Repeat after me: "It will all be okay." Breathe deeply.
That got your attention, didn’t it? However, I strive to maintain a “G” rating on FHZ, and the language is not that bad. I’m not interested in pushing any of your buttons; I just want to get this safety message across.
So let’s just jump right into it. Depending on where my shift falls, I drive my youngest daughter to school three or four times a week. Without fail, there is one dumbass who every morning, manages to tie up the carpool line for an extra five minutes while she yaks incessantly to one or another of the other parents waiting in line.
When she finally decides to pull up her tricked-out Escalade and discharge her whiny little brats, she ties up those exiting by stopping and talking to someone else. Thus far, I have not succumbed to the (strong) urge to walk up and pull her out through the partially open window of her status machine. But even as I originally contemplated this post, she ran a stop sign, swerved across three lanes of traffic at carpool pick-up, cell phone in one hand and double decaf frappe crappacino in the other, cutting cars off, just so she could pull up next to one of the other moms (there for the afternoon social, of course) and gab some more. (Breathe deeply).
“Where is he going with this?” you ask (cautiously). Well, while watching this daily comedy of the bizarre, I was thinking that perhaps our apparatus operators are also too distracted while driving very large, inertially-challenged, parade beasts, and maybe this is part of the cause of so many minor and major vehicle collisions each year.
Take for example, the discussion that I encountered this past week. I am the Chair of our department’s standard operating guideline committee and people sometimes pull me aside to discuss recent changes to our manual. With recent changes to the way we back our apparatus, our logic is to make everyone get off the apparatus (except the drivers, obviously) and act as spotters to provide some more eyes on the blind sides of the apparatus. As you can expect, there are those who think more than one spotter is a bad idea. I think that given the number of accidents we have had, we should be doing anything in our power to change things, since the current modus operandi doesn’t seem to be working all that well. If one spotter isn’t working, two or more might be better, but one certainly doesn’t seem to be doing the job now.
In our organization, the command staff (unreasonably, I guess) believes that any number greater than one is an unacceptable statistic for collisions. We LIKE being proactive. Consequently, we have people who think a few collisions is okay. ”It’s the price of doing business”, I heard someone say.
Of course, when assigned to spot the apparatus, if we happen to be doing so with a spotter who can actually manage to do more than fog a mirror, that’s all well and good. I say this because we have drivers who still manage to back into something even with an individual out there to plausibly prevent such an occurrence. Of course, that’s if THE SPOTTER isn’t themselves distracted by their own cellphone, the hottie crossing the street, shiny objects, or the flashing lights.
Between the radio going, the siren blaring, the other distracted drivers, the officer ordering, and the three swans-a-swimming, our modern fire apparatus operator has a serious challenge when it comes to paying attention to the road and the myriad hazards encountered between Point A and Point B. In today’s emergency services, and having read some interesting posts by members of some of the forums, while many of us believe the foremost concern of the apparatus operator should be the safe operation of their vehicle, there are people who are more concerned with what music they should be blasting on their way to “the big one”. Then we wonder why we have accidents.
Years ago, I heard someone say that if every vehicle on the road was equipped with a nine-inch stainless-steel spike in the center of the steering column, we would probably decrease the number of traffic accidents ten-fold. While I agree that a sharp object pointed at my chest would probably cause me to think twice before exceeding the speed limit, I think a less lethal solution, like a machine that would punch you in the balls for exceeding the physical limitations of the rig, might just be the answer. Trust me, if I were smacked in the cajones every time I unlawfully exceeded the speed limit, it would get my undivided attention. I certainly wouldn’t make that mistake twice. So, if you’re sincere about avoiding this terrible contraption: FOCUS ON DRIVING THE (Pick one: engine/truck/medic/rescue) SAFELY, because I’m off to get the patent.
It is painfully obvious each time we roll a vehicle, smash one into a car at an intersection, park one on the train tracks, or run over our back-up man that there are serious issues of attention at play here. Instead of focusing on getting to the fire first, we need to focus on getting to the fire in one piece. And so long as officers on these rigs sit silently and pray that the ride ends up well instead of speaking up and ordering the driver to slow down and drive reasonably, we will continue to lose our brothers and sisters for what- so some hopped up adrenaline junkie can pretend he’s Mario Andretti racing in a 25-ton killing machine?
Just as my story about the clueless soccer mom riled some of you up, so should the image of a fire apparatus driver ramming into the side of a carload of kids be equally, if not so much more, reprehensible. After all, our subject mom is just another dumbass civilian with a cell phone. But you, my friends, are caretakers of the public trust. The taxpayers chose to allow you to drive the biggest, shiniest example of the American Fire Service down its public thoroughfares because they had a semblance of trust that you wouldn’t mow them down like a dog when you were running to that alarm activation.
Let’s be serious about safe driving of our trucks. If you really want to kill yourself, do it at the scene where at least you can pretend you were saving someone’s life. Driving down the highway like a maniac isn’t helping anyone, may likely kill someone, and is really just an excuse for showing off. Don’t be a dumbass.
Do your job and be proud you are a firefighter, and keep your community safe by easing back a little on the throttle. Focus on what is important; delivering your highly trained crew with the necessary equipment to the scene of the emergency, and insuring that not only they arrive safely, but everyone and everything encountering you in your travels survives the experience as well.
