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Finally, No More Begging

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Hilton Head Training Center FLAG PropFor the past year or so, our department has been building a training facility of our own.  We officially dedicated it on the 29th and christened some of the props with a little demonstration burn to wow the VIPs who came out to celebrate with us.  It’s a nice facility and was designed with more than just training in mind, given our organization’s desire to find multiple uses for things.  The site was designed to also be an effective staging location for after hurricanes, or to be used as a distribution center in the event of the same, and can support our semi-annual HAZMAT roundup.  But to me, one of the best things is no more begging.

For years, we have had to improvise when it came to training.  It’s difficult to motivate someone into working at “drill speed” when they are flowing a handline into the woods and pretending it’s a burning building.  While we have gotten good at being creative, I sometimes felt like my kids, pretending to be a firefighter while spraying a garden hose at an azalea.

To me, there aren’t too many more exciting sounds then the “whoosh” made by LDH coming out of the bed and punctuated with the ding of a coupling hitting the pavement every 100 feet.  Or the sounds of hose being coupled and the background noise of a roaring fire.  And even though we will be using predominantly theatrical smoke in the tower, there’s really no substitute for dragging a charged line through zero-visibility and not having to worry about marking up the walls or carpet of the hotel or timeshare willing to permit us a little realism that day.

Every time one of our more motivated instructors wanted to insert some live action into their training, for the most part, it required an act of Congress.  Not to mention that although you can’t get much better than live fire training in an acquired structure for some good scenarios, between the asbestos mitigation and all the other associated permitting, by the time it was done, one or two days of burning and then cleaning up afterward just doesn’t hold the magic of being able to light off in the burn room and being able to mop up by flowing your streams into the sloped-floor drain designed for just that task.

If you come down our way, come by and see it.  We have a lot to be proud of.  And we certainly appreciate the support of the community in helping us get there.  In the end, they are the ones who will benefit the most, though, because as a result of our new acquisition, the training calendar is already filling up with companies who want to practice in a real facility, and not by having to imagine the environment they might be working in.

Posted by truck6alpha on July 30, 2009 • Filed under: Uncategorized, change, customer service, education, rescue • Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Innovation Distinguishes Between Leaders and Followers

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Safely chocking those wheels.

Safely chocking those wheels.

If you didn’t know, that’s a quote from Steve Jobs (I didn’t).  I was sitting in the office of our Deputy Chief/Ops, reading a magazine while he finished up a meeting, and I saw that quote.  I liked it a lot and wanted to share it with you.

The quote was being used by David White, the editor of Industrial Fire World, in this month’s editorial, where he is discussing “evolution vs. intelligent design”.  His point was that while it is fantastic we have these newfangled radios and all, they’re really not worth anything if we can’t talk to anyone on them because they’re too complicated to use. What’s more, while we have been wrestling with interoperable communications for eons (I mean, look at the Tower of Babel and all), we have another situation that merits a technological solution: tracking firefighter location inside a burning structure.

While some of this stuff is a little out of my immediate reach, there are tools used daily around us that don’t get used to their full efficiency.  Take for example, that little bundle of software you probably have on your computer right there in front of you.  If you’re like me, you have some sort of office pack with a word processing application, a spreadsheet application, and a database application.  In most total office packages, I would surmise that they are interoperable between each other.  I’d be willing to bet you that most fire stations these days have computer workstations and in each of those you also have some sort of interoperable office pack.

How many of you are proficient at using these programs, not just as stand-alone applications, but in concert with one another?  Can you create a table in Excel and transfer it to Word?  Can you create an Access database and then query it to get information, then export it to Excel to create graphs and tables for presentations?

I was at a “presentation” the other day, and the person was trying to influence a governmental body into giving their project funding.  While the speaker was disorganized, what was more appalling is that in this day and age, there weren’t any supporting slides or visuals to reinforce their points.  There’s that whole theory of how much you retain by hearing and seeing something in comparison to just hearing it or just seeing it that you learned in Instructor I (one more reason for requiring this kind of a course as a pre-requisite for Fire Officer I: it teaches you how to communicate to an audience).  You’d think that by now someone might have retained that information themselves.  If you care enough about your project that you’re willing to get up in front of a whole bunch of people to discuss it, why wouldn’t you try to SELL it?

