In June 2009, I blogged about spontaneous bystander response, or rather, the difference between that and a bunch of people jumping into their Fire SUV and driving to say, Bastrop, Texas, only to be turned away from the action.  I don't expect civilians to understand.  On the face of it, it looks like the Feds are turning away perfectly acceptable resources. The response community, however, obviously needs a big-ass brick dropped on their head with a note wrapped around it that says: "Don't go if you aren't invited."

Let's put some perspective on the issue AGAIN.  I've been dealing with disaster response for a very long time.  When I need additional resources, I have found that there is an electronic device in most response apparatus that I can use it to call for help.  In case you are wondering, this would be the radio.  In these days, however, a cell phone, e-mail or any other number of methods may be employed (in case you didn't know).

We are not discussing the desire for people to help their neighbors by bringing clothing, money, food, water, labor, etc.  We are talking about bringing yourself (and usually not much more) and saying, "I can fight fire".  We are talking about popping a sleeping bag in the car and going for a road trip, thinking that in a lot of these situations, it is going to be like camping, sans Kumbaya and S'mores, but with an extra helping of excitement.

As I and countless others have said, time after time after time:

The main problem faced by those of us in the disaster community when it comes to spontaneous response, is the fact that as the designated adult supervision at these events, we have a responsibility to insure not only mitigation (or depending on the complexity and scope, control) of the incident, but the safety of those who were not necessarily part of the problem before, but now are. 

My whole reason for saying this is that while most of us in the response community can certainly appreciate the altruism in bystander response to an emergency, there are cases upon cases in every aspect of disaster and technical rescue response where the spontaneous bystander response in and of itself became an additional rescue mission for us on our arrival.  If anyone wants to be bored to death, I can cite example after example, and even put you in touch with others who can do the same.  This has not changed for any emergency in decades.

You may say, "Hey, these guys were calling for help and nobody came."  That is YOUR perspective on the situation.  The reality is not that there is a true lack of resources.  At Katrina, for example, there were plenty of resources.  There was just a little problem of certain parties not knowing the plan for getting those resources, or not knowing how to deliver them, or sending them to the wrong places.  There isn't a lack of resources, there is a lack of knowledge on how to put them in place and make the work.

This is where the Feds come in, believe it or not.  Because the Feds have a few things going for them that in a lot of cases, the locals, the counties, and the state don't have.  Principally, that would be money and coordination.

Having been involved intimately with a few of these little dances, I have witnessed firsthand the dialogue going on in the command post with some of these elected officials:

Fire Chief: "Okay, we have fourteen houses burning over on XYZ Circle, but we don't have the engine companies necessary to cover that area. I need to have the authority to call the state and have them declare a state of emergency."

Mayor: "Well, that's your job, dammit!  Hell no, I don't want a bunch of people from Capital City over here telling us how to do things their way!  Don't you have a plan?  Why don't you just use those guys with the pickup trucks who showed up this morning?  Doesn't the state have a bunch of those thing-a-ma-jigs they can send over?  You know, strike forces, or task teams or something?"

Fire Chief: "Strike teams and task forces.  Yes, but this is the representative from the State here.  They are offering their help, but since this hasn't been declared a disaster by the Governor yet, before I agree to sign this Memorandum of Understanding, I needed to let you know this is going to cost us money…"

Mayor: "Is that all you are waiting on?  Dammit, sign whatever you need to sign!"

Fire Chief: "By ordinance, I am required to get your permission before creating a liability for the city over $100,000."

Mayor: "WHAT?  How much are we talking about here?"

Fire Chief:  "I don't know, but more than that.  So this guy says we can have the Governor declare a state of emergency…"

Mayor: "I don't want those a#$%$@*s from the Capital down here telling us what to do.  Just see what you can do for a little while."

Fire Chief: "Ohhhh-kay…"

Now, I have no idea if that's what is going on in this situation.  I would actually doubt it, because they declared a state of emergency pretty quickly.  But most localities are pretty reluctant to declare that they need help, because to them it is a loss of control, and when faced with that breakover point (where they can't control it, but don't want to release it), that's when the chaos thickens.  I actually wrote a paper a number of years ago on why local fire departments won't develop plans or call for help when they need it.

