I used to pretty much "get on my game face" when one of these babies came wandering up from the Caribbean.  These days it seems like I'm just interested in getting on with things: either hit me or don't hit me, but let's not drag this out for a few weeks as I have little patience for drama.  Then of course, along comes the quake.  While this definitely ratcheted up the tension on the already nervous, it too didn't register much with me.  I guess not much fazes me anymore. 

While there is the wisdom shared by some that this is the Apocalypse, I'll point out that this was also said about a number of previous disasters by a number of similarly-wrong prophets, hucksters, and snake-oil salesmen posing as religious leaders.  I'm watching The Weather Channel like I do throughout most of the year anyway, hoping my family located in the Mid-Atlantic is doing okay, as they are usually wondering about us when the storms are aimed a little lower.

On my way back from out of town, I found myself contemplating the possibility of a strike on my community, as we were centered nicely in the earlier forecasts.  Strangely enough, and maybe it's just a sign that I am growing older, I felt pretty peaceful about it, so long as I could assure the safety of my wife and children and as well, spare the lives of my many Island neighbors (and other communities as well, but you get what I mean).  The rest is just stuff and stuff can ultimately be replaced.  It wouldn't be easy, but so long as we have each other, we have what we need.

A story I have repeated often (and have even spoke of it here on FHZ) is one from Katrina.  I met a man who had lost everything he had. When I questioned how God could let something like this happen, he said that he was thankful, because this was God's way of showing him how many people loved him.  In retrospect, some of the most valued lessons and gifts in my life came from Katrina. That sounds pretty bizarre, but the friendships I strengthened, the people who I met and have become lifetime friends with, the opportunities for learning and sharing, and many other things as well all came from the aftermath of that terrible storm.

Let's keep the people and communities who have already been impacted by disasters all over the world, and those who are in the sights of this new threat on the horizon, in our prayers.  And let's hope that instead of despair, each individual instead finds some meaning in these tragedies, meaning that strengthens them for the rest of their lives.

Now, I do read a lot and listen to podcasts, etc. and I will check my quotes with a deep internet search to make sure I haven't stolen someone else's ideas, but I'm pretty sure I said this stuff at one time or another.  I also left off anything I paraphrased (I hope) and added some stuff that exists in unpublished posts (there are a few dozen of those).  Believe it or not, we here at FHZ have standards.  They are low, but we do have standards.  

So here you are, from the beginning of FHZ, some of the more memorable ones:

• "When I give you an order, I want to see it done, or your dead body where you died trying to do it."
• "Never eat more than your mask can hold."
• "I am not your friend, I am your boss. If you want to be friends, that's okay, but that doesn't change the fact that I am your boss first."
• "The company officer is the designated adult supervision in the station. Act like it."
• "There won't be a group hug at the end of this. I don't do Kumbaya."
• "When I call for a resource I'm gonna give you type and kind. If I call for a Lincoln-ful of Panamanians, I don't care where you got it, just give me the closest one."
• "Let's put this in terms you can understand: Confined space rescue is nothing more than HAZMAT on a rope."
• "Being a truckie requires resourcefulness. You are presented with a problem no one else knows how to fix and you fix it with what you brought to the party or what you can swipe. After that, it's all magic."
• "Individuals have given themselves the freedom to make poor decisions, then be let off the hook because we 'shouldn't judge them', or because their mommy didn't hug them as a child, or whatever the victim story is this week." (Okay, I just used that one again the other day).
• "The base cause of indignity is usually the result of inconsiderate behavior." (Oh, and that one is new. But I liked it).
• "Conflict in life is inevitable. Conflict escalation and intractability is not." (Alright, that one is new as well.  Back to the old stuff).
• "There's enough ugly going on around us right now without our own people bringing it down on us."
• "Each of us should be serving as a positive example of how to do the job, volunteer or career, and without acting like a bunch of amateurs and whackers."
• "The important part in our lives, really, isn't necessarily what we can fill up our minds with at every moment, but about creating space to let more in."
• "There are a few things that you should raise the stakes for, like your faith, your family, and your country.  But when faced with an unwinnable scenario and a profound lack of resources, sometimes it is best to save what you can save and live to fight on another day."
• "Where t = tempo, r = resources and f = frustration: increasing t multiplied by decreasing r = exponential increase in f."
• "The taxpayers in your community ultimately decide what level of service they want.  If they are insistent that giving you no resources is okay, then they have to be educated to what extent that investment will reap disaster.  Risk is proportionate to return."
• "There are other sides to every argument that get squashed by the rush of the ADD crowd to comment.  Don't fall into the trap of the unenlightened.  Think before you post."
• "I can think of no rational society that thinks it is okay to screw the disadvantaged for the benefit of the privileged.  Taking advantage of the less fortunate is simply bullying."
• "When we use the phrase 'customer service", if that's not appealing to you, try saying it like this: 'doing what is right for our neighbors and the people who visit and work in our community'.  That should be a little more pleasant."
• "Successful coaches match schemes to personnel, not vice-versa."
• "If you are going to successfully implement change in your organizational culture, there should be a reluctance to be where you were and a desire to get where you are going."
• "I'm pretty sure that when my ticket , I'm not going to be quoted saying something profound, poetic, or heroic.  It is likely going to be something that can't be repeated around children or the faint-hearted."
• "If we really want our industry to recognized as professional, it requires consistent conduct that is professional."
• 'Legitimate power, in the sense of leading others, is limited to the amount of leverage the followers will permit."
• "Tansformative leadership requires commitment, honesty to self, and an understanding of the world.  It's yours if you can embrace change, open yourself up to it, and set the example to others."
• "Our business is too dangerous to leave the teaching to amateurs."
• "Perhaps if you guys are going to fight fire like you are in the '70's, you should be paid like we were then too."
• "If as a team, you can't agree on the destination, someone needs to get out of the car. Ultimately, getting to the destination requires assessment, negotiation, understanding, cooperation, and ends with commitment."
• "More often than I care to, my 'command presence' comes out at inopportune times, like when I am talking to my wife (she doesn't like it), my kids (they're not crazy about it either), or my colleagues (they probably think I'm insufferable anyway)."
• "If you fail to illustrate a clear picture of who is in charge, someone else will come in and fill that drawing in for you."
• "Sometimes the best we can do is to pin it down to the neighborhood of origin, if that's what was burning when we got there."