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Bravery In The Line Of Fire
2 commentsPlenty of blogs exist just for the sake of venting. The origins of the web log are in a diary format and meant as a way for the blogger to share his or her feelings and observations with others. My site was meant to be different, just as I would bet the rest of the blogs on the FireEMSBlog Network were. Mark’s efforts were pioneering like many of the rest of my fellow bloggers. Many of us saw this format as a way to immediately reach the masses with timely messages. But not only that, I think Mark set an example of a blogger that took the high road consistently, so much so that he and Justin at The Happy Medic were able to inspire Thaddeus Setla to team up for developing the Chronicles of EMS series.
While Mark and many of us chose to blog openly, for a long time I used to get a little frustrated sometimes with the people who choose to hide behind a psuedonym. Looking back on it, sometimes I wish I had stayed anonymous, since the longer I do this, the more I realize it’s probably not a bad way to be able to say your piece without being taken out at the esophagus. While I publish any comment for or against my views, except spam, there have been a few unnerving moments when I would read a comment and know a potential spark was heading toward the hot zone. The nature of my blog keeps that to a minimum, but I have read others that have turned pretty emotional.
The subjects of change and leadership cover some dangerous ground. You can be courageous and try to influence positive growth, but from time to time, leaders get attacked, especially if what they say is unpopular. Just ask Gandhi, or JFK, or Martin Luther King, Jr. how dangerous leading can be. While on this site I haven’t gotten into what I consider the “daily grind”, I have discussed some best practices that apparently don’t sit well with everyone. Some of my long-time readers might remember the series I began on credentialing that went south when a few individuals disagreed with my assessment of the current landscape. Not only did they choose to attack me, but my employer as well (they were pretty good natured about it, considering, which goes to show how supportive my bosses are of this endeavor). Likewise, I got an e-mail recently from someone I consider a friend, who, having read something I wrote, took it as an attack on him. Nothing could have been father from the truth. While there were others involved in the situation that I felt deserved some well-placed rage, I never meant to question this individual’s commitment or bravery. But like everything else, when you are enmeshed in a situation, no matter what side of the fence you happen to be on, sometimes the firing gets a little too close. If you happen to be standing nearby when the grenade goes off, just supporting the leader may blow up in your face, no matter how much you wanted to help and how good your intentions.
So to keep this from going on much too long, I’m reminded that I wanted to tell you all this story: I recall an event from my recent past where I was doing my station rounds; a firefighter, who obviously saw my “certificate book” years ago, when I happened to visit his station pulled out his similarly crafted three-ring binder which makes keeping track of certificates a little easier. While mine is pretty full after thirty years in this business, this young firefighter had a pretty impressive start and I congratulated him on the many trees that were killed in pursuit of personal excellence. Of course, this event became the equivalent of a measuring contest and soon the other crew members were bringing out their own versions, ranging from a file folder to what looked like a scrapbook. Thus, the Zen Master saw a little teaching moment.
I wished I had my book at the time, but when I took all of the other books and stacked them on top of one another, they made a nice pile. The crew members were laughing a little nervously (okay, where’s the chief going with this?) when I made a BIG deal out of this stack. Then I turned to the bunch and pointed out that while this was quite an assembly of awards, the entire pile was worth NOTHING if the knowledge and experience that the stack represented wasn’t shared, either by teaching, relating it to others, or simply by setting an example. Mark got that idea early on and decided he wanted to share his ideas, albeit in a method that many don’t understand or even try to appreciate.
Medic 999 was and remains an excellent blog. Mark did a great job with it and he deserved the honor of Fire/EMS Blog of the Year he got last year from a popular vote. As I mentioned earlier, Mark and Justin’s story of reaching out to one another across the pond and a continent (depending on which direction you flew, I suppose) was inspiring and certainly newsworthy. And above all, the situation he finds himself in now, I have been close to before and there but for the grace of God go I. I’ve been fortunate to have an employer who, while keeping their distance and reaffirming their legal requirements to maintain privacy, have also been supportive of my need for creative expression (so long as it is done off-duty and on my own computer). It is here in which we have our last leadership lesson of the day.
Every now and then I have to endure an occasional comment from the “less-than-enlightened”; or “LTEs”, as I like to call them. Like as in “Battalion Chief Lite” or “Firefighter Lite”- you know, looks like one, MAYBE tastes like one, but we all know somehow, when you turn it to the side, you see it is just a facade (or like in beer, it never tastes as good as what it is advertised to be). When you have a lot of these Lites hanging around, it really makes it hard to do your job. While it gives those of us a never-ending source of material to write about, these individuals can quickly make your life miserable and wear you down. If they are your boss, they can make it impossible to be innovative and visionary. I have been fortunate to work with people who realize the power of knowledge and desire for us all to share (appropriately) what we know. Others aren’t quite as fortunate. If you find yourself in the position of being the big cheese and you have some real go-getters, do you want to be known as the chief that took off the leash and encouraged facilitated excellence? Or do you want to be known as the Stalinist who shut down all original thought, suppressed creativity, and required everyone to march in lock-step? In this day and age, we should all be reaching out to not only understand where we have been, but where we need to go. Mark was reaching ahead of himself, not behind. If you can honor his decision to make the choice, the best way is probably to learn from his experience, share it with others, and to strive for excellence. While you may not be able to choose to blog, you can teach, you ca mentor, and you can certainly patronize those of us who can bring it to you.
Good luck, Mark. Vaya con Dios. Visit often and know that I’m hoisting a drink in your direction. Cheers and thanks for leading.
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