Has there ever been a time when so many firefighters were lost? There probably has been: Dresden, Germany; the sacking of Rome; or maybe the first day the chief said, “Just put on this new self-contained breathing device and you can spend 30 minutes inside the fire.” There were probably a hundred firefighters who would have rather quit firefighting than wear SCBA.
Now look at us-not just 30-minute but 60-minute SCBA, specialized entry suits for haz mat, air-conditioned fire apparatus, and don’t forget paramedics, EMTs, and flight nurses on trauma helicopters. We certainly have changed, but the loss of a brother or sister firefighter hasn’t changed one bit. It hurts just the same as it did 200 years ago.
The pain of watching the coverage of the World Trade Center and Pentagon disasters made me sick to my stomach. Even though I knew what was happening, just like during the Challenger shuttle disaster, I half expected to see the boys come walking out of that cloud of dust, hacking and coughing but mostly intact. Of course, like Challenger, they didn’t. And I sat there for hours, with a lump in my throat, praying for what I knew simply was not likely to happen. I thought of some of the FDNY firefighters I have had the great pleasure to meet.
How will the fire service progress if we can be so easily obliterated? In under 60 seconds, 300+ of the fire service’s top talent was unceremoniously murdered. They can never be replaced.
Will we have the strength to put our petty differences aside and work to improve the fire service for all departments, large and small? Will our chiefs gear up to do battle with county and city commissioners to improve staffing on our engines, ladders, and rescues? Will we make the investment in new technologies that will help locate downed firefighters or smoldering hot spots? Can we see past our fiefdom mentality to start and continue training with our neighboring fire districts and brother police officers so we can better interact and communicate with each other at major emergencies? Will we ever get past our monumental administrative egos so we can discuss our failures as easily as we do our successes and learn from our mistakes instead of repeat them?
A lot of good folks gave up their lives doing their jobs. And the rest of the country saw what these martyrs did and rallied behind us. They support us in words and song. They send us cards and letters of remembrance, thanking us for our dedication to duty. One Sunday a group of girls came to our fire station. They wanted us to send money they had collected to our brothers in FDNY. These girls raised $380 in one day selling lemonade for a quarter a glass. I am humbled by their gift and inspired by what it means for all of us: that at long last, the public supports our goals to save their lives, to protect their property, and to extinguish their fires at the risk of our own lives and property. It means that right now, if we act responsibly to improve our departments and better serve our public, the public will back us up. Now is the time for us to unite as the strong representative of the public’s interest and demand from our political administrators the improvements to our service that will protect future firefighters and our communities’ way of life.
We can demand improvements in our budgets that fund our support service divisions so we cannot only purchase trucks but also maintain and staff them as required. We can develop new technologies such as global positioning satellite-oriented location devices for firefighters and laser devices to determine a building’s structural integrity. We can fund local and national training that keeps us informed of new issues and helps us interact with other emergency agencies. We can also interact with our international brothers to learn from their experiences.
That is only the tip of the iceberg. We can make our fire service a safer, more responsive service. Or we can bemoan the loss of our brothers and ignore the opportunity they gave their lives to provide for us. I’m going to miss those guys. I’m not going to forget how they died. I’m not going to forget the way I felt on September 11, 2001. We can and must change our fire service so that the generations to follow will benefit from our brothers’ supreme sacrifice. God bless them all!
Bruce Cavallari
Lieutenant
Palm Beach County (FL) Fire Rescue
Editor’s note: The following letter was written in response to an article in the Washington Post by Sally Jenkins about the September 11 tragedies and the heroism of FDNY.
I have been listening to the stories told about the heroism of FDNY over the past several days. Reporters have extolled these brave men and speak of how people who used to snub them are now cheering them when they walk by. America has discovered a real-life hero.
While all this is true, I submit to you that these men in New York are merely the best example of what has happened quietly in small towns and fire stations across this nation since the first career fire department started in Cincinnati in the 1800s. Firefighters are a special breed and have been since it first occurred to man to try and stop a fire’s destruction. Every town has a fire station, and every fire station is full of heroes. Sit quietly in their kitchens and listen to the stories they tell; watch them interact, and you will discover the truth in this.
Firefighters are dedicated to family-first and foremost is a firefighters’s personal family. He places himself as personal guardian of those he loves, often working two jobs to ensure that they are provided for to the best of his ability. However, once he knows his family is taken care of, his attentions shift. Now he needs to take care of those around him. With him it isn’t a desire, it’s a need. He feels a sense of civic duty of which most people are blissfully ignorant. At times he can seem cold to his family if they don ‘t understand what he is doing. I know this because I married one of these men. He is old fashioned, a man in the truest sense of the word.
All firefighters are brothers. Since they are dedicated to family, that means that they are also dedicated to each other. I watched while one brother came to the fire station and sat in a chair with his head down. Then he looked up at those sitting in that room and told them that his wife was leaving him. Within minutes, phone calls had been placed and the brothers started appearing. They took him out and let him drink until he couldn’t think anymore and then took care of him. They knew what he, at that moment, needed. Later, when he was more able to think, they talked.
I have also watched them rally around the family of a fallen brother. They stepped in and became fathers to the fatherless children. They dug deep into their own pockets to support the widow. They cried at their brother’s funeral.