So let's cut to the chase.  Feel free to read the earlier article.  Feel free to hunt down any other number of articles I have written on the subject.  But while the dates have changed, the situation has not.  The system for deploying emergency response assets around the country, while not perfect, is better than it used to be.  And the situation is improving.  But if you are just dying to go somewhere and help out, instead of piling into the family roadster and hiking out for the unknown, instead, determine what equipment and apparatus you can send somewhere, decide who you will send, identify their capability using relatively well-known recommendations out there, and get with your state to find out where you can list your resource through mutual aid agreements.  Do this ahead of time and when the time comes, if your services are needed, they will call you.  

Or even better, establish "sister community" arrangements in advance: work with other agencies and communities out there on a special agreement that if your community is impacted, you will call them and likewise, they will call you.  Do this with communities who are in other regions or states that permit you to get assets no one else is likely to be drafting from.

The short story is this though: Although the sentiment is appreciated, drama is not something the locals need when chaos has come to call.  They need coordinated assistance of the right kind.  And they need an asset, not a liability.  If you are going to help, go to help, not to add to the problem.  And you may not like to hear that, but it's the truth.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Give your subordinates a chance to succeed while you watch them closely.

There’s been a lot of talk about death in my family lately.  I have been coveting a tortilladora for a while, a relatively heavy device for making homemade tortillas.  The other day, I bought one (they’re cheap, but I had to make a side trip to the supermercado to buy it).  Of course, when I did, my daughter Emma, who is my kitchen sidekick and sous chef, got attached to it.  At dinner, we were joking around and I announced that when I died, I would make sure I specifically left her the tortilladora in my will.

Of course, my three-year old, Honora, took this to mean that my death was imminent, and for the last week everyone in our family has been getting quizzed as to when we are going to die.  Explaining to Honora that I had no immediate plans to die wasn’t cutting it, and explaining to her that everyone will eventually die, but not necessarily over the weekend wasn’t doing it either.  All we can do, I guess, is to be reassuring and hope the discussion evolves to something else soon.

Heartbreaking as it is, however, it brings to mind that our life on this mortal coil isn’t forever and just as I tried to reassure Honora that it wouldn’t be within this pay period, we really have no guarantees that it won’t.  Interestingly enough, our buddy the Fire Critic was just reflecting on this very same subject the other day, while blogging about firefighter wills being offered to personnel.

As good as this sounds, and our department approaches this from a different angle, by providing a one-time benefit to all employees for $300 toward a will or financial counseling, I was hit with something a few years ago that made me spend that much and more as a result of our daughter Caroline having special needs.  Having a “regular” will drawn up would only exacerbate the problems for Caroline; we actually needed to have a specially trained attorney draw up our wills to include the creation of a special needs trust in order to keep the government from taking away any benefits that Caroline would have coming to her as a result of her having Down syndrome.  So the objective discussion is that not only do we need to plan, but we need to know what we are planning for.

The point of my post today is one of leadership, believe it or not, and it goes to the heart of your legacy.  While you may be doing the right thing by your people on a daily basis, there’s also the consideration that we need to prepare them for the event when we are no longer with them, for when we retire, or move to another position, or for any other reason (we’ll leave the realm of death out of it, but that’s another contingency, of course).

If you are a transformational leader, rather than simply a transactional leader, your personnel will already be understanding the need to engage themselves intuitively, to participate and stretch their comfort zones (with you nearby as a safety net), and to identify the areas they need to improve.  You should also be taking this time to coach these people- encouraging them, redirecting them, and allowing them to take small leaps, like leaving them in command of some incidents (like I said, though, with you at their side).

