I have known Bill Manning for many years both as a coworker and as a friend and mostly as someone who has put his heart and soul into trying to understand the true fire service. I think he brushed up against it briefly many times and in particular with the “White Cover.” But he had it by the heart in his editorial in the October issue.
He is right on target–the same target that the late Bill Clark just ticked with comments of the same sort when asked about accountability, a word that has been wrenched from the service level that we had sworn to render to the public trust, in the old days.
Safety is one thing that must be ad-dressed every day. But safety at the expense of function is another thing. We are unable to dive through the gobbledy-gook of laws, codes, and full-duty cowardly observers that are to rate fire service efforts on-scene, never having to even don a turnout coat, and still be successful in efforts to reverse a sure death in areas where no one dares to operate and in fact is running the other way. We cannot be the keeper of our brother by conscription to committee. It is, as he says, an individual effort that is instantaneous and affected by both experience and knowledge but also of courage and bravery and total unselfishness. It is usually those who criticize who are the same ones that are outside the fire buildings telling those inside not to break any glass.
We are still killing and injuring the same number of firefighters year after year. But we are going to 40 percent fewer fires AND are better protected than at any time in the history of firefighting. All codes and laws and on-scene supervision, and colored vests haven`t prevented the establishment of many burn centers throughout the country to care for the escalating injuries from flame contact to our firefighters. And this in the face of the facts stated in the beginning of this paragraph. In New York City, the many fire deaths in recent years can be tied directly to lack of performance of basics–yes, basics. This is the same with the fire services throughout the country. We are so busy with accountability systems and commanding the fire to be out that we forget how to make the system that controls fire behavior in the building effective! Surprise has returned to the fireground as a routine hazard! Nonsense!
Manning is correct when he says he “jumped” with Dan Santos–and so did every firefighter worth his or her “salt” on the fireground. I used to totally depend on my brother on shift, as could he of me; now I am not so sure. I think we have lost our identity with our mission, our vocation. We have become ineffective in this most dangerous lifesaving profession. The fire service is the only organization that continuously operates in an uncontrolled environment. We cannot be so safe that we cannot function, or those who believe that every civilian who died in a fire was dead before we arrived will win. And we will have become Nomexw, positive-pressure balls that walk to fires and watch as the building “successfully” burns to the ground, then return unscathed and totally unsuccessful as to not making a difference whether we show up or not.
Tom Brennan
Chief (Retired)
Waterbury (CT) Fire Department
Technical Editor
Fire Engineering