Since at some point perhaps I'll add another page of these for the next years, if one of the sentences I uttered strikes a chord with you, point it out to me and I'll add it.  I'm all about customer service.  Until next time, thanks for reading.

I’ve been really busy getting the home ready for the holidays. In the meanwhile, though, here’s an update on where and when I’ll be in your part of the world:

February 19-20 – Command for Company Officers, Ballardsville FD, Crestwood, KY (near Louisville)

March 8-9 – Command for Company Officers, Canyon Lake, TX

March 10-11 – Incident Safety Officer, Canyon Lake, TX

March 26 (one day class) – Command 101, Johnson City, NY (near Binghamton)

I expect to continue working with Ron Richards and Task Force 1 to present some really dynamic programs.  There are also some real quality courses being presented that I am not teaching, and you can see those class offerings in this link.  and I even have one in the works that I’ll hopefully be offering beginning in late Spring 2011.  If you are interested in having me come teach or speak at your event, I’m happy to work with you, or point you toward Ron who can help set up some really nice programs with multiple instructors, if that’s what you are looking for.

I hope to have a nice post here in a few days when things settle down but it looks as if everyone else seems to be carrying the load right now just fine.  Until then, thanks again for reading and I hope you are having a great holiday season.

As was quoted by at least one of my friends from the CFD prior to that night: “We’re the FDNY of the South.”  When your fire department has a Class 1 ISO rating and homes aren’t burning into the dirt on a daily basis, the public is just fine with whatever it is you are doing.  Whether your organization is using the most modern equipment and techniques, or whether they are utilizing tactics thrown away in the 70′s, there are much more important things on the public radar.  Things like whether or not the garbage will get picked up, or who the next contestant is on The Bachelor, or which rehab facility Lindsay Lohan is skipping out of.  The entire community of Charleston and the fire department itself, prior to that day, was fine and happy with the status quo.  Just like any disaster, it isn’t until people die that questions begin to be asked.

This isn’t an indictment of the department, its culture, or anyone in particular.  All I know is what I know and the things that were said before, on and after that night.  A big reason why I have never said anything really about it until now is that I wasn’t asked (I was this time).  But nothing I care to say would be intended to disparage the reputations or the character of the brave members of the CFD.  I simply believe that the charismatic style of their leader at the time led them down a primrose path.  He thought he was doing the right thing, everyone else there thought he was doing the right thing, and nothing seemed like it could go wrong, until it did.  Catastrophically.

I wasn’t at the incident in the beginning and frankly, in retrospect, there were many disasters converging at that exact location that evening.  It was inevitable that something bad would happen, given some of what we knew before, and of course, given what we know now.  I had to shake my head in wonder when I saw that one poster on a blog page wanted to know, “Where are all the chiefs in SC?” on the issue.  ”Why wouldn’t they do something before this disaster?”  Well, let me tell you a little bit about fire departments in the United States: Unless the public or their elected officials detect a problem, there is never going to be any change, no matter WHAT the chiefs in the neighboring communities or the state have to say about it. After the disaster, it is true, the collective anger and frustration not only from within, but from the overall fire service community was instrumental in causing a change, but really, it took the deaths of nine brave souls to make that change manifest.