If you want to be a leader, it’s not just about surviving, it’s about EXPERIENCING.  You have to stretch and pull, not push.  You don’t see the lead climber at the back of the pack, do you?  They’re the one forging the way, finding the path, and establishing the precedence.  You have to get out ahead of people to lead them and the way to do that in places other than on the battlefield is to be innovative and thinking about new ways to do things, and learning and finding out the better way up, not by taking the same path everyone else takes.

To be a real leader requires creativity and more than anything, the ability to manage in a dynamic environment.  If you are willing to be flexible and change with the conditions that present themselves, people will look to you for the answers when they don’t have them.  This isn’t just from your subordinates, either, this will very likely come from your superiors as well.

There’s a question I once heard on The West Wing, “Would you rather be ‘The Man’, or ‘The Man that The Man Goes To’?”  If you are a subordinate who desires to be considered a leader (or wishes to have real influence), consider that premise.  I hear from people all the time who complain that they wish their boss was a better leader and I always say, “Why don’t you fill that spot?”  Leadership abhors a vacuum.  If the appointed or legitimate leader fails to lead, someone will.  If that place is filled by you, insure that you cement your value to the boss and the rest of the crew by being a positive, motivated, seeker of truth and knowledge.

If you care enough about your job that you want to lead, you should consider that leading requires more effort than following. A lot of that effort is learning how to be ahead of everyone else in the pack, especially when it comes to improving your condition and by employing creativity to do a safer and more effective job.  Be proactive and be the best at what you do.  if you do that, I can reassure you, with a good attitude, people will come knocking on your door for the answers.

Posted by truck6alpha on July 28, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, fire service, firefighting, government, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, revolution, safety • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Reserving Our Scorn for the Deserving

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Hot Day on the Training Ground

Hot Day on the Training Ground

I know that I am one of the chief purveyors of snarkiness as a means of combating the less-than-professional element in our midst.  I guess that just because I have a personal vision of what I’d like to see the fire service evolve into, there are those out there who also have a vision of well-lit POVs and thumping bass stereo in their engines as what is considered to be worthy of discussion.  However, just as many other red-blooded males of the species, I’m okay with crushing my enemies, seeing them driven before me, and hearing the lamentations of their women.  To each his own, I suppose.

So the dilemma, I guess, is which battles need to be fought and to what degree.  This then relates to what level of sarcasm should be employed when you are trying to point out that someone is discussing what we consider to be bizarre or to the extreme and we are trying to point out that yes, they are an idiot.  As I have found out over the years(and especially recently), the degree of snarkiness should probably be limited when dealing with the less fortunate, the disadvantaged, and the criminally insane.

As to why we blog or write, there are different reasons, of course.  I am not interested in blogging for the interest of stirring up hate and discontent, except as it goes to encourage spirited but civil debate over subjects that require deeper thought.  So for me, my reason for writing and expecting feedback is to ask questions to challenge the minds of others, in an effort to learn more and to grow. 

Some people blog and posts to hear themselves speak.  Just as when we must tolerate the gas from a nearby infant, what comes out of the mouths of some of these people may stink, but just as we wouldn’t flame a child for passing an offensive cloud in our direction, we must consider the source of some of these scratchings (“writings” would be pretty charitable for some) and be relatively tolerant. 

Likewise, no amount of clever rhetoric is going to get you back the thousands you’ll have to spend defending a frivolous lawsuit.  What it really all comes down to is that we must decide for ourselves what is harmless and what is dangerous, and go after the dangerous and ill-advised.  All other discussion is probably wasted because with some of these individuals, no amount of logic will sway them from their misdirected viewpoint.

I guess my measurement on deciding which individuals should be dealt with would be that there are those whose views are derived either because of laziness (and reluctance to change because it would require them to do something other than to take up space), those who are as a result of ego or greed guarding their domain (and reluctant to change because it would cost them their position in our “society”), those who are defrauding others (for whatever reason, again as a result of ego or greed, aware that change would cause people to analyze their claims), and the malicious.

