service, firefighting, leadership, motivation • Tagged: , , ,