All we can do now is honor the lives of those who go before us, pray for the families and help them deal with this tragedy, and hope we all learn from the events that evening.  Senseless doesn’t begin to describe the loss suffered by the principals of this story, and although I chalk up a great deal of what happened to hubris and over-confidence by the Fire Chief, and by default, the organizational culture, I don’t take anything away from the extremely fine and dedicated brothers who serve the community of Charleston, SC.  I can only pray that we don’t experience something like this again anywhere else on the globe.  In my heart, however, I know there are departments out there who learned nothing from this, therefore, we are only a heartbeat away from repeating these mistakes again.

I was lying on the couch in my living room when I got the first call.  The power was out at our house, so I was just working on my laptop, having just put the children to bed.  At the time, I was the Acting Director of the South Carolina US&R Task Force and awaiting our hiring a full-time Director to take my place in Columbia.  One of my Task Force Leaders rang my cell phone and asked if I had been briefed on what was going on in Charleston.  He said that there were several firefighters unaccounted for in a fire at the Sofa Superstore.

I am intimately familiar with Charleston.  I did the majority of my paramedic clinical time there in the 80′s and fell in love with the place.  My mother-in-law grew up in Charleston and we would go up there to visit her family, especially her well-connected sister and brother-in-law, often.   And when our second daughter, Caroline, was born, she developed complications resulting in a helo ride to the Medical University and a subsequent six-week stay in the neonatal ICU.  In response, my wife and I literally moved to Charleston and lived at a friend’s second home at King and Broad for the entire time.  We go back often and have developed many close friendships there.

I am also friends with a number of Charleston’s firefighters, although I never had the honor of meeting any of our brothers who passed that evening.  But at the time, no one really seemed to know who was involved, much less who was missing, so for all I knew, it could have been any one of the people I had grown to know over the years of interacting with the department.  And yes, I knew Rusty and many of the command staff who were there that evening, much as a result of my capacity with the Task Force and the ultimate oversight of their regional response team’s interaction with the State US&R Plan.

There’s really not much you can say when you get one of those calls.  I’ve been called for others like it before and several hours later find that the news was completely distorted from the original message.  You know, everyone ends up accounted for, or there was a mistake in transmission, or something like that.  And although I had every reason to believe what I was being told was true (this TFL has always been a good friend and dependable officer), I have to admit I was a little skeptical.  I told him to call me if he had any other information, and I’d call the State Fire Marshal, John Reich, who as the ESF-9 coordinator for the state, I technically reported to, and give him a heads-up.

When the power came back on a little while later, I clicked over to the Charleston news station and saw the coverage, and was immediately swayed by what was going on: an active search and rescue incident looking for multiple companies of missing firefighters.  Needless to say, things began to move pretty quickly, and it was really pretty much a blur after that.  Multiple phone calls between multiple state officers and the next thing was, the State Fire Marshal was asking us to represent the state at the incident and to offer whatever assistance was needed.

I can tell you this, given any State agency’s relationship with local entities, we were instantly cognizant that what we DIDN’T want was one of our incident support teams (IST) rolling in there and announcing we were there to take over, because we weren’t.  Not only would that be extremely callous and insensitive to the situation, we have no statutory authority to do so, short of a gubanatorial declaration of disaster (and that wasn’t coming).  So this was going to be a mission of extreme delicacy and an offer of assistance from the State Fire Marshal’s Office, and as such, I felt like it would be best if I went personally, even though we had an IST sitting across the river in Mt. Pleasant.

I called up Ed Boring and Jason Walters, who at the time were both Task Force command officers and work with me at Hilton Head Island, and told them I was heading up to Charleston on direction from John Reich.  Ed and Jason continue to work with me and over the years have become two of my closest friends not just because of our shared interests, but also because we served together at Katrina.  Nothing like a disaster and riding around in a dark-colored Suburban to create a bonding experience.

On our arrival, we were each stupified by the absolute desolation on the scene.  We got there before midnight, and at that point it was still not clear how many souls had been lost.  Everyone was in shock, or so it seemed.  The fire was still burning in places, but everyone seemed to be moving like their feet were in concrete.  Not in a slow, poorly organized way, but in a stunned, defeated, bewildered way.  It was definitely the scene of an enormous and horrendous event.

We delicately announced our need to report to the command post so we could speak to the incident commander, and kept getting pointed in a direction until we were finally pointed toward an empty pop-up tent with a single fold-up chair in the middle of the parking lot.  No one was there.  So we began to again poke around a little bit more, until we found Battalion Chief Robbie O’Donald, over by the ladder truck, which was still in the air.  Robbie, who was a member of SC-TF1 and also a member of the Charleston command staff, had very obvious burns across his hands and arms, but was standing at the front of the building with a portable radio.  I remember very softly calling to Chief O’Donald, because I honestly believed he was in total shock.  The burns on both of his arms were pretty graphic, with skin literally falling off of his arms, but here he was, still at his post.