Believe it or not, I don’t find too many people in our business that fit into the category of deserving of a flame attack.  In most of the cases I have found where I am dealing with someone who gets my temper to flare up, after a few moments of deep breathing I have found that they fit into the category of the misinformed.  The question then is, are they receptive to education, or is it me who needs to be educated?  After all, maybe I’m the one who was misinformed or misunderstood the issue.  The key, I have found, is that both parties need to be open to civil discourse and willing to appreciate the viewpoint of their counterpart.  It is in this area where I find many of us, including myself, to need improvement.

By checking our emotions at the door and getting to the point of the discussion, figuring out the difference between factual information and rhetoric, we achieve enlightenment.  Let me paraphrase something from the Tao Te Ching; the useful part of a jar isn’t the jar, it is the empty space within the jar.  Unless we are willing and able to understand someone else’s position on a subject, no matter how right or wrong, we will not be able to teach someone the truth, or appreciate the truth ourselves.  In understanding how someone comes to a conclusion, we can then effectively show the way, if that is what is necessary, or we can be shown the way.

I may have lost some of you with that, but it is in this that you can probably see the point better.  When was the last time you were completely convinced that something was the truth, only to find out after time that you were wrong?  So in that interim, did you find yourself defending that “truth” to the point of being uncivil to another?  How did you feel then about what you said or did that may have been to defend your position, only to find out now that you were wrong?  Did you regret your actions?

There is an eastern tradition that the victorious should be be magnanimous in victory and as much as possible, allow the defeated to save face.  In doing so, you secure allies and you earn respect.  If you trot around like T.O. after a touchdown after winning your point, be reassured that if you are ever wrong, it will be rubbed in your face (like I wish someone would do to T.O.).  When you are convincing someone of your point, you’ll find it to be a good move to win them over rather than to point out their folly and subsequently, you’ll find that you gain trust and respect as well.

It may feel good to be snarky and rub someone’s face in their ignorance (I enjoy it), but after a while, you’ll find it to be a hollow victory.   I’m sure we can all agree we should never attack the unarmed, and in a battle of wits, that is the root cause of much of the problem. So instead of being smug about our victory, maybe we should celebrate together that we have another convert to our cause.  That seems to be a more appropriate celebration anyway.

Posted by truck6alpha on July 27, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, fire service, leadership, motivation, officership, politics, professionalism, revolution, safety • Tagged: , , , , ,

Elvis, Urban Legends, Grapevines and The Firehouse

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Hilton Head Island Medics

Hilton Head Island Medics

Elvis has left the building, in the literal sense.  Elvis Presley came to mind today because of the Facebook vote we are taking for a colleague as to whether or not he and his fiancee should elope to Vegas and get married by an Elvis impersonator.  But as happens with many ideas of mine, coffee, and driving home from work, Elvis was soon replaced to musings on the life of urban legends and likewise, those musings to the issue of the “Firehouse Grapevine”. 

Of course, this then led to further examination of the term, “grapevine” and my wondering if it had some sinister Latin origin like maybe Caesar heard Brutus planning through a grapevine or something (by the way, the word “sinister” has it’s origin from the Latin, “left”, as in your left hand, and I am a lefty but not sinister. But I digress…). 

Of course, the origin of the phrase is nowhere near as sinister (or left-like).  The origin of the phrase, according to the website, The Phrase Finder, comes from, well, read it for yourself:

The first practical public demonstration of the telegraph was given in 1844, when Samuel Morse sent a message from Washington to Baltimore. The invention was widely welcomed as a means of rapidly communicating news. It soon became clear though that close communities already had effective word-of-mouth communications. Soon after the telegraph was invented the term ‘grapevine telegraph’ was coined – first recorded in a US dictionary in 1852. This distinguished the new direct ‘down-the-wire’ telegraph from the earlier method, which was likened to the coiling tendrils of a vine. It’s clear that the allusion was to interactions amongst people who could be expected to be found amongst grapevines, i.e. the rural poor. 

In 1876, The Reno Evening Gazette ran an article about a bumper corn and grape crop. They commented on the fact that the people who were then called Indians and Negroes seemed to be already aware of it (hardly a surprise you might think as it would have been they who had harvested the crops):

“It would seem that the Indians have some mysterious means of conveying the news, like the famous grapevine telegraph of the negroes in the [American Civil] war. The Pioneer Press and Tribune says that, while the first telegraphic news of Custer’s death reached them at midnight, the Indians loafing about town were inquiring about it at noon.”