At the company officer level, this sometimes gets a little challenging, since you can’t necessarily turn over command of your company at the next worker to the new guy (there’s usually not enough of those to go around), but there are plenty of other learning moments.  Put them in charge of the company at training, or better yet, have them teach a few classes to the company.  Get them used to being in front.  Let them handle some alarm activations or medical calls or even some service calls as the CO.  Surprisingly enough, we probably had all kinds of training on how to handle fire, medical, and rescue incidents, but how about the critical thinking involved in solving a ruptured water heater call, or a public assistance request?  There are needs for the CO to not only solve for X, but also to be able to provide effective interaction and communication with the complainant to help them through the situation.

While you may have subordinates who can achieve this learning on their own, it is important for you to not only facilitate it, but to monitor it to insure that what these individuals are doing is what meets your criteria.  Coaching and mentoring involves your oversight; you just can’t leave it to chance that they will have absorbed what you have been demonstrating over the years.  While you may have looked upon your own mentor for years and figured out what he or she was doing and understood how they approached situations, not everyone has the same understanding level and while your subordinates may seem to have figured it out, there’s a good chance they are just parroting your moves as well.  Thus the need to have these folks achieve understanding and a deep appreciation for the nuances of each decision and how they came about.  It’s one thing to have someone do what you tell them to do, it’s a different thing to have them think through the situation on their own.

What do you want your legacy of leadership to be?  Do you really want to leave it to chance that your students absorbed the lessons?  Insure that you prepare your personnel for the future by realizing the entire situation and make preparations now to support them in the days to come.

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The course will be “Command for Company Officers” and as Ron Richards, of Task Force 1, Inc. describes it:  ”A company officer’s job is difficult, especially if you have not been prepared for the transition from firefighter to company officer. This program will provide you the tools needed to succeed in the station and on the fire ground.”  So if you’ve got the time and you are in the neighborhood, come on by.

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Recently I was on my way to work and marveling at the sunrise (I get a good shot of it going over the Cross Island bridge on the way to my station) and got to remembering one call where a person dove off that very same bridge.  I was thinking, if you’re going to pick someplace to move on from, that’s a pretty scenic spot to do so.  It also brought up to me the dichotomy of risk vs. reward.

While the individual I was remembering had a reputation for making daring but risky decisions, you have to understand the motivator for someone like that.  If you can pull it off, you’re a God.  A stunt like that makes for a lot of interesting conversation later in life.  The downside, however, is when you fail, you fail catastrophically.

When we choose to forgo a risk/benefit analysis, we do just that.  In fire/rescue, the risk we take also involves death-defying heroism if you can pull it off, or grave consequences if you don’t.  While diving off a bridge seems to be the start of interesting cocktail party conversation, failing to appreciate the impact when you hit the water (literally) or the swiftness of the current below indicates a lack of total understanding of the problem.  When we plunge headlong into a fire with no idea of the conditions or into a rescue without considering the hazards that exist, we aren’t being professional.  We are choosing bravado over intellect.

I’ll keep it short because I’m juggling a few projects, but appropriate risk/benefit analysis requires a total understanding of the situation.  Failing that, at least a brief contemplation of the major risk involved is required.  There are people in our business who don’t even think when they go into harm’s way.  How many times in a media interview with “the hero” have you heard someone say, “I didn’t even think about it”.  I’d be curious to know if we were able to interview those who didn’t make it; would they say the same thing?

Understand your situation and make intelligent decisions, not irrational ones. It’s the difference between the steadfast and respected commander and the impulsive private.  If you want to be a leader, act like a leader.

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You can put the dangers out in front of someone in back and white.  You can paint the picture for them in classes and education.  You can bore them to death with your blog, like I do.  I think that what it really comes down to, though, is that unless you have a very graphic experience with death and understand not only the implications on you, but on others, I don’t think most people can really grasp the message.

There is a lot to be said for working in our business.  I have seen my share of people ejected from vehicles to convince me that wearing a seatbelt is a good thing.  I have seen enough burned homes to understand that being fire safe will head off a lot of heartache.  But no matter what, we have people who ride in fire apparatus without seatbelts and won’t keep their fire station free of hazards, and then they wonder how they end up on the national news wire.  Risk vs. benefit doesn’t have to be limited to the fireground.