After a brief discussion about who was in charge and where he was at, I asked Robbie if he realized his arms were burned.  He just kind of nodded and made a quiet, brief comment about trying to get someone out.  I asked him if he wanted to get his burns checked out, he just said he’d be okay.  Ignoring my suggestion, he led us over to a nearby gas station where the police had set up a command post of sorts, but no one was there either, so we went back over to the front of the store and stood around for a little.  Finally, I said to Robbie, “Hey, John Reich sent us up here to see if there’s anything we can do for you.”  Without answering me, he began to detail out for us where all the firefighters were lost at, including two on the other side of the wall from where we were standing.

I remember there was a back hoe sitting in front of the store.  ”You aren’t going to dig them out with that, are you?” I asked.  Given the state everyone was in, I didn’t quite know what to take for granted.  ”Man, I can bring you the entire task force down here, or just trucks and equipment if you guys want to do this yourselves, but you tell us what YOU want, we’ll do whatever it is YOU want.”  Trying to push him a little, I gave him my official business card, to indicate the official nature of my being there, and told him to take it to Rusty, and to let him know that whatever he needed, we’d get it there, just name it.  So Robbie took the card and went into the building and out of our sight, which was where Chief Thomas was.

After a while, Chief O’Donald came back out and told me, “Chief Rusty says we’re fine.”  Something in his face told me differently, and I’ve had enough experience to also know that things weren’t fine.  But I wasn’t going to argue.

“Robbie, we’ll be right over there,” I pointed to the street, “if you guys change your mind.”  He was staring back into the building again and I put my hand on his arm to let him know we were serious.  ”I don’t have the authorization to make a decision for Hilton Head, but given what’s going on here, if you need people up here to cover you guys, I know we can get a bunch of guys up here to cover you at least on a volunteer basis.”  He shook his head again and said, “Chief Rusty said we’ve got it.”

So we just wandered back to the road and got out of the way.  I called John Reich and gave him my report and said that we needed to send another representative later on when some of the shock wore off.  Then Ed and Jason and I stood by the road and watched as they carried the first five or six out, I don’t even really remember because at that point, I felt like this was something they needed to do themselves, and I wasn’t going to push the matter.  If they were my people, I’d want to be the one who carried them out, so I understood.  I also felt like our presence there, at that point, was more of a bystander than being of assistance, so we made our offers again, and with them saying once again they had everything under control, we left.  The ride home was pretty quiet.

I look back on that night with a certain amount of disbelief.  Did a department who fought as many fires as Charleston did really think they were going to make a knock on a commercial building fire with a single 2 1/2 inch supply line from a distant hydrant?  Did they really think an attack on a heavily-loaded big box with booster lines was a sufficient attack strategy?  Did they completely forget about the thermal imager sitting on their apparatus?  Did their hubris really lead them to reject the notion of calling for outside resources early into the incident?  Did the idea that “we fight these fires every day” with no semblance of modern command and control overwhelm the logical need for a coordinated rescue supported by protective lines?  Rather than trying to attack a fast-mover without opening up the overheads, might we have not approached this with a more defensive attack once it was realized that a victim was trapped in the rear of the building?

We can “what if” this incident to death, but it doesn’t reverse the past.  I personally know many of the key players in this saga and I can reassure you, none of them went to work that morning thinking, “Hey, I think I’ll kill off a few firefighters today”.  But that’s what happened and no matter how sure you are of yourself, when you lose nine firefighters and someone asks you, “Given what you know now, would you fight this fire differently?” and you say, “No”, you have got a serious problem.

Resources will always be a problem in the fire service.  We never have what we really need to do our jobs and we are always going to be understaffed.  We will always be questioned by the public as to why it takes so many of us to fight a fire and why does it all cost so damn much.  Then when all hell breaks loose, if we don’t make things happen, the public will scream that we didn’t do our job.  It’s the never-ending dichotomy of public service.  But to look at the lessons learned that evening and ignore them, well, it’s tantamount to killing your people.

It’s this simple: if you can’t fight the fire without killing your people, then why bother?  If a rescue were being made, it’s one thing, but the men who lost their lives weren’t in any position to mount a defense for the rescue teams; they were in attack positions and eventually retreat positions with nowhere to go.  They were actively trying to seek out a hidden fire while the whole time they were playing a game stacked against them.  There WAS no “Plan B”.  I’m not sure there was a “Plan A”.  If you drive by there today, it’s a big vacant lot.  These guys gave up their lives for their community, they gave what is identified in the Bible as being the greatest gift one can give to their fellow man: their lives.  But just like the 343 men who died in the World Trade Center, the public has a short memory of these people and their mission.  And when we ask for more funds, more manpower, or more equipment, more training, more support, or more apparatus, unless the stain of blood is still on the hands of the civilians from the latest disaster du jour, they have moved on to the next media extravaganza of the week.

Me, I have an obligation to my family to come home in the morning.  I have an obligation to the families of my personnel to make sure they leave in the morning as well. If I don’t keep sharp, if I don’t fully comprehend the situation I am sending companies in to engage, and if I don’t have the means to put the tools in their hands they need, then I am failing them.  No amount of pride, a patch, a label, or honors will do you any good when you are carrying out your dead and for what?  If we can’t be there for each other, what have we really got?

