Focus on the basics
I just read “You Should K.I.S.S. This Job” (Random Thoughts) by Tom Brennan in the February issue. Well done.
This column should remind us of and refocus our thoughts on the simple basic tasks that are fundamental to safe firefighting U. To amplify his thoughts, I offer this acronym: Fundamentals Increase Response Effectiveness. Practicing those time-proven fundamentals will help Keep It (the job) Simple and Safer for us all.
Kenneth E. Thompson
Foreman
Mine Hill (NJ) Fire Department
“Customer” is the correct term
Reference is made to Letters to the Editor, December 1997. John R. Reardon suggested that the term “citizen” is more appropriate than “customer” when referring to those in the community served by the fire service. I have been serving my community for 25+ years, but I do not serve just “citizens” or “victims.”
Unfortunately, too many in the fire service are struggling with the idea that the fire service is much more than [an organization] that offers professional intervention to victims. These people are too critical and hung up on semantics.
Reardon is correct about a paradigm shift, but I do not agree that it will ever create a fee structure. The shift is in the way the fire service looks at the community. The community was not formed to meet our need; rather, we are here to serve the community.
The word “citizen” is too cold, remote, and antiseptic when used to refer to a member of the community. Webster`s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines a citizen as “an inhabitant of a city or town,” “one entitled to the rights and privileges of a freeman,” “a subject of the state,” “a person owing allegiance U.”
The word “customer” is the appropriate term for the people (both citizen and noncitizen) we serve. It implies that there is a professional relationship between the community and the fire service. People do not have to be victimized before we can be of service to them. The fire service is in the business of serving the public, protecting the public from the peril of unwanted fire or natural disaster, and educating the public (including inspections and prefire planning).
How many times has the fire service offered one of its stations to host a public meeting or a birthday party, teach bicycle safety or first aid, or conduct blood pressure checks, and so on?
In fact, the failure of the fire service to recognize its customers sends the message that they can be ignored until there is an emergency. The police departments across the country have realized this basic principle for years. That is why they are beating us at budget time. The community expects that the service promised and paid for is the same service that will be delivered. Otherwise, the consequences will be the same as in the case of any other unsatisfactory customer-provider relationship–someone will be in trouble.
The days of hiding in that mysterious building with the big red trucks are over. As we enter the next millennium and strive to be the best instead of just good or better, why must the fire service continue to learn the hard way? Why must tradition constantly be our biggest stumbling block? I, for one, am glad that we are learning the lesson the business world has come to know very well: Do not just meet the customers` needs–exceed their expectations.
Stephen Weber
Corsicana, Texas
EMS is an added fire service responsibility
I look forward to Bill Manning`s Editor`s Opinion column every month. Although I do not always agree with his viewpoints, they are still insightful and get people thinking. As they say, “a little revolution is good every once in awhile.” Manning`s “Bits and Pieces” in the January 1998 issue–especially his comment that “EMS is killing the fire service”–has prompted this reply. Manning offered the following new fire service math: “A (“EMS-izing” the fire service) approximately equals B (losing sight of the core mission) and, therefore, `EMS is killing the fire service, approximately.` “
I feel that he came up with the wrong answer. EMS is no different from any other large addition to our responsibilities. We must adapt and overcome, as we always have. The fire service was well established long before technology thrust auto extrication, hazardous-materials response, and heavy rescue on us, yet we accepted them and continued on. The fire service progressed, firefighters became more skilled, and IQs surpassed neck sizes in hiring qualifications. And the basic firefighting skills were still the core of what we did.
I have been a paramedic for 20 years, the past 14 years in the fire service. I am the fire training officer for my department and thus feel that I still have a firm “handle on the core mission.” I am not an enigma or an anomaly; I am multitalented, as all firefighters already are. Not only is EMS a natural extension of the fire service, it also helps build leadership qualities, as the skills needed to run the medical aspects of an EMS call can easily serve as a base for a fire officer.
It all boils down to fear–fear of the unknown, fear of something new–all normal feelings for humans, but something that we in the fire service have spent 200 years trying to push past for the betterment of our fellow citizens. And learning something new does not mean that we have to forget something old. As training officers, we are the ones who must control the fear and be sure that our firefighters are always learning new things while maintaining the firm base of our “core mission.” Hundreds of departments across the nation have successfully made the transition to EMS U and are actually benefiting from the recruit base it attracts and the public relations it generates. I`ve heard there have even been a couple of popular TV shows based on the premise.
Or, if it helps: Fire training is good, medical training is good; learn both better.
Scott C. Arthur
Lieutenant, Fire Training Officer/EMT-P
Snowmass-Wildcat Fire Protection District
Snowmass Village, Colorado
Bill Manning`s editorial in the January issue hit the nail on the head. The fire service had better wake up before laws are passed requiring everyone to be outfitted with a NomexT suit at birth and back up the custodian at the station just in case the primary one takes a nap and the paper towel dispenser needs to be refilled.
Bill Telfer
Via e-mail
What happened to truck operations?
Lack of ventilation is a terrible problem that we are not addressing, and it may cost us lives. It`s time the fire service put some serious effort into firefighting tactics. Let`s for a moment set aside all secondary roles–i.e., medical first-response training, haz-mat training, and confined-space training–and analyze our firefighting role.
