New Year’s Resolutions

By Billy Goldfeder, E.F.O.

Well, it’s 2003. Who knows WHAT’S going to happen in this business of ours. Hopefully, in 2003 the nation will mimic the Fire Department of New York, which had no firefighter deaths in 2002. On the other hand, just by looking around, you can kind of predict what will probably happen in the fire service. Following are some resolutions that you might find handy. You can copy them, paste them up, pass them on, put on desks, post on lockers, and slide under doors!

1. Try to look before backing apparatus so you don’t rip doors off and run anyone over.
2. Try to generally slow down and try to stop at red lights while responding so you don’t hurt anyone.
3. Secure or even close the roadways down when your members are operating on them so some lunatic doesn’t run them over.
4. Spend at least the same amount of time training (to make sure some firefighters “have a clue” when operating) as you do discussing, planning, making, eating, and digesting the ever-important firehouse meal.
5. PRINT and DISTRIBUTE items such as articles from Fire Engineering and on-line fire-related items and sites that will help the firefighters GET IT. If they ignore these items, post them in the BATHROOMS so they HAVE to read it.
6. Operate with DICTATORIAL accountability and strict, disciplined command and control on the scene.
7. Don’t stop yelling and screaming to your superiors, elected officials, bosses, and others who make more money than you do if your fire radios don’t work right and you can’t speak to each other via radio on a scene.
8. Try your best to teach/learn that ventilation requires a TRUCK COMPANY crew, not a FAN blowing air in the door.
9. “Lay a supply line” on structural responses so you have it when you need it, and cheerfully help pack it when you’re done.
10. Make sure that you INVITE as many fire departments as it takes (to get the tasks done) to a first-alarm assignment reporting a structural fire until you know that they won’t be needed.
11. Encourage your department to regularly TRAIN with other departments and companies that you respond with so when you get to a scene you don’t have to spend 20 minutes socializing and cordially “getting to know each other” while the building burns down.
12. Spend some of your “precious valuable time” ensuring the apparatus and equipment are “ready” before the run comes in. It’s a real drag when the roof saw is out of fuel or the SCBA bottle is low.
13. TRY to make the scenes a bit safer with enough people (call mutual aid if you don’t have it–enough excuses!) to provide an effective and trained RIT/FAST team, a backup hoseline or two, a search crew, a vent crew, water supply, sector officers, and even someone to watch the garage door so it doesn’t close on the members operating inside.
14. Work FEVERISHLY on a personal goal of minimizing “Non-Thinking Syndrome” (NTS) wherever possible.
15. Devote some TIME to teach, train, and guide some of the “6-22s” you work with (firefighters with 6 months on the job but who act like they have 22 years of experience).
16. Encourage your department to look BEYOND “low bid” on the stuff you need and also do “provable” research to support it. Give the bosses the “ammo” they need so you don’t end up with junk.
17. Attend AT LEAST one national fire–related school or conference for training, even if you have to pay for it (aka invest in) yourself. Not sure which ones? How about FDIC, FDIC West, Command School, etc?
18. Apply to take a course at the National Fire Academy. It’s free.
19. Work to support politicians who have proven to support firefighters and related programs–and work even harder to remove those who don’t.
20. FORGET? NEVER. We are supposedly a country that had been attacked and need to act more like it. 343 firefighters and thousands of other good people were murdered on 9-11-01 as well as prior to that in terrorist attacks. Don’t let Americans forget … no matter how hard they may want to. Do whatever it takes to carry on that message and ensure that it NEVER happens again. It is OK to sometimes worry, but NEVER give up!

Chief Billy Goldfeder is a battalion chief for the Loveland-Symmes (OH) Fire Department. Previously, he served as a chief in Ohio, Virginia, and Florida; an engineering/public protection representative covering southern New York for the ISO; and a lieutenant with the Manhasset-Lakeville (NY) Fire Department. A 1993 graduate of the National Fire Academy’s Executive Fire Officer Program, he is the former chairman of the International Association of Fire Chiefs Volunteer Section. He recently was made an honorary battalion chief of the Fire Department of New York.