Enemy No. 1
Have you ever had that feeling of being both mad and sad at the same time? I really hate that. It seems that lately I have been wrestling with such emotions.
Why? Because it seems that lately the news has been broadcasting far too many stories announcing firefighter deaths and injuries.
Nationwide, our brothers and sisters are being trapped in building collapses, roof failures, flashovers and extreme heat conditions. Many of these victims are veteran firefighters with many years of knowledge, training and experience behind them. Occasionally one of them is a rookie reported to have died in his first fire out. We've had cases where the R.I.T. (Rapid Intervention Team) has responded to the interior to retrieve a firefighting team only to perish in the fire as well. We've read of firefighters' deaths due to falls from moving apparatus and the stories go on and on.
These make me sad beyond words. I knot up inside everytime I read of a firefighter's death. It affects my whole family. My wife becomes worried and scared. Our son is just beginning his career as a firefighter, and she worries about us both. It saddens me to think of the loss and hurt that the families go through. It saddens me to wonder what the department and the firefighters close to the victims must be going through. These situations shake everyone's confidence a little.
Not always, but far too often, my sadness is intertwined with feelings of anger that I just cannot shake. I went into this business knowing that there is an element of danger and risk involved. I accept the fact that our profession rates high on the charts for stress and potential hazard. What I am not willing to accept is that we can continue to allow what I consider the No. 1 killer of firefighters to run rampant in the fire service. I am talking about COMPLACENCY!!
This is where the mad comes in. I become angry everytime I hear or read the post-fire analysis in which the "white-shirts" are describing the events which led to the injury or death of their firefighters. Far too often they describe the incident as "just another routine fire." "They were conducting a routine search of the structure." "We don't know what happened. It appeared to be a routine structural attack." When are we going to get it through our thick heads that in our business nothing is routine! There's no such thing as a routine fire. This must become our motto:
ROUTINE = COMPLACENCY.
It's a fact. There's no room for complacency in our business.
We are allowing our firefighters to be needlessly wiped out by allowing complacency to exist in our organizations. Like it or not, this starts at the top and filters down through the ranks. Our white shirts need to wake up and realize that today's firefighters face different dangers than we did 10-20 years ago. Yeah, I can see some of your neck veins bulging with anger at my inference that we are too lax in our duty to train our firefighters. Well, join me in my anger, because it's not an inference; it's a fact. I see it across the board. Certainly, many departments have taken a stand towards bringing their firefighters into the 21st century of firefighting. You know who you are, and I applaud you. But far too many departments are stuck in the old traditional ways of putting the wet stuff on the red stuff that we're losing the battle. We're not progressive enough to keep pace with technology.
I realize that we all face a variety of issues that hamper our ability to offer our firefighters the best. We must, however, do all that we can to prepare our soldiers to go into battle. I believe the first and most important step is to make it clear that there is no such thing as a routine anything in our business. If we are not teaching our firefighters that complacency kills, then we are being complacent ourselves.
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