Does your department permit the use of helmet cams? Please post your responses in the comments section below.
This month’s Roundtable looks at helmet-cams. These devices have come into our little corner of the world with both good and bad results. I suppose at first it seemed exciting to memorialize our profession by videotaping ourselves working inside fires, to show the world our dangerous work.
Helmet cams have given us some great shots from firefighters at some good fires, but there are also a host of videos showing the darker side of out profession. Recently, a video emerged on the Web showing a firefighter attempting a ladder bail-out with less than desirous results. These can and should be used by us as training tools. Too often however, they end up on YouTube as either a “look-at-me-and-what-I-do” or as a spoof when something wrong happens.
If a department authorizes the use of helmet cams, does the actual video then become available to everyone under the Freedom of Information Act? If so, do you really want to “memorialize” everything we do on the fireground? What may seem like harmless fun in an attempt to accurately show your children what Mom or Dad do at work my end up part of a legal (or other) nightmare.
Login and share your thoughts below. —John “Skip” Coleman retired as assistant chief from the Toledo (OH) Department of Fire and Rescue. He is a technical editor of Fire Engineering; a member of the FDIC Educational Advisory Board; and author of Incident Management for the Street-Smart Fire Officer (Fire Engineering, 1997), Managing Major Fires (Fire Engineering, 2000), and Incident Management for the Street-Smart Fire Officer, Second Edition (Fire Engineering, 2008).
