National Fire Academy Needs Your Support
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The Editor’s Opinion Page
We have been following the “federal focus on fire” since way back in 1967 when we went down to Washington, D.C., to sit in on the Senate and House hearings on a bill that eventually became the Fire Research and Safety Act of 1967. Among other items, the act established a National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control, whose report “America Burning” led to the establishment of the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration, now called the United States Fire Administration.
At the hearings mentioned above, the proposed bill received the wholehearted support of the nation’s fire chiefs and fire fighters. The only opposition came from the National Fire Protection Association leaders, who apparently looked upon the bill as an infringement upon the association’s traditional functions, and some economy-minded Congressmen. The NFPA, incidentally, is chartered in Massachusetts as a “private, voluntary, charitable, and tax-exempt association.” It is “national” only in the sense that the National Broadcasting Company and the National Biscuit Company are national.
From the very beginning, the NFPCA was subjected to considerable criticism. Most of this criticism was muted, however, since many groups and organizations within the fire service were receiving grants from NFPCA funds. And most of this criticism was unfair. The administration was new, starting from scratch, and like most new ventures, it required time to gear up.
We give you this brief history of the federal focus on fire because we have supported this focus going back even before 1967, and infinitely more so than any other fire service publication. Pages of Fire Engineering reporting on the plans, programs and personalities of the NFPCA and later the USFA would fill a fat volume. But we are now alarmed at the animosity that seems to be developing within some segments of the fire service toward the USFA and its new administrator, Gordon Vickery.
What really sparked our alarm was a motion passed at a recent meeting of the Joint Council of Fire Service Organizations that directed the chairman “to appoint a special committee to study the advantages and disadvantages of operating the National Fire Academy as an independent national foundation, chaired and funded by the Congress and operated by a board of trustees appointed by the Congress and the President.”
We don’t know what will come out of this and perhaps it is just a veiled threat to the administration. But we do know that the NFA took at least 12 years in the making. It does exist. It is operating in a magnificant setting in Maryland and it is the best thing that ever happened to the fire fighting forces of this country.
So let’s give it a chance (and some support) to get off the ground. And, if necessary, fight back at those who would tear it down in their own selfish interests.
