Why Is It…?

BY BILL MANNING

Why is it that, no matter how loud you scream and no matter how far you think you’ve gone, the cops get the money, first and most?

Why is it that, while people seem to make a national issue of crime and education and welfare and many, many other things, they still call fire and emergency response a “local” issue?

Why is it that it takes thousands of people to oversee or try to manage what fire companies and fire departments can do on their own?

… that national fire data goes in but it never comes out in real time or in location-specific ways?

… that the one agency that actually understands and practices incident command systems plays second fiddle to the ones that don’t?

… that some in the fire service still think they can command the fire out?

… that most firefighters in the United States don’t know how many members it takes to conduct a tactically correct response to their most common fire problems, and that fire management doesn’t know how to argue its case for staffing and resources based on those tactics?

… that a firefighter receives more medical training in a career than fire training?

… that, by and large, this business is run by people who made only a handful of good fires in their four years on the line with slow companies?

… that we still have a “nozzle debate”?

… that we don’t make a new rule: “Out-of-shape guys and old guys can’t do fire”?

… that you need a search rope to find your way back to the elevators from the USFA’s offices in the Department of Homeland Security?

… that there isn’t an aggressive national program to educate firefighters to become fire protection specialists or engineers, and thus begin to make the enlightened change to automatic fire intervention instead of our continual human intervention mode?

… that training instructors in our academies can’t teach “past the book”?

… that there are never enough fire inspectors with “teeth,” especially when it all hits the fan?

… that a federal grant program for local fire department needs is in danger of being sucked into the “WMD complex”?

… that we still have a wildland urban interface fire problem?

… that a tower ladder costs $1 million?

… that volunteer companies in affluent areas and with lots of “parade money” complain about recruitment and retention but refuse to pay for full- or part-time drivers or pay for firefighter response on a per-call basis?

… that we’re learning how to save our own but our own keep getting caught and trapped in the first place?

… that too many fireground chiefs can’t read buildings under fire?

… that it has taken 200 years of firefighter deaths in America and one incident of firefighter deaths by terrorists to get people to listen?

… that Americans have a greater chance of dying in a fire than they did 30 years ago?

… that we’re always preaching to the choir?

… that people think it’s about them?

… that because standards worked for some stuff, we automatically presume they will work for other stuff?

… that there are more people who can tell you about what’s in the leadership books than there are real leaders?

… that regular, professional stress debriefing is not the “norm” in this very stressful fire service?

… that the federal government can destroy a private industry providing software services to fire departments and nobody—not the firefighters and not our fire service vendor groups—give a damn about it?

… that, for too many, life-saving equates only with what we can or can’t do with the big red trucks?

… that the backup man is the company officer?

… that every firefighter in the United States doesn’t know who Bill Clark was, or who Andy Fredericks was, or who Don Manno was?

… that the word “progress” can’t be spoken in the same sentence as “tradition”?

… that we can’t hear our own dead speaking to us?

… that sometimes “goodbye” really means “goodbye”?