Where were you that night?  You may not have been there, but the lessons are all available for us to read and to learn from.  If we fail to address the deficiencies, or short of that, at least identify methods of modifying our approach, or even less, realizing we simply don’t have the appropriate resources and stating: “we’re going to let it burn”, then we are ignoring the legacy of these fine men, these Charleston Nine, who have gone on before us.  As leaders, we have a responsibility to learn and not make the same mistakes again.  Honor these men by perfecting our craft and striving for positive change in the fire service.  I never knew them, but I’ll bet that’s what they’d have wanted.  Let’s keep them forever in our memory and insure they are never forgotten.

SCTF1 Personnel performing search training at SCFA US&R site in Columbia, SC

I reported to work this morning and caught this news as I walked in the door.  This quake was reported as being an 8.8 and is also the cause of a tsunami that is expected to strike various nations in the Pacific basin.  I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this over the next few days and since I’m not a “news” blog, I’d suggest keeping an eye on this from our other FireEMSblog partners who are.  Here’s the article from Reuters.

While I have been hearing reports that Chile’s infrastructure is significantly more robust than Haiti’s was prior to the quake, an 8.8 magnitude quake can’t be good for anything requiring stability, so once daylight hits there, I’m sure we’ll hear a lot more.  As far as US&R assets, I’m sure we’ll also be hearing about requests for those although just like before, I think Haiti was an anomaly in the deployment of any American teams other than the ones who are contracted through USAID (so if you are a FEMA or State team not on that very short roster, I wouldn’t be packing my bags quite yet).  However, I felt pretty stupid the last time when I said, “oh, no, only teams assigned through USAID go to disasters out of country”, and a day later all kinds of teams were getting put on standby.  Never say never, I guess; Just goes to show you there really aren’t any experts in emergency service management.

Keep these folks in our prayers.  They’ll need them.

My Grandfather "Smokey", my sister Colleen, and Smokey Bear. Unknown which cousin is in Grandpop's arm.

Trust is the mortar, the bond between power and responsibility.  Without empowerment, people are unable to act on their vision.  Give someone power and they are free to create all kinds of possibilities.  And in turn, if you give someone power and they squander those opportunities, those with power are reluctant to share it again.

There are several reasons why “leaders” fail to empower others, some of which involve the hesitancy to trust others to use the power wisely.  There may have been a precipitating event to foster this mistrust, or a cumulative effect may have occurred.  There are those who distrust others based on perception.

Take, for example, those who mistrust others because of outward appearances.  If you come into my place of business to get a job and don’t look professional, if I’m trying hard to convey a professional appearance, then you shouldn’t be surprised if it requires me a moment to trust in you.  Dressing the part goes a long way toward opening doors; in fact, it opens more doors than closes them.  But this is just the beginning: speaking my language- not just English, but using intellect and knowing the jargon- permits me to believe I can trust in you that you know what I know.  Using logic permits me to believe that you are mature and understanding of the options, and thus, maybe trustworthy.  None of this in and of itself should establish your credibility; you may dress like a slob and be a genius.  You may not have good English skills and yet have an amazing amount of information to share.  You may be one of those crazy artists who isn’t very logical, but has an excellent abstract way of looking at a problem.  But each of these things allows me a good feeling that I can take as: this person understands that what I think is important, they think is important.

Now while you can dress the part and talk the talk, that doesn’t make you trustworthy.  That’s the realm of the con man.  That gets you in the door.  The essential element is that once I allow you to open the door, you prove that the small amount of trust I hand over to you is nurtured and used appropriately.  Furthermore, if I permit you this trust, if something goes wrong, instead of stepping away from the situation, you own it and work to resolve it, I’m more willing to at least extend you a certain amount of trust again.

It’s completely give and take and it requires a certain amount of credit and repayment.  But given that transactional experience, a partnership between people is formed and the bond increases, just as mortar cures over time.

Right now in Haiti, for the survival of their nation, true leaders must come to the forefront.  They have an opportunity to rebuild their nation and make it strong.  There was a lot of work to be done before the disaster and the squandered trust between the “leadership” and the people is certainly a problem.  But when I know for fact that a lot of work is needed to restore their infrastructure, that indicates to me many opportunities for people to shine, to show others their devotion to hard work, to innovation, and to creativity.  If the leaders really desire change for the better, they need to foster a new generation of Haitians with power to improve their economy and their standard of life.  And while the disaster is only a week or so old, and the devastation so close at hand, it makes it difficult to focus on the future, but the future is there and waiting.  Once the fog lifts, enlightened leaders should seek those who desire a strong nation and employ them to rebuild it.

In this nation as well, there are those of us who are sick and tired of the two party system, the system that seems to be all about itself and not about us, and desire leaders who don’t give in to the rhetoric of the ultra-left or ultra-right.  There are those of us who simply desire to do right by each other, to look out for one another and not see things in the extremes but in shades of gray, because we all have value, and we should all be able to engage our dreams, but not at the expense of others’ dreams.

