By Adam K. Thiel
I recently completed 30 years serving in public safety, with most of that time in local fire-emergency services departments across the United States. I’ve also visited, learned from, taught in, and worked alongside many other organizations around the globe. Reaching the 30-year mark got me thinking about the past, present, and future of the fire service.
Living in the same “Old City” area of Philadelphia that Benjamin Franklin called home, I’m surrounded by history, and it’s always surreal to think about the progress our fire service has made in the almost 300 years since he helped form the Union Fire Company in 1736.
As Franklin understood, fire departments exist in a broader public policy realm that affects every aspect of our mission—on the emergency scene, back at the firehouse, in our neighborhoods, and throughout the halls of our governments. In such dynamic organizations, change is a constant; learning to embrace it, while appreciating our history, is essential for creating a future where we are relevant, respected, and properly resourced to serve our diverse communities.
Technology
For my part, over the past three decades in this business, I’ve seen a lot of changes and some things that haven’t changed much or at all. The relentless advance of technology has brought us capabilities—and potential threats—that were the stuff of science fiction in years past. Smart watches? Look at your wrist. Drones? Check. Electric vehicles? Yep. Seeing through smoke? Sort of. Robots? Getting there. Artificial intelligence? Moving fast. Instant videoconferencing? Turn your camera on. Self-driving cars? Coming soon to a city near you.
Other technologies that promise to fundamentally change the nature of fire protection have still not achieved universal adoption—like automatic fire sprinklers. Some technological “advances” in modern building materials and consumer products are actually making the fire environment even more dangerous for firefighters in the 21st century. Multiple-fatality fires are still occurring with some regularity in cities around the world, while the global climate emergency has made wildland fire and severe weather a year-round problem on several continents.
At the same time, we in the fire service have continued to do anything and everything asked of us. This “can-do” attitude is both our greatest strength and our greatest liability. We’ve created an almost universal expectation that we will save lives and protect property under any circumstances, and in any environment; even when the odds of success are incredibly low, and the probability of firefighter injury or death is inordinately high.
Early in my career, I thought technology would almost eradicate building fires and maybe even render interior structural firefighting obsolete. On the contrary, the science is clear: Fires are burning hotter and faster than ever before, civilian fire deaths are trending upward, and more of our fellow firefighters are added to memorial walls each year.
As firefighters, we live—and die—at the intersection of forces we often do not control. We perform our work at the center of a complex system that, for most people, is out of sight and out of mind. When tragedy occurs, however, firefighters are seen on the front lines—fighting and too often dying to fix fire safety gaps created by failures of the unwilling or the unknowing.
Teamwork
Almost every day, I continue to witness the street-level social and economic impacts of our nation’s fire problem firsthand along with the bravery, courage, skill, and compassion of the dedicated firefighters and EMS providers who—working together in high-performing teams—are saving lives and protecting property 24/7/365.
Ever since Franklin’s time, teamwork has been a hallmark of the fire service, and I hope it will remain one of our core competencies into the future. Maybe someday we’ll add artificial intelligence (AI)-managed robots to help perform key fireground functions, but I expect that, for many years to come, we will rely on human beings to make critical lifesaving decisions from inside the dynamic environments where we work.
The composition of our teams is changing for the better as fire-EMS departments are getting more diverse; continued progress toward ensuring we have inclusive, respectful, and cohesive teams remains essential for effective firefighting performance and maintaining the trust of those we serve.
Trust
Whatever the future holds, we must keep the fundamental tenets of our fire service strong, especially the trust that joins us together in service as sisters and brothers, along with the trust that allows us to be so respected in our communities that people literally throw us their babies and (rightly) expect us to “make the grab.”
It is that level of trust, earned by our predecessors and by the sacrifices of our colleagues in the line of duty, that keeps the fire service perennially high on the list of “most trusted occupations,” even as overall confidence in government institutions is relatively low.
Trust also creates an opportunity for all of us in the fire service to initiate an open, honest, and candid public policy dialogue around fire protection in our communities. I’m not just talking about providing fire safety education or justifying operating budgets; that doesn’t go far enough. What we must do, if we truly desire to make the shift from a reactive to a proactive service, is help people understand that they are co-producers of fire safety outcomes in their homes, businesses, and neighborhoods.
A Shared Responsibility
In economic terms, fire protection is usually seen as a public good—that is to say, it can be difficult to divide and account for costs individually, especially in urban areas where people live in close quarters. While generally accepted as a public good, fire safety is not always seen as a shared public responsibility.
When discussing the value of public fire protection services and regulations, we are often at a disadvantage because of an inability or unwillingness to discuss the true costs and benefits of a properly functioning fire safety system including, and well beyond, the cost of provisioning fire departments. This leads to an information asymmetry where citizens and policymakers, and sometimes some in the fire service, don’t fully understand or properly value the complex relationships among various policies, policy actors, and other factors influencing fire protection outcomes in a given community.
As I speak with ordinary citizens around my city, I’m always surprised by how little people know about their fire-EMS department—our capabilities, limitations, and the true costs/benefits of the services we provide. It has also been my experience that many elected officials and other policymakers are similarly underinformed about how public fire protection works, much less the many complexities of the overarching fire safety system in their communities. I’m not blaming anyone but calling people to action.
Fire Safety and Building Design
Beyond educating ordinary people in our cities, towns, and villages, I also believe we urgently need firefighters to help businesses, investors, and firms throughout the global supply chain understand how their decisions about design, engineering, production, testing, and marketing have life-or-death implications for their customers.
Going forward, we the fire service can help define fire as a problem that we must all solve proactively by working together and not just something to think about for a few months after yet another tragedy. We must continue working to create more public awareness, support, and an understanding that firefighters alone cannot provide fire safety for those we serve.
We need to enlist others—the developers, building owners, residents, and elected officials—to take action for their own safety and not rely on the fire service to fix every problem, especially when the deck is stacked higher and higher against us.
. . .
When I next walk past the site of Ben Franklin’s home and the spot in Grindstone Alley where Philadelphia’s first (hand pumped) fire engine was stored, I know that he would be proud of how the American fire service has evolved to meet challenges that he and his fellow Union Fire Company members could never dream of. I also think he would agree that technology, teamwork, and trust will continue to help define the future of the fire service, just as they have defined our last 287 years.
Adam K. Thiel became the 20th commissioner of the Philadelphia (PA) Fire Department in May 2016 and is responsible for leading its more than 3,000 members in every facet of protecting the city from fires and emergencies arising from all hazards. Thiel also served as director of the Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management from 2019-2022. He has more than 30 years of government, private sector, and nonprofit experience spanning five states.
