By Ray McCormack
On one hand, firefighters are told to care about the people we serve, while on the other hand we are told that we need to keep emotions out of what we do. What do you believe? Is emotion okay for certain types of responses and not others?
“Dispatch to Engine 99, respond to 1670 Urban Blvd. for a car accident.” Engine 99 replies in the affirmative. The dispatcher then informs the company that the response has been upgraded with additional companies due to confirmed entrapment and that they should now respond in “emotional mode.”
While this response is hypothetical, it is not far from the truth. The truth lies in the fact that firefighters have emotional responses to calls. The emotional response levels vary depending upon many factors, such as the nature of the call, knowledge of call severity, and personal traits.
We do not want firefighters losing their heads at fires and emergencies, and some scenes will provide strong tests. There is nothing wrong with having an emotion connection when it comes to doing this job. We don’t want an army of emotionless drones operating off checklist menus. We practice emotional control constantly.
Sometimes we have to push our emotions to the side and operate to work past what we see and hear to better the outcome. Sometimes we have to incorporate our emotions into what we see and hear to better the outcome. Do you have to control your emotional response? Yes, and you also have to make it size adjustable for the occasion, but we don’t just throw it away and claim it’s bad for you. No, we work with it. We call it up when we need more and reduce it down to the surface when appropriate.
Many incident commanders are taught to barricade themselves through isolation so that emotional scenes only play out through video displays or windshields and not in their heads. They are told that the key to operational effectiveness is be unemotional, cold to what’s happening over there somewhere–so that you can remain calm and collected while your troops handle the heavy lifting. We must give ourselves the opportunity to measure up to the challenge of emotion. Emotional avoidance or fractional participation does not prepare you for when you must stand in the thick of things without safe harbor. If incident commanders have never learned to control their emotions, then cocooning themselves might be for the best.
Some will say that if we put our emotions into it, we will be too hard on ourselves or the baggage will start to pile up. If you avoid emotion on your calls, are you saving it up for a special occasion? Probably not. If you practice emotional avoidance, are you waiting for the cork to pop? To be effective and build a better firefighter, we need some emotional glue, and that is gained by using catch and release when it comes to emotion. Trap bad emotions and release them after they come in. Care about your performance, use emotion to your advantage, and realize that emotion is always there. Like any size-up consideration, emotion is something to deal with while making it work for you instead of against you, in both the long and short term.
We don’t need the dispatcher to tell us to respond in emotional mode. We can figure that out on our own. Including emotions in your responses does not lower your tactical safety unless you let it.
Next Tactical Safety – Will Work For Fire
Thanks for reading.
Keep Fire in Your Life!
MORE RAY McCORMACK
- Pushing to Save Lives
- Operating With a Sense of Entitlement
- Free Thinking for the Fire Service
- Cultural Saving Time
- More Ray McCormack
RAY McCORMACK is a 30-year veteran and a lieutenant with FDNY. He is the publisher and editor of Urban Firefighter Magazine. He delivered the keynote address at FDIC in 2009 and he is on the Editorial Board of Fire Engineering Magazine.