I enjoy fighting fires, but some of the fires I used to fight still baffle me.  I have literally put everything on the line for an unsavable building before and to what end?  They tore down the building later.  But we still have people charging into fires, like they just want to roll in it for a little while.  Well, the excitement of the fire is one thing, but I’ve actually seen what a fire can do to someone, so you’ll have to excuse my reluctance to get up close with it and get to know it better.

As emergency service leaders, we need to remind ourselves that just because we used to play in the street when we were kids doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.  Riding on tailboards and charging into unsafe buildings was fun until we saw people dying from those decisions.  Be the grown-up and help point out to your personnel that just because things used to be one way, we have actually learned from our mistakes and it only makes sense to avoid these problems in the future.  Revisiting them for experience’ sake isn’t fun, it’s just stupid.

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As a little refresher for some of us, here is what I’m talking about:

1. Declarative sentences make a statement.  They end in a period.

2. Imperative sentences can end in a period or in an exclamation point.

3. Interrogative sentences end in a question mark.

4. Exclamatory sentences end in an exclamation point, or for some of you out there, ALL CAPS.

Now understand, these are pretty general.  There are always exceptions to rules (like my sarcastically phrased interrogative statement that is actually an imperative statement; Standing in front of an obviously open compartment door while the driver is not paying attention to the fact that he has left the compartment door open, saying, “You did remember to shut that door, didn’t you?”).

Now for the most part, we here at FHZ like to use plenty of the interrogative when discussing items with you all.  I am really not in any position to discuss things with you declaratively, because I am not an expert on anything.  I do, however, have a lot of experience, so I like to use the Socratic method of teaching, that is, to throw out open questions to you like softballs and let you think about them as you slam them into the outfield.  Very rarely will you see me word anything in the exclamatory.  I’m an old-school kind of officer; I like for you to realize I am yelling at you without necessarily having to raise my voice (although from my earlier post about yelling, I’m sure you understand that this isn’t feasible all the time).  When writing though, I consider myself a master of the deftly-worded semi-sarcastic statement that makes you read it, then go back again and say, “I wonder if he’s calling me an idiot?”

Think of it as a little verbal Aikido.  If you know anything about the art of Aikido, you know that the underlying concept is to use the attacker’s momentum and redirect it, while also having deeper concern for the well-being of the attacker.  Most of the time when someone is being nasty, I really don’t wish you bad, I just wish you’d go away.  And while you’re at it, take this broken humerus as a reminder of this lesson.

But one thing I really can’t stomach is a bully, and for some reason, the internet brings them out of the closet in droves.  Honestly, to me, I think it has been said repeatedly (and I am in full agreement) that the relative anonymity of the internet gives some of these trolls courage.  It’s really the same way with society in general.  It’s when you know these people, I mean really know them, like they are your neighbor, or your co-worker, when you find a lot of that “courage” goes out the window.  Just like your basic road rage; while we are all probably tempted to flip off that terrible driver, it’s a whole different ballgame if you see him four pews over from your family in church every Sunday.

These bullies like to speak in the declarative and the imperative and often in the exclamatory, when really, they should be listening and speaking in the interrogative language, especially when we find out the “resident expert” has been on the job for three and a half years and has run a hundred calls in that time.  When someone like me, who has plenty of cred to back up anything I would like to proclaim in this business, says to you, “I’d like to hear what YOU think about it”, maybe some of you blue-light bandits or red-light raiders, or whatever you call your resident whacker, should take that as a hint that even with thirty years on the job, I’m still learning, and I take pride in saying that I can learn from anyone and on any day (sometimes its what NOT to do, but you see my point).  And it’s not a vollie thing or a career thing, it’s a “professional” thing.  I know plenty of vollies that can eat the career guys up on a fireground, but I know of plenty of vollies who like to talk a good game but can’t back it up when the excrement is flying, if you know what I mean.