In your particular environment, insure that those around you are given the trust they need to succeed, and if you are in the position that someone entrusts you, make the most of it.  Insure you give back what you receive, and share that power as well, and create opportunities for others, and work together to make each other stronger.  Together we are greater than the sum of our parts.  That’s what synergy is all about.  Given the right amount of trust and taking responsibility for our actions (or our failures), we can grow and we can achieve excellence.

SC-TF1 US&R working in St. Tammany Parish, LA after Katrina.

I’m sure everyone out there continues to keep an eye on Haiti.  I’m not easily shocked, yet even I have been amazed at some of the scenes from down there.  Every time I see another bit of news, I want to go hug my children and remind myself how fortunate we are.

When friends and family see the situation there, not knowing how US&R deployments really work, I get asked if SC-TF1 is going.  Each time, I have taken that opportunity to explain the workings (and separation) between the USAID/DART assets and domestic response (FEMA US&R and State US&R assets) and how “task forces just aren’t sent to international disasters through FEMA”.  Of course, by saying “never”, something I NEVER thought I’d see in all of my years working in this business is occurring: the cooperation and coordination of FEMA with EMAC for the possibility (note I said, “possibility”, not “probability”) of State US&R Task Forces being deployed along with FEMA-sanctioned assets to an international disaster.

But all that being said, in watching the events unfolding, I continue to try to get my head around the response and it frankly has been a challenge.  With any disaster, there needs to be an attack plan, but in most cases, these plans hinge on some basic tenets of organization, none of these which seem to apply in Haiti.  Having been hit by several prior disasters recently, the country was already in extremis and the current situation obviously doesn’t improve things.

I have already heard from my sources that the teams that are there are working under heavy force protection.  Any of us that thought operating in New Orleans post-Katrina was sketchy, one look at the situation in Haiti makes us understand that at least we had the force of law SOMEWHERE on our side.  Reports have indicated that aside from the overwhelming number of missions and dangerous conditions, another part of the reason that engaging missions is problematic is because there simply isn’t any way to get the equipment from the airport to the disaster: roads were bad to begin with, there’s only one active runway at the airport, and there’s no machinery to off-load equipment and supplies.  Once the materials do happen to get onto the ground, no matter what conventions you try to apply for allocating the resources, there isn’t any guarantee the locals will comply with it anyway.

So for this disaster, there are other “sub-disasters” that make it much more dire, and even the media isn’t astute enough to understand it.  This situation is going to get MUCH worse before it gets better, because there’s no way to effectively get the help to where it needs to go, and if it did get there, there’s no guarantee that it will be applied to the right area anyway (unless you count “at gunpoint” as an effective means of allocating resources).

While equipment and supplies are arriving, we could just send everything we have to the area, but without the people who know how to work it, the equipment is useless.  While one friend of mine said to this, “If you gave me a concrete cutting saw, I could probably figure it out”; I mentioned to him that if you didn’t know water was an important part in making the saw blade cut more effectively, failing to do something as simple as that might mean the difference between extricating someone with one blade or a half-dozen blades.  It occurs to me that there are nuances of working with our US&R tools that are completely lost on the uninitiated.  I said this the other day: “It’s the definition between an organized US&R resource and ‘mobs with shovels’”.

My point is, after all this rambling, is that this is very much a teachable moment for everyone, just as I hoped Katrina and other disaster have been.  Even for some of my non-emergency service readers out there, there is an extremely important lesson to be learned: Every community must understand its vulnerabilities and the potential for disaster, and plan accordingly.

The caveat to this is, that despite the presence of a written plan, you can have every contingency covered and discussed, if you don’t understand and practice the plan, it isn’t worth the paper it is written on (Anybody remember Katrina?).

It is imperative that elected officials along with those of us who serve the public safety sector of our respective communities (AND the citizens living in those communities) understand what likely scenarios can occur, know where the vulnerable populations exist, and understand what resources are needed.

For responders: If those resources aren’t readily available, it is then incumbent upon us all to know where to get those resources, how to legally obtain and use them, and even more important, when and how to call them.

For the elected officials: It requires insistence on development of these plans as well as FUNDING to support the plans.

For non-responder citizens: Maybe you should understand that you have a part in this as well, to insure you are prepared to go it alone for at least 72 hours and maybe have some ability to rely on your own preparedness and not look to government for the total solution.  Try checking out the recommendations here at the FEMA website.

So without too much further delay, maybe this is a moment for all of you (elected officials, responders, and citizens) to dig out your volumes of plans and look through them and begin to understand not only what is in them, but at least what your part in that plan will be if, God forbid, you have to utilize them.   While we here in the United States are subject to the same disasters as other nations, at least here, there is the force of law to keep this type of situation from getting out of hand (note the sarcasm).  My suggestion: have a plan, support it, practice it, and if things go badly, USE IT.

