THE DIRTY SECRET
BY BILL MANNING
Another National Fire Prevention Week has come and gone.
I`m thinking about Vina Drennan, who so eloquently wondered aloud to the fire community why her husband Robert responded to that apartment house in the first place–why careless people left garbage on their stove, a prelude to the backdraft condition that killed Captain Drennan and two other firefighters. “We tolerate carelessness in America,” she said.
I`m thinking about Hugh Caulfield, respected fire officer and fire service educator, who would begin his fire protection management course with the words, “See those red fire trucks out there? Our job is to put them out of business.”
I`m thinking about a fire department whose idea of fire prevention does not exceed a day`s worth of a man in a dalmatian costume, a child directing a booster stream through a playhouse window, balloons, and comic books.
I`m also thinking about a fire service that in some quarters is afraid of the “firefighters in the ceiling” because they`ll “put us out of business.”
About a fire service that can look the Red Devil straight in the eye but yet withers under the pressure of building construction lobbies for whom fire protection technology in residential construction is an “insurmountable” line item cost. We allow them to play Residential Fire Roulette time and again and in so doing ensure that our principal fire problem will continue on well into the 21st century.
About a fire service that sounds the death knell for its firefighters time and again. We say, “They`re heroes.” We say, “It could have been us.” We may even say, “There were some very wrong actions, stupid actions taken at this fatal fire.” But we ignore the blinding flash of the obvious-that the real stupidity occurred before the fire ever originated.
I`m thinking about a fire service proud of its new breed of enlightened, progressive executives, who can steer skillfully through administrative rapids yet spend just two or three percent of the entire department budget on fighting fires before they happen, before they become firefighter killers.
About a panicky fire service that turned to EMS when city managers demanded justification for its very existence. We turned “Fire-Rescue” into “Rescue-Fire,” changed the nature of the fire department and the business. But the real answer was right in front of us all along: Our existence would always have been secured, even before EMS, had we held true to the core mission and demonstrated the quantifiably justifiable, value-added benefit of fire prevention/protection. Perhaps we should take a lesson from the Tokyo Fire Department, with 18,000 members strong–the great majority of whom are fire prevention specialists.
I`m thinking about a fire service-at-large blind to the fact that fire code groups are using you, by your action and inaction, to capitalize on international code marketing opportunities instead of helping to correct the real code enforcement problems here at home that translate into firefighter and civilian deaths and injuries.
About a reactive fire service that gives tacit approval to status-quo, roll-the-dice fire risk levels in this country.
I`m thinking about an editor who has spent perhaps five percent of six years worth of magazine editorial on fire prevention/protection issues.
Fire Prevention Week has reminded me of a fire service that, in the overall picture, remains uncommitted to prevention. Sure, some small steps have been taken over the past 10 years. But our failure is real. It`s the fire service`s dirty secret, the whispers of which are drowned out by sirens screaming in the night.