When everyone in our business starts realizing that they don’t have all the answers, maybe then we’ll be a little more civil to one another and stop pontificating like some blowhard hypocrite politician or preacher, not that there are any of those out there.  But until then, plan on more of the same every year around the fire service, where something blows up and forty guys and gals sit around Monday Morning Quarterbacking it, not ever having actually faced that situation themselves.  And in the event that the day comes, those same trolls will probably be standing out by the engine with a wet spot in their bunkers, watching the rest of us doing our thing.

We need a little more understanding, not just in our business, but in society.  I’m one of the worst cynics there are out there, but I’m trying, I mean, I’m really TRYING to give people the benefit of the doubt, and some of these trolls just make it damned difficult.

Let’s just try to make one of those buddy pacts; like if I find myself getting ready to flame someone, I can call on you and you’ll talk me out of it, and vice-versa (“Hi, I’m Mick, and I’m a cynic.  I’ve gone 45 minutes without swearing under my breath and calling someone a total idiot.”).

It’s time we work together in our industry and work harder to educate everyone, not just in the basics of firefighting or rescue or EMS, or even in incident command, or anything fancy like that.  Just educate everyone in being better “brothers” and better co-workers and asking more questions and less telling people what to do or how they should think.  When you have unbelievable access to authors and bloggers like the ones here in FireEMSblogs.com and all over the internet (and in your library, etc.), why not take advantage of it?  There’s a lot to be gained from looking at different approaches to the same problems and learning if there is something we have in common, rather than shooting each other when things go wrong.

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It reminded me of several passages from the Tao Te Ching, one of which says: “Those on tiptoe don’t stand up, those who take long strides do not walk; those who see themselves are not perceptive, those who assert themselves are not illustrious.”

These are some teachings that have lasted centuries and what, exactly have we taken from them?  When I was younger, I wanted it all.  When I grew up and could have it all, it was hard at first for me to understand, but I realized that it wasn’t altogether worth it.  Power comes from within and can’t be seized.  If you let it come to you, it will.

Conflict comes from people wanting something.  The amusing part of that is those who have power will say all day long, “If you really want it, you have to let it come to you.”  I’ve found that to not exactly be true.  That concept relies on enlightened leaders seeking people who are also enlightened, and not on surrounding oneself with “yes-men” and deceivers.  Had I waited my whole life for people to come to me and ask for my help, I’d probably still be waiting.

Thus the neverending struggle between seizing opportunities and creating them;  I have put a significant amount of research into what it would take for me to get from Point “A” to Point “B” and in some cases, made it happen.  I’m happy to say, however, that a lot of what I have accomplished has actually come about because I didn’t walk up the backs of others to get where I am at.

Ambition is not necessarily a bad thing; being deceptive, manipulative, and doing things contrary to the good of the team and the public we serve is.  What we individually have as a vision of our organization is proper if it involves service to the people we are charged to protect and assist, and not if it involves the “benefits” of public service.  By those, I mean the “perks” of having a badge, importance in the community, and the ability to lord over others and speak down to people.

There is such a thing as being an advocate for those who have no power, for standing up and doing the right thing, even when the right thing requires going out of our way to do so.  The other day I was driving down the road in my chief’s wagon and saw a family broken down on the side of the road.  I also saw several other official vehicles (not ours, thank God) pass these people by.  Had I been going somewhere in a hurry, would I have stopped?  Maybe those other official vehicles had places to go and people to see.  I stopped and helped them out.  They were grateful but I didn’t do it for their gratitude, I did it because it was the right thing to do.

As leaders, are we interested in the chase for power?  Or what we can do with the power once we have it?  I was talking about money with my oldest daughter today and explained to her, what good is money if you already have what you need and you are more interested in accumulating “stuff”?  Wouldn’t it be a better idea to help others who are in need, or at least taking the time to do something nice for others?  Once we hit the mark we desired, as a company officer, or a chief officer, what will we do with that newly found power?  Will we share it with others and empower them?  Or will we use it to beat others down and tell them what to do and where to go?

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