Stay safe and let’s keep the responders as well as the citizens of Haiti in our prayers.

Hilton Head Island Fire Station 7

It’s that time of the year that we hear the word “presents” often enough to make your ears bleed, so I was wondering if my misuse of the word “presents” got your attention. Apparently it did, or you wouldn’t be reading this now.  Or maybe you didn’t notice.   If you didn’t notice, go and look again: when we speak of “command presence”, we speak of the characteristics of the person in charge to lead from a strong, visible, and decisive point of view, not “presents” like a gift.  Having strong leader-like characteristics  as part of your daily personality could be a “present”, if your job is to be a leader.  It also could be very annoying to the people around you.

According to my family and friends, acquaintances, and the Myers-Briggs (and every other psych profile I’ve ever gone through), I exhibit decisive, directive behavior as part of my normal personality.  More often than I care to, my “command presence” comes out when I’m talking with my wife (she doesn’t like it), my kids (they’re not crazy about it either), or my colleagues (they probably think I’m insufferable anyway).  This just goes to show you there is a time and place for everything.  Explaining to your daughter the intricacies of math, for one, is probably not a good time to be strong, visible and decisive.

Likewise, when you are leading firefighters into emergency situations, it is not a time to be easy-going, reserved, and willing to compromise.  There are those out there who are; they are also the ones with crews free-lancing, poor accountability, mixed commands, and poor coordination.  These are also the ones who get people hurt and killed.

While you don’t have to be the second coming of Field Marshal Rommel, you should understand that the fireground or rescue scene is the place where only one person can be in charge.  Coupled with the observation that leadership abhors a vacuum, you can probably understand that if you fail to establish a clear picture of who is in charge, someone else will.  It’s not the act of having a fist fight to decide who that is; the only person who can be in charge is the legally responsible incident commander.  How that decision is made is pertinent to the laws of your jurisdiction, but if you have someone who can’t command, they probably shouldn’t be in that position.

All too often, I see failure in company officers who are “best buds” with their troops on a daily basis, and then can’t understand why there’s so much chaos on their incident scene.  It is simply because those people don’t necessarily see you as the “alpha dog”.  To them, you are just another “member of the pack”.  Other members of the pack don’t call the shots, the alpha dog does.  And like I said, if you aren’t filling that role, someone else is.  That person will also be the one that when things go south, everyone turns toward for the answers.

In this time of giving, give your subordinates a lesson in leadership.  Your leadership should set a positive example, a role model, if you will, for your aspiring officers.  Command and control is important on the emergency scene and failing to work with that does not instill confidence in the abilities of the IC.  It is essential that not only do your charges see you as a leader on the scene, but in the station as well, for if they do not, on the scene is a bad place for them to convince them of that.  Make it a “present” to the people you are responsible for teaching and watching over.  Give them the tools to lead others, and they will hopefully show you that they trust your leadership, and when the time comes, they will walk on that path as well.

How can we help you today?

Are you a fire department or are you an EMS service?  Do you do both?  The knee-jerk reaction I sometimes get was one coined by a previous chief, “We are an EMS agency providing fire service”.  In fact, it sounds so clever that there are a vocal few who like to throw that out there time and time again, like they were the ones who originally came up with the concept (they’re paramedics, so they’re a little biased, I’m sure).

Something I said in a much earlier blog bears repeating:  customer relations are essential for any department operating in this day and age.  There are those who continue to disagree with the use of the word “customer” when referring to those who use our service.  Respectfully, I also continue to insist that just because they don’t walk into your shop and buy something doesn’t mean they don’t have a choice in using your service.  Taxpayers may not be able to change providers, but with enough votes, they can radically change your organization.

The world can change overnight.  If you think the current model of how we provide service is going to last another 200 years, think again.  As our customers become more educated and expect more innovation from government, look for them to insist on ways we can do things better.  We need to continuously and constantly evaluate our direction and possibly even reinvent  our concepts in order to stay out front.  Good customer service revolves around recognizing the needs of our customers and using our skills, abilities and past experience to improve service quality and to provide excellent service.

As has happened over really the last thirty years, our industry has evolved into one that defies definition, one that more and more reflects all-hazard response.  I’m going to go on record to say that I’m even confused as to what to call us anymore.  There’s a famous paragraph in Report From Engine 82 (Dennis Smith) that I’ll paraphrase, because I can’t remember it exactly.

In this city, when you turn on a wall switch, you may or may not get a light.  When you turn a faucet, you may or may not get water.  If you pick up a phone, you may or may not get a dial tone.  But everybody knows that if you pull the handle on that red box, you WILL get a fire truck.