 The term ‘bush telegraph’ originated in Australia, probably influenced by ‘grapevine telegraph’. That referred to the informal network that passed information about police movements to convicts who were hiding in the bush. It was recorded in 1878 by an Australian author called Morris: ”The police are baffled by the number and activity of the bush telegraphs.”

 In the UK it was the ‘jungle telegraph’ – referring to communications in outposts of the British Empire around the same period.

 Of course ‘heard it through the grapevine’ is best known to us as the Motown song, recorded by Gladys Knight & the Pips in 1967 and by Marvin Gaye in 1968. It’s salutary that, whilst the telegraph is long gone, the person-to-person communication that preceded it is still going strong.

 So by now I’m sure you are asking, “Where are you going with this, anyway?”  Here’s where I am going: Is there an emergency service organization (or any organization, for that matter) anywhere in which a certain amount of information, often incorrect or incomplete, isn’t passed around from day to day, affecting the morale of the personnel?  I know of none.  People, by their nature, are curious.  Any lack of information creating a vacuum in their field of knowledge will rapidly be replaced by something; if that something is the guy or girl at the station who likes to gossip and/or stir things up, you can guarantee that THIS information is what will be disseminated, not the truth.

So what created this vacuum in the first place?  A lack of information.  We used to joke in our organization that if we wanted to know something about our department, we needed to read the local newspaper.  The flow of information from ‘The West Wing” as we call that section of our Headquarters, was notably absent.  Was it an issue of trust?  Was it an issue of neglect?  Who knows, and it’s old history anyway.  The point is that in an absence of information, someone will gladly fill that spot up for you.  So do you want it to be the correct information, or the rumors?

Our organization, in this administration, has gone forward with an agreement that we should be as transparent as possible.  Short of personnel issues and issues that require a certain amount of timing, we have been very open about our plans and have gone to extraordinary lengths (sometimes, admittedly, frustratingly extraordinary) to include others in the process of running a world-class emergency service.  But the efforts are paying off.

With some isolated exceptions, most of our personnel seem to understand more about the nuances of our operation and they seem to appreciate the candor of our chief.  A key phrase that is used, especially in this time of uncertainty: “I don’t know”.  When you don’t know something, you should say so, because people, and more specifically, firefighters, can spot BS a mile off.  But the effort to find out, or to at least explain the reason why we actually don’t know, is imperative for building the trust of the people who work with you.  If you don’t know because of ignorance, shame on you; but if you don’t know because of ambiguity or fluctuating conditions, well, be frank with people and educate them so they too can help solve your challenges.

While the best way to kill off the grapevine is to cut it off at the root, in my limited viticultural experience (none) I have been led to believe that the root stock, with proper care, can be regrown.  In similar fashion, although you may fire the “pot stirrers”, it is likely that the core issues that caused that grapevine to prosper will soon be right back at work, disrupting your team.  Furthermore, although we may not agree with their methods, if you listen to what those annoying and often counterproductive individuals are saying, you might find a shred of truth.

So while I can’t attest to the current status of Elvis, and I can spot what seems like an urban legend and check it out, the closest I have come to solving the riddle of the firehouse grapevine is to insure my people are informed and involved.  And if you dig to the heart of any well-regarded organization, you’ll find those characteristics are shared among all of them.  My advice to you: Be the same.  Listen to your people, let them listen to you, share the knowledge, and build consensus and collaboration.  May the fruits of your labor be productive and many.

Posted by truck6alpha on July 24, 2009 • Filed under: Firefighter Nation, change, fire service, leadership, motivation, officership, politics, professionalism • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cellular Dependency

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Hilton Head Island Engine 7 at truck fire

Hilton Head Island Engine 7 at truck fire

It wasn’t really by design, but the last time I was in Atlanta, I found that I had some problems getting my e-mail on my fancy smart phone.  Likewise, on this occasion when I spent a few days in “The City Too Busy To Hate”, my “missing” status this week evolved into a few days of real time with my family.  As far as being away went, other than a boneheaded move in leaving my wife’s laptop unattended on top of luggage (while my 3-year-old daughter lurked nearby- things didn’t end well), it was a beautiful weekend with my wife and children.  The weather in Atlanta was amazing, the hotel and staff excellent, and best of all, the smart phone silent.

