If you didn't have standards, this might be your first out engine. Swan Creek/Emu Creek Bushfire Brigade, Queensland, Australia 2002
Authentic Neapolitan pizzas are typically made with tomatoes and Mozzarella cheese. Genuine Neapolitan pizza dough consists of high-protein wheat flour (type 0 or 00, or a mixture of both), natural Neapolitan yeast or brewer’s yeast, salt and water. The dough must be kneaded by hand or with a low-speed mixer. After the rising process, the dough must be formed by hand without the help of a rolling pin or other machine, and may be no more than 3 mm (⅛ in) thick. The pizza must be baked for 60–90 seconds in a 485 °C (905 °F) stone oven with an oak-wood fire.[4] When cooked, it should be crispy, tender and fragrant.
Those were just a few of the standards for an authentic Neapolitan pizza (published on Wikipedia), as recognized and protected by the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana. Likewise, most of the things you take for granted in the world, with the exception of things like knock-off Rolexes, are constructed from materials meeting standards, are built to certain standards, and if they carry any kind of guarantee of quality or workmanship, must meet performance standards.
Unless your organization is living in a 1950’s time warp, the people in your community, when they call the fire department for help, expect help for many things that exceed the scope of “firefighting”. Regardless of whether your community is staffed with a career or a volunteer department, there are increased expectations on the level of service being provided. I can rationally argue the need for standards on a number of different levels. I will, however, only provide you with this one today; it’s the minimum.
If you want to call yourself a firefighter, there are certain things you should be able to do. If you cannot do these things, you run the risk of hurting yourself, not to mention others. You also run the risk of making an emergency greater than it was when you arrived. As a reasonable and prudent individual with a duty to act, you agree that your “job” (as a firefighter) entails certain knowledge, skills, and abilities to allow your organization the ability to advertise a product. What that product is in your jurisdiction could be limited to fighting fire or could be all-hazards, or anywhere in between.
Your community, in supporting the “fire department”, does so with the understanding that you are what you say you are. The community defines that expectation; if their only expectation is that a group of bubbas show up to put out a fire when it occurs, then maybe you don’t need to meet a standard. If that’s the case though, when insurance companies decide the risk is too great in your community, don’t be surprised when the citizenry can’t get coverage and they hang you (or your chief) in effigy at the town square. And that may be getting off light.
Minimum standards, among other things, define. Since a group of individuals representing different aspects of the world affected by a certain thing decided and agreed on a definition, and that group is recognized by the others affected by that thing, the definition becomes a standard. I could write a standard on constructing nuclear plants and declare it the minimum standard, but since I have no authority or expertise in doing so, my standard would likely be considered meaningless and useless.
For those who aren’t in favor of standards, I’d suggest that it’s not that you aren’t in favor of standards, but what is in those standards and how they came to be. If that’s the case, I’d say that before you make any proclamations on a standard being a “bad” standard, you seek to understand how that definition came to be and how it happens to be the minimum. In many cases, I’d bet that you’d find that others wanted a much stricter or more restricting definition and the end result was what everyone on that committee agreed was acceptable for use or was prudent.
Like I tell the people who work with me, don’t complain about anything unless you tried to do something about it. If you don’t like a standard, feel free to get involved. But the long and short of it is this: standards exist for at least one primary reason, and that reason is to define what something is. In the absence of any other meaningful definition, if something close fills that void, that standard will be the one that defines the subject matter. You can be angry about it if you like, but if you don’t like it, change it.
In the meanwhile, if it’s an accepted standard, you can assume you’ll have to meet it. You can say all day that you choose not to meet certain standards, but if you are like me, you will understand that to not do so will leave you open to a number of things, including liability. The only way to escape it is to lay that decision on the people who are at that payscale: the politicians. But that’s a blog post for another day.
Stay safe and do the best you can with what you have. But remember, the standard is what defines you. If you have no standard, you have no definition, and in that case, a monkey can do your job. Even pizzas are made to standards. If having no standard is what your community believes to be okay, then know that you ultimately get what you pay for, and if your community doesn’t support a department with minimum expectations of members, they shouldn’t be surprised when everything within the city limits are a smoking ruin some weekend.
I can’t begin to name all the people who have shared their knowledge with me over the years. I have probably mentioned a time or two that I was fortunate to have been given an early education in the “family business”. While I have never fought a fire with my father nor my grandfather, I have heard the stories, and in fact, a few of the firefighters who have fought fire for both of them actually moved to Hilton Head Island and fought fire for me. I joked with one of our family friends who fit this description that he had the “honor of being a subordinate to three generations of the Mayers family”. If you can’t take that kind of love in a firehouse, you are doomed.
I hate to dump on my “B” Shift brothers, but I led a merry band of these guys for a period of time, so I have earned the right to state my piece. Obviously, this isn’t an indictment of “B” Shift specifically, but as Bruno observed years ago, and we all continue to share today, “B” Shift seems to be an assembled band of technically competent but disciplinarily challenged individuals who are not above putting saran wrap on the station toilets or cribbing your car at least three courses too high to leave the parking lot in the morning.
Don’t waste your time thinking that opportunity is going to come find you. The value of your network is extremely important. Many jobs in the private sector get awarded to people who know someone within the company. Referrals are worth their weight in gold. But this also goes toward obtaining opportunities to prove yourself.
As a quick aside, if any of you are interested, I’ll be in 
Distance separates us. Of course it does, you are probably thinking. That’s not that much of a revelation. But distance separates us all the more so because by being distant, or more so, by not being alike, it also indicates a schism between you and I. The fire and emergency services are united in our history, but at some point we evolved into many different representations of the same idea: service to others. As to whether that space can be broached or not is the big question. While we can all claim brotherhood and a desire to do this job, whether we are career or not; whether we are urban or not; whether we provide EMS or not; and a whole host of other differences keep us from effectively saying “We Are One”.
For the past year or so, our department has been building a training facility of our own. We officially dedicated it on the 29th and christened some of the props with a little demonstration burn to wow the VIPs who came out to celebrate with us. It’s a nice facility and was designed with more than just training in mind, given our organization’s desire to find multiple uses for things. The site was designed to also be an effective staging location for after hurricanes, or to be used as a distribution center in the event of the same, and can support our semi-annual HAZMAT roundup. But to me, one of the best things is no more begging.
I’m Mick, and I yell. I think this is the part where you all are supposed to say, “Hi Mick.” Why do we yell? I started to say, “I’m a yeller”, but that doesn’t sound right. And I don’t scream. Screaming to me indicates panic or total loss of personal control. But anyone who knows me knows I have a little bit of a fuse and when you light it, I’m liable to say some things I wouldn’t intentionally repeat around the God-fearin’ folk.
There’s all kinds of supporting documentation regarding the differences in simply sending a message and telling a story. In doing the research for a paper I 
In another post, I 
I was clearing up from a reported water rescue the other day (turned out to be a false call) and I was reviewing the thoughts that had run through my head on the way to the alarm. Unfortunately, the 18 years I spent as the special operations officer still causes me to immediately think “special ops” instead of reflexively thinking “incident commander”, but I can (and have) consciously made that switch.
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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