People sometimes tell me about firefighting using terms such as “RECEO” and “ICS.” I`m tired of it all. Whatever happened to engine work and truck work? I`m not advocating we forget about RECEO or ICS. We just need to look first at the fact that a first-year rookie can recite acronyms but doesn`t know anything about the fundamentals. For example, rescue is our first priority, but who makes the rescue, who protects the exposure, who extinguishes or ventilates? The same rookie who can recite the acronym does not have the insight to look at his first alarm assignment and say with any real certainty which company will perform the tasks that RECEO talks about. We have put the cart before the horse.
“Put a line on the fire and see what happens” seems to be a popular game plan. All too often, I see fires that are fought by the engine-only approach. I started my career as a volunteer firefighter, and I distinctly remember my first house fire. It was a difficult fire that started in a crawl space. The fire burned extensively in the walls and void spaces; it was very difficult to extinguish. As I look back, I know now that one of the reasons it was so difficult was because we did not open the house up. There was no vertical ventilation; very few windows were taken out. We worked long and hard in hot, smoke-filled conditions with poor visibility. No wonder it was so difficult! When it was over, we patted ourselves on the back. We thought we had done a good job. I now know we got lucky. We could have extinguished the fire more quickly and with less damage had someone been performing aggressive truck company functions.
I, unfortunately, had a similar experience in one of the first house fires I went to with my career department. We were pinned down at the top of a stairwell in a dwelling fire and could not advance because no one was ventilating. This is a problem that extends throughout the fire service, career and volunteer alike.
I see this problem getting worse; we are becoming a nation of one-line fire departments. We arrive at the fire and stretch our magical 134-inch hoseline from the preconnect bed. If the fire does not go out in 30 seconds or less, we are in trouble. You only have to look at the new fire engines we are building, and you can see what I mean. We no longer build main hosebeds. We build new rigs with up to four preconnects and have a tiny little hosebed on the top of the rig, sometimes as much as 10 feet high. Some departments are even turning the rear hosebed into storage areas for ladders, haz-mat suits, cold water suits, and cribbing/ shoring for the once-in-every-10-years technical rescue.
The widespread use of the quint aerial ladder has also served to confuse the fire service. Many fire departments buy these rigs and use them as an engine company with a ladder on top. I suppose it`s just too tempting for these crews to have a ladder truck with a pump and hose on it. They arrive at the fire and pull hose just like an engine company. I have seen it with my own eyes in more than one department at many different fires. No one is doing the truck work when the truck company is on the hoseline.
I`m sick and tired of seeing buildings burn down because of a lack of ventilation. With the exception of large departments that use traditional truck companies, many (not all) of the nation`s small- to medium-sized fire departments are burning down buildings and hurting people and firefighters alike because somewhere along the way they forgot how important truck company operations are.
I hate to say it, but I know it`s true. I have asked many fire officers to discuss what they know about the subject of truck work, and their knowledge is limited at best. What`s even more disheartening is that there are fire service instructors out there who have no clue when it comes to truck work. Believe it or not, a lieutenant from a career department told his Fire Officer I class that there was no reason to vertically ventilate a first-floor fire if the building was more than one story in height. No reason whatsoever. It was his thought that you would only make the fire spread. That, believe it or not, is not the worst part of the story. What really makes me sick is that no one in this Fire Officer I class contradicted this instructor.
I wonder if truck work could be reinvented. I`ll bet that if it had a fancy acronym, we could make it popular again U. I have seen departments that spend thousands and thousands of dollars on rope, carabiners, and haz-mat suits burn down buildings because they have no organized truck work to support the engine company.
It`s time to change, and I have a solution. We must designate this function to specific members of our departments and give them the responsibility for completing truck work. It`s that simple. How is this done? In departments that send a ladder truck to a fire, let`s make sure the crew is not assigned to a hoseline. The importance of truck company operations should be emphasized to these members in daily training drills, and all members should know that the truck will vent the building. Truck company officers should be sent to seminars and classes that specialize in these functions.
By the same token, we must discuss fire departments that do not send a ladder truck to a fire. This happens every day in our country in suburban or rural areas and in small cities. Who is responsible for truck work in this situation? The answer is to designate the truck work to somebody. Consider the complement of apparatus and personnel sent to a fire call, and designate two or three firefighters (as a minimum, preferably four to six per alarm assignment), depending on how many people respond to a fire in your department. There are probably those who are saying they just don`t have the personnel to accomplish this. If that`s the case, then it`s time to make automatic mutual-aid agreements, not as a luxury but as a critical necessity.
If you cannot designate members to do truck work, then don`t go to fires. You are putting yourself in jeopardy. The only interior attack that any firefighter should make is one supported by truck company operations. I know this may seem harsh, but it is a legitimate health and safety issue. Too often, our health and safety committees concern themselves with trivial matters. Let`s put them to work on the issue of truck company operations.
These thoughts and solutions are just a start. I`m sure that if the importance of truck work could gain widespread popularity, a dramatic difference in the way we fight fires would be noticed throughout the nation and, more importantly, in the way we save lives and property. We just need to concentrate on the fundamentals of fire attack strategy, which in my book are engine work and truck work: Who does it and why do they do it? Once a firefighter grasps and understands these concepts, we can then move on to the acronyms.
Greg Harris
Firefighter
Michigan