Interestingly enough, the homilist at Mass on Sunday reflected on the same thing: Even Jesus needed a break.  You know the story: Jesus asks His entourage to go ahead after a hard day’s work and prepare a place away from the huddled masses where He could rest, only to find someone leaked the plan and when Jesus arrived, there were plenty there waiting.  Of course, Jesus goes on to have pity on these “sheep without a shepherd” and goes back to work.

While I’m certainly not even in the slightest comparing my situation to Jesus’ situation, the point is that even the most important people in the world need to step away from time to time, so really, who am I to believe that the world will come apart if I shut off the phone for a while?

There’s a certain amount of imbalance in our lives, especially for those of you who like me, are always picking up a new thing they want to share and work with.  The problem is that in our doing so, we forget that we need an opportunity to recharge and step back for a while.  If anything, you can chalk it up to needing fresh perspective.

So you’ll have to accept my apology when I keep this one short, as my daughter wants me to teach her how to make fried chicken.  After that, I’ll check the e-mail.

Posted by truck6alpha on July 21, 2009 • Filed under: Firefighter Nation, change, fire service, firefighting, motivation, professionalism, safety • Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Who Is Building Your House?

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Ken Bell at Chalmette BoO, Katrina 2005

Ken Bell at Chalmette BoO, Katrina 2005

Ken Bell, a friend and the other Deputy Director of the South Carolina US&R Task Force, announced this week that he is retiring from the program to spend more time with his family and his other pursuits.  In a reply I sent that was meant to pay homage to his contributions to the program (which were enormous), I compared him to the contractor who took the blueprints and built the house.

Our task force originating plans were put together by our Program Management Group, as a team.  Though our first Director, Ray Wilkinson, was a huge part of the equation, Ken was right there with him, implementing the things he needed done.  When I took over as acting Director in 2005, I insisted on taking those original plans, developing a strategic plan to take us the rest of the way, and insuring the future of the program.  Nothing in those plans would have been any good had we not had a reliable and determined individual to coordinate it all.  From the birth of our program forward, Ken was a constant representative of the program, and through most of the way, the central focus for getting anything done.

Even after we hired Dan McManus, and I was off doing my thing, I’d say that Dan was able to count on Ken for whatever he needed done.  So at this point where South Carolina’s premier US&R asset has gone from a piece of paper to a respected state-level Type 1 US&R task force with a multi-million dollar facility and apparatus and cache, we know that because of Ken’s efforts, our house stands on a solid foundation.  This program was built for generations by someone who genuinely cared about each component as if he were building his very own home, when in fact, he was building it for someone else; the citizens of South Carolina.

If you have a program you care deeply about, that you know is important not just to you, but to others, it is imperative that you find the right person to implement it.  We were so very fortunate to have had Ken come into our lives and take us to where we are now.  Ken- great job.  We all owe you, big time.

Posted by truck6alpha on July 13, 2009 • Filed under: US&R • Tagged: , , , , , ,

Why Yell?

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IMG_1146I’m Mick, and I yell.  I think this is the part where you all are supposed to say, “Hi Mick.”  Why do we yell?  I started to say, “I’m a yeller”, but that doesn’t sound right.  And I don’t scream.  Screaming to me indicates panic or total loss of personal control.  But anyone who knows me knows I have a little bit of a fuse and when you light it, I’m liable to say some things I wouldn’t intentionally repeat around the God-fearin’ folk.

This blog is as much about therapy as it is for education and sometimes the questions I ask are actually me asking myself the question (did that make sense?).  Why yell?  Well, I guess the simplest way to say it is that I yell when I am frustrated.  I guess in a bit of self-analysis, I should ask, who gives me the right to yell except me?  Who made me the arbiter of all things?  Does the yelling solve anything? In short, I probably don’t really have a right to yell and the yelling only solves things when the recipient gets the message.