The purpose of my poorly remembered paraphrasing of that statement was to illustrate that times have not changed from when the book was published in 1972; just substitute “call 9-1-1″ for “pull the handle on that red box”.  But what we have become has, as we become EMTs and HAZMAT Technicians and Water Rescue Technicians and etc., etc.  I read “Report” cover to cover when it first came out (I was eight- I’m a good reader) and the context of that paragraph has stuck with me forever.  Dennis Smith points out in his story how the fire department was used to handle plumbing issues, to handle overdoses, and to handle pretty much anything up to and including, things that happen to be burning.

So back to customer service; what is our mission?  Why do we exist?  If your answer is, “To protect people from fire” or “To help the sick and injured”, I’d suggest that maybe you should reconsider all of those calls that don’t meet that definition as distracting you from that mission.  If you’re anything like me and the organization I work for, I’d say that not handling those calls is probably counter to the needs of your community.  And what your mission should really be, is defined by those needs.

When someone dials 9-1-1 (or whatever they dial in your community), they do so because they have a problem they can’t handle themselves (or should I say they don’t know how to handle), they don’t have the resources to handle the problem, and they don’t have anywhere to turn for an answer.  Obviously, you are saying, “Well, if my pipes are leaking, why wouldn’t I call the plumber?”  Again, think about the ENTIRE situation.  Maybe they can’t afford a plumber.  Maybe they can’t find a plumber to come out.  Maybe they are totally freaked out by the situation and not thinking clearly.  There are many answers to the question, but the long and short of it is, they trust YOU to help them solve the problem and YOU are the people they call.

So what I’m telling you is that our job REALLY is to respond to a request for help, gather facts about the problem, analyze the options, apply a solution, and ultimately, stabilize the situation.  We may not FIX the problem, but when we leave, things should at least be stable.  We really don’t need doctor-wannabes or adrenaline junkies for our job, what we need are people who can look at any situation and understand the situation, then apply creativity using the resources at hand (either on site or on that BRT you brought) to stabilize their situation.  And further along that line, we’re not asking these individuals to rebuild the house, we’re asking them to stop the forward progress of the damaging element (or disease process or whatever it is) and return some means of order to chaos.  We’re not building a piano here, we’re improvising and hopefully we’ll come out with something that can at least pass for a musical instrument of some sort.

What should our business be called?  What is it that we do?  How can we possibly have meaning in our life if we don’t have a label or title for our life’s ambition?  When I hear of the trash guy being called a “Sanitation Technician”  or a dog-walker a “Pet Care Specialist”, I wonder what title really defines what it is we do.  What it really comes down to is that everyone recognizes the title for your job more than you could ever know.  When someone asks me what I do for a living, I answer, “I’m a Firefighter”.  The knowing look on their faces and the subsequent questions about my job, my worst call, my most stupid call, etc. confirm for me that most everyone understands what our job is really all about.  Now the bigger goal is to get those of us who do it to understand that as well.

In their latest issue of Disaster Research, there is an article regarding government response and recovery and the increase in governmental partnerships with faith- and community-based organizations to assist in cleaning up catastrophes.  In the recent past, we have seen ineffective response from certain portions of government that have assumed responsibility for this service at the local, state and federal levels.  I don’t think anyone who works in our field and  is taken seriously about their views on the subject feels like “government” alone can deliver an entire package of assistance to a disaster-stricken community.  However, there is plenty of debate about how to most effectively coordinate assistance in the wake of a calamity.

Of all things in our industry, our frustration with failure of some politicians to continue to apply heat (and funding) to the problem BEFORE disaster strikes is only compounded by the political “outrage” when disaster occurs and we are accused with not properly preparing in advance (still with limited or no budget or legislative action on our behalf).

In an answer to some of these challenges, some state and local governments are forming coalitions that guide organizations providing emergency response. Missouri, Florida, Texas, and a few others have, according to a recent article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, begun to develop alliances between emergency managers and NGOs.

There are many discussions regarding the potential for blurred church and state separation which can’t even begin to be adequately addressed in a short blog post.  However, those issues aside, NGOs over the past decade have been efficiently providing disaster recovery assistance and have been successful in finding resources that governmental bodies can’t seem to scare up.

This discussion doesn’t also begin to factor in the entire over-reliance on “outside” help in the event of disaster.  This was a point made by Alan Kirschenbaum in earlier works referring to the growth of the disaster response community that seem to be related to the decline in perception of individual responsibility for preparedness.

While this all has some serious discussion ahead of it, I have less of a problem with this type of assistance than I do with pseudo-qualified responders self deploying to events with little or no capability or self-sufficiency.  I think there are plenty of avenues for a person with altruistic motives to get involved with an organized response; it’s the poseurs and con-men I’m interested in keeping away.

I’m open to some observations on the subject.  I think if managed correctly, these NGOs have access to resources currently limited to those of us charged with response, and we should take advantage of creative partnerships, as the organizations I am affliliated have already done.  Look around your community and identify capability that lies outside of the conventional response.  You’ll be surprised by the resources that lie out there and I think you’ll find that instead of spending essential funds on assets that already exist, you can find better uses for that money in areas that are currently underserved.