And finally, I have had the honor of watching them rally around me. A few years ago, my son died after living only for a few hours. One memory I have from the blur of pain that was that time is of the firefighters. They did a walk-through at my son’s funeral. I remember, one by one, in dress uniform, with hat in hand, they came to me with hugs and words of comfort. Afterward, they stood back, in a line, while the minister read his words. They were honoring my husband for what he is and my son for what he might have been. They have become my truest and most trusted friends.
I know that what happened in New York is tragic beyond all description. My heart is breaking even though I have never met even one of these brave men. I don’t have to. I was not surprised when I heard how many were missing. In the back of my mind, I have known all along that something like this was bound to happen. How could it not? Firefighters everywhere are running forward buttoning up their coats and pulling on their boots while the rest of the world is running away. They don’t know the people they are running forward to save. The property they are risking their life to protect is not theirs. In many cases, they aren’t even getting paid. Each time I see a truck pull away from the station or scream down the street, tears come to my eyes and I whisper a prayer for those brave men inside. They are the true Americans and always have been.
These brave men are not digging through the rubble and destruction at the World Trade Center to get national attention, though that is an effect of what they are doing. They are men with broken hearts and numbed minds scratching at the earth trying to find their brothers. Of course they aren’t giving up. Anyone who understands firefighters knows that they won’t until the last brother is accounted for and returned to his family. They can’t. If I were to meet one on the street, I wouldn’t cheer. I would do what I have always done: offer him a cold cup of water, a hug, and my love. I would give him whatever he needs to be able to return to Ground Zero and keep digging. His name doesn’t matter. His battalion doesn’t matter. He is a brother. That is all that matters.
Theresa Pratt
NFPA 1710
I read with interest “NFPA 1710: The New ‘Accountability’ Standard” by Bill Manning (Editor’s Opinion, August 2001), aimed at our fire service leaders. He certainly is right. For too long, fire chiefs have been acting like CEOs rather than fire chiefs. Perhaps the image of a fire chief in a suit seemed more imposing than that of a leader in a uniform. Perhaps some people were actually embarrassed to wear the uniform; considering some of their decisions, this may be true. Or maybe it was simply so they could schmooze with other “suits” and enjoy a cocktail without it causing a ruckus. Whatever the case, many fire chiefs forgot about the men and women risking and sometimes losing their lives to budget crunches without even putting up much of a fight. After all, the line-of-duty death happened in that “other” fire department, not theirs.
The National Fire Protection Association is a great tool for the administrator. I fear, however, that firefighters will die in spite of it. 1710 does not make you smarter; it simply makes it easier to argue with the city staff. If your company officers are not trained to recognize structural deterioration, then firefighters will die. If company officers do not communicate their intentions and locations within a building, then firefighters will die. If firefighters wander off by themselves in a structure fire, then firefighters will die. If fire chiefs do not train their personnel to be safety conscious and to be proactive, then firefighters will die.
I am happy for the passage of 1710. I believe that it is a great tool for increasing the safety factor for firefighters. But I fear that it will also mean more improperly trained firefighters in an already dangerous profession. You simply cannot have just more people-you also have to have more people trained properly and a fire chief who recognizes that just throwing numbers at a fire will not put it out without casualties.
Dennis A. Cavin
Battalion Chief
Metro West Fire Protection District
St. Louis County, Missouri
“Safety Susies” at it again
It seems that the “Safety Susies” are alive and well in the American fire service. I am referring to “SCBA harness as a rescue harness” by Ross A. Wood (Letters to the Editor, September 2001). Wood condemns this emergency procedure as being fodder for attorneys and the courts. Have we abandoned all common sense? Now it is suggested that we let our brothers perish in a hellish basement while a member of the safety police runs back to the truck for the NFPA-compliant harness that we will never be able to assemble in that boiling cauldron of poisons. But at least we will be safe from litigation by the dead firefighter’s family. Our pocketbooks might be safe, but what of our honor?
The two-in/two-out rule has resulted in rapid intervention teams being assembled in some jurisdictions before even the basic fireground operations of stretching the first line, venting, and conducting primary search are underway. “Our safety is the most important thing,” these pretend firefighters will say. Hogwash! We have sworn an oath to protect the people we serve. They have placed their trust in us. We have a duty to accept some degree of risk. And, in any event, the safest course of action is to put out the fire!
Another letter writer condemned training on the ladder slide technique because a firefighter who practiced the technique without appropriate safety precautions was killed. The error was in not using a safety line, not in practicing a potentially life-saving technique. Perhaps this letter writer would suggest that we stop hands-on training altogether. After all, some of that stuff looks pretty dangerous.
Before I am criticized for being anti-safety, let me assure you that I am not. I support a careful risk/benefit analysis for any action a firefighter might be called to perform. I strongly advocate providing our nation’s firefighters with the training and equipment necessary to do their job. What I do not support, however, is the notion that we can abandon our duty to the public to protect ourselves. This smacks of cowardice. I hope that this recent trend toward safety at all costs can be arrested before we are relegated to standing in the front yard lobbing water through the windows. But wait, we should probably just stay in the fire station lest we get in an accident on the way to the fire. It’s probably safer that way!
Lance C. Peeples
Firefighter
St. Louis County, Missouri