So it sounds like it’s more of a communication problem.  I don’t really yell when I don’t get my own way.  I yell when it is apparent to me that someone isn’t paying attention or I yell back when someone is yelling at me.  When someone isn’t paying attention in most cases, I get angry because I feel like the other person is being selfish and acting in a manner that doesn’t show consideration for others.  It’s funny, because I don’t nearly get as angry about someone wronging me as when I see someone wrong someone else.  And when someone is yelling at me, I guess I’m inclined to yell back because when I screw something up, I take it to heart and simmer over it for a while.  So you don’t have to yell at me, I get it.  And if you don’t get that I get it, I begin to yell too.

Generally, I am an empathetic man, and when I finish yelling, I wonder why I did it in the first place, and more often than not, I feel badly about it.  I don’t CHOOSE to yell.  I guess that’s the powerlessness coming out.  Just as a three-year-old will lash out when no one understands what they want, I guess yelling is a form of emotional immaturity that we need to choke back.  But how else then can we communicate what it is we need when the subject doesn’t seem to be listening?

The problem at the heart of this truly is communication.  If all the laws of effective communications came together like they are supposed to, we wouldn’t have to yell.  We tend to yell when there is a lot of noise, and by noise, I’m not just talking audible noise, but distractions – problems at home, busy schedule, not feeling well, etc. I suppose the key is to either find a way to effectively drill through the problem or to postpone the communication until a more appropriate time.

I’d just as soon never yell again, but unfortunately, I’m in a business where sometimes things go seriously wrong and people die when orders aren’t understood.  If you aren’t paying attention on the fireground, I’d rather yell at you then see you fall through the roof, so please bear with me.  And I have three young children at home, none of whom seem to be inclined to pick anything up when they are done with it, so as much effort as I have put into not yelling at home, it’s inevitable that it will happen again.  I suppose it all really comes down to a matter of perspective.  If I don’t yell at home, the result might be a dirty house.  If I don’t yell at work, someone might die.

But just like commercials and other annoying things, too much completely ruins the effectiveness of it.  If I yelled all the time (other than everyone staying away from me), the intended recipients just see it as another crazy rant.  I know people who like to yell at me (a lot) and while at first it bothered me, now it is just so much background noise.  So if yelling a lot isn’t working, I guess the key observation would be that you should save your yelling for when it is absolutely necessary, else it will have no impact whatsoever on your chosen yellee.

I guess this brings us full circle then.  Is yelling effective?  Why yell?  It almost seems counterintuitive to suggest that yelling will cause people to NOT listen to you, but if you do too much of it, chances are that you are headed right down that path.  So some advice- take a deep breath, put the problem into perspective, and decide if yelling is even worth it.  On occasion, it might be.  But the likely scenario is that by the time you consider all that, the problem individual has moved on already and you may have even cooled off.  So think hard before you use a shotgun to kill a housefly.  Save the yelling for the completely necessary events only.  My audiologist thanks you.

Posted by truck6alpha on July 12, 2009 • Filed under: Uncategorized, customer service, education, fire service, leadership, officership, professionalism, safety • Tagged: , , , , , ,

Star of Life Law Blog

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I am encouraged by some of the blogs that are going on out there right now and I try to throw a link to the good ones over on the side over there (you know, over THERE, on your right).  A great one that popped up in the past few days has some serious merit; the Star of Life Law blog by my friend and colleague Pete Reid, who is not only a practicing lawyer but a practicing paramedic.  I am a man who has braved some serious fires and disasters, dove into alligator and shark infested waters (not at the same time), and fathered three girls, but if there is a subject that strikes fear in the hearts of all of us, and that’s the legal side of the business.  It’s likely because we don’t fully understand it, but given the few posts Pete already has on there, he has the opportunity to help us at least stay out of trouble.

As I posted before, a quote from a lawyer on lawyers:

“Lawyers are like vultures – most people look upon the vulture as a vile creature, eating carcasses and garbage, reprehensible to watch.  However, if there were no vultures, think about all of the roadkill that would rot on the highways, in the forests, and elsewhere.  Vultures take care of the messes we find distasteful.  If people would just get along and deal with each other in a civil manner, we wouldn’t need lawyers.” (Judge Thomas Kemmerlin, in a Leadership Hilton Head session)

While Pete is certainly not a vile creature (he’s actaully a really nice guy), he does offer a perspective on the legal side of emergency services that I hope to include in our discussions on here, because after all, he’s the lawyer.  If people didn’t sue people, we wouldn’t need lawyers, but if we do our job, we shouldn’t have to worry about being sued either.  Unfortunately, that’s not always the case and frivolous lawsuits cost a lot of money to defend, money that I’m sure most of us have allocated for more important things, like food and a mortgage.  So learn, educate others, and protect yourself.  Go check it out.

