BY BILL MANNING
When I was young and naïve, I romanticized the fire service. The fire scene was an allegory, a timeless battle between man and the forces of nature. Duty, honor, strength, courage, and sacrifice mattered above all else. I celebrated acts that sliced across the razor’s edge between life and death.
When I was young and naïve, I walked a path that accepted line-of-duty death as an unavoidable part of a dangerous business. I spoke in terms that glorified sacrifice on the battlefield. I embraced the concept of acceptable loss, part of what we call the fire service “tradition.”
When I was young and naïve, I drank down my friend’s fatalistic words, “Sometimes in this job, goodbye really means goodbye,” like a magic elixir.
That was before he died on September 11, 2001.
I have grown older since then. I have grown older, and somehow I am different.
Now I think: There is nothing left for firefighters to prove to the world.
But still American firefighters die in the line of duty, in plane crashes over wildland fires, in training accidents, in house fires, on the highways, and on and on.
We have died enough, yet the bagpipes wail across America in an unabated stream of mourning.
The fire service is awash with the sound of bagpipes playing over caskets and crying widows, mothers, children. Their calls echo through time, lonely and haunting, in a symphony of sadness. When will they stop?
They will not stop until the fire service proves to itself that it can push past the culture of heroism and the deeply embedded tradition of “acceptable loss.” It will not stop until the only “acceptable” loss is the unavoidable loss. It will never stop until the fire service quits hiding behind a mask of tradition and status quo and learns its lessons.
The fire service buries its heroes. Then it’s on to the next run or the next city council meeting, and little has changed.
Line-of-duty deaths and injuries—the marks of our heroism and tradition—are a political tool used when convenient but not to the extent that we can obviate the problem, lest by doing so we lose any leverage gained from your blood, sweat, and tears. So we are on a treadmill to nowhere, or glory—same thing.
We must and do honor our fallen heroes with ceremonies that commemorate their greatness. But the greatest honor we can give them is to create a new fire service that pushes beyond the ties that have bound us for so long. The fire service no longer can afford to define itself by the way we die in the line of duty.
Our buried heroes speak to us. I am sure they do. What do they tell us? Do they tell us that honor and heroism and funerals and status quo were worth the price of sacrifice? Or do they tell us it is time to break the chain? Listen to them.
Dying is not a requirement for heroism. Heroism takes many forms. And I can think of nothing more heroic than for the fire service to transcend its traditional cultural borders into uncharted territory in a battle to save the lives of generations of firefighters yet to come. That would be something worth fighting—and living—for.
The only thing left for you to prove is how to act as living heroes, and stay that way.
On behalf of Fire Engineering and FDIC, I extend my heartfelt wishes for a safe and peaceful holiday season.