Posted by truck6alpha on July 10, 2009 • Filed under: US&R, change, education, fire service, government, leadership, officership, professionalism • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I Wanna Be A Libertarian

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mod abf slidell (7)For the most part, I consider myself a Libertarian in that I’d just as soon the government not tell me what to do.  In some aspects, I guess, I’m pretty conservative in my values, so I’m a little Republican, and I like the idea of people on welfare getting off of it someday, especially since I had to eat a lot of PBJs and continue to drive a car with 100k+ miles on it to afford the house we live in (but that’s called choosing your priorities).  And although I’m all for funding the arts, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to fund anything called “Piss Christ”. 

Socially, I guess, I’m pretty Democratic.  While I want people off of welfare eventually, I’m also realistic in that there are people who really need help.  I also believe that just because I believe in certain things, others do not.  Just as soon as I would never force anything down your throat, though, I’d just as soon you didn’t force me to either.  So I’m all in favor of saying “One country, under God” and courthouse lawn manger scenes, in season, of course.

Our government should help when it can and stay out of our business when it can not. But when public safety is involved, time and time again the public has shown it can’t be trusted to do what is right for their neighbors, so there are times when the government should really step in and set things straight.

What am I talking about?  Well, in Breckenridge, Colorado, an ordinance was passed to create a defensible space between properties.  While some people see this as a sane thing to do, others think that it infringes upon their rights.  As I see it, it is the right to have highly combustible timber and brush leading right to your home (or your neighbors), and then, I guess, your right to bitch about it when it catches on fire and the fire department is overwhelmed trying to help all the other Libertarians in your neighborhood.

Now, I don’t for a minute think all these people are Libertarians (nor do I care, and the same for any other political affiliation, just bear with me), but there really does come a time when the common good trumps that of your personal rights.  Call it a slippery slope, but you know, as much as I embrace your religious rights, I don’t see a problem with being able to see your face when you enter a public building.  And I as much as I believe in my First Amendment rights, I think race-baiting and hate speech should be banned, because it is apparent some people lack a certain amount of civility.

When we in emergency services make proposals for public safety, we should always consider the effect we have on individual rights.  The decisions we make really do affect those rights, but so long as we are using good logic in doing so, the public has to understand that we need a LITTLE HELP sometimes.  If you choose to exercise your right to build right up to the interface, you are going to have to give us a little break when we ask you to cut back the forest from your house a little.  When we tell you that you need to leave your home because the fire is heading in your direction, trust me, if I could leave you in place, I would, because frankly, you’re just going to get out there and tie up the highway and gawk and get in my way instead of evacuating anyway, so I’d just as soon leave you there.  I do, however, realize that leaving you to burn up in your property, regardless of your individual rights, is going to land me in court because I left you to do what you wanted anyway.

How do we take into consideration individual rights versus the right to protect people from themselves?  By educating people, and sometimes that requires bold and candid speech.  It is this exact kind of speech that politicians hate, because it shakes up the status quo.  So long as the populace is happy, the politicians are happy and it’s a lot less work.  When we make decisions to cut back trees or not to respond to calls for help at a certain windspeed during a hurricane, or to evacuate people from harms way, it certainly upsets people and they take that moment to complain.

We have to make the grown-up decisions, though; it’s why we exist.  Sometimes it’s best to leave things be, but sometimes you need to point out to people that their decisions could very well result in injuries and fatalities.  If people can’t see their way through those choices, then maybe we should just restrict our response to help them when all Hell breaks loose.  After all, we wouldn’t want the government to interfere with your life, would we?

Posted by truck6alpha on July 9, 2009 • Filed under: DHS, FEMA, change, customer service, fire service, firefighting, government, insurance, leadership, planning, politics, professionalism, safety • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I Had A Vision

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IMG_0631I woke up this morning with an idea for emergency services that is already a reality.  It’s funny about technology in our business; innovation driven by the private sector and the military is implemented and has probably run through four or five revisions, then we look at it and say, “Wow, this is amazing technology!” while the others have likely moved on.

I was thinking about the use of RFID, or “radio frequency identification” for you non-geeks out there.  Now while we have discussed the use of RFID for personnel accountability (which you could embed in your credential we have been beating on about over the last month and I have decided to let rest for a bit), where as you pass through a checkpoint at an incident, the RFID chip would log you in, plus pertinent data, and make it much easier to manage the locations of your valuable assets (that would be your people).

But another application that private industry and the military have used RFID for is for logistics management.  For a while I have gone on in our department about the use of bar coding to produce a reliable determination of asset location (if you can’t scan the code, the item is obviously not there).  But in the case of RFID, what I was thinking is that you could have a portal- like at the bay doors- that would scan your vehicle, with all of the RFID-chipped tools and assorted equipment, and tell you what was there and what wasn’t.  While you were at it, you could actually tell WHICH item it was; for example, the generator on your engine is Acme Fire Department Generator #3.  Well, Generator #3 is due for maintenance.  Or Generator #3 was swapped out at your last preventative maintenance cycle and you actually have Generator #21.  And your Maintenance/Logistics folks just happen to be looking for Generator #21 because it has to have a whatsit retrofitted.  You see where I’m going with this?  You could actually know if Engine 1 went out the door with everything on it or not.

If your department is anything like my department, and your firefighters anything like my firefighters, you are asking, “isn’t this going to be expensive to replace when we break the chip?”  You all know that if you put a firefighter in an empty locked room with two ball bearings he will break one and lose the other.  Well, if this stuff is ruggedized enough for the military, it’s likely that it will last at least a week in a fire station.

The sad part is, like I said, this is stuff that has been out there for a while.  But do YOU know about it?  Can you advocate for change and improvement if you don’t know what kind of change and improvement we are capable of?  What other ideas do you see being used in everyday life that have an application to our jobs?

Posted by truck6alpha on July 8, 2009 • Filed under: US&R, USAR, change, credentialing, fire service, firefighting, leadership, planning, revolution, technology • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hypocrisy

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When a man will condemn others but will not subject himself to the same ethical standards, that, my friends, is a hypocrite.   We talk about people living in glass houses and the logic for their not throwing stones, but we often fail to hold people to their statements that they made to get them to where they are today.

When a man will say that a project is a waste of time, yet take credit for it when the project is being hailed by the media, that, my friends, is a hypocrite.  Likewise, there are “leaders” in this world who like to trumpet their budget cuts and their saving of taxpayer funds, despite being warned that their efforts could prove dangerous, but when things do go badly, they slip free of any blame, and those people are also hypocrites.

When a man will make claims that he has accomplished something spectacular, but won’t permit scrutiny of his claims, is that man a hypocrite?  Shouldn’t we, if we have indeed done an amazing deed, be willing to permit people to look into our claims, to see just what it is that we have done and how we can replicate that “success”?  Hypocrisy is claiming you are all about something, when really you are not; so if you make claims of expertise, shouldn’t you expect critical review of your work?  If it is truly what it is, it will stand up to the examination.

When people go around pretending to be leaders by making claims of their honesty, they should in fact be honest.  If they are about being a good steward of taxpayer funds, they too, should be actually doing just that.  If they think that their cost-cutting efforts are actually beneficial to the community and they prove to be wrong, they should be willing to take that heat.  And when we say we are professionals in what we do, we should permit others to review our works and determine if they hold up to a critical examination of the content.

Change freightens the entrenched and the hypocritical; the entrenched because of their anticipation of loss and the hypocrites, because they will be exposed for what they are when the light of truth shines in.  If you are one who embraces change, it’s probably because you know you don’t have anything to lose.  If you are what you are and you do what you do, and you practiced your art and you learned from the masters, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain from change.

Posted by truck6alpha on July 6, 2009 • Filed under: DHS, FEMA, NIMS, SAR, US&R, USAR, change, command, credentialing, government, leadership, motivation, officership, politics, professionalism, rebellion, rescue, revolution • Tagged: , , , , , , ,