BY BILL MANNING
I was struck the first time I heard the saying, “Train as if your life depends on it, because it does.” The axiom perfectly underscores the importance of, and captures the urgency in, training for fire and rescue. It’s so immutable.
It’s a damnable disgrace that large numbers of firefighters, for various reasons, don’t live by those words.
There’s another saying, this one a quote from an era gone by from a fire chief named Edward Croker: “Let no firefighter’s ghost say, ‘My training let me down.’ ” If ghosts do speak, the spirits of too many firefighters are saying that very thing.
Those in positions of leadership often declare that our people are our greatest resource. Some actually believe it. But actions speak louder than words. In so many organizations, significant investment in the people part of the equation just isn’t there. It stands to reason and morality that “our greatest resource” should be better developed and better protected through training and education.
But reason and morality are elusive in the world of practical management, or practical mismanagement. “Preparedness” too often is a numbers game, a “hardware” game, the thinking being you get the “minimum” number of people out on the line with the minimum amount of training (enough to deflect or minimize lawsuits) and with enough apparatus and tools and gear, and voila! We are prepared!
In many places throughout the country, fire training budgets are miniscule or even virtually nonexistent. And we’re not just talking about small departments trying to scrape by. Larger fire departments with lame training divisions aren’t anomalies. At least one major metro department, in fact, hasn’t done developmental fire training of any kind for several years—and it shows. That we haven’t killed more firefighters is but for the grace of God.
It’s hard to believe that in 2004 there are fire departments whose members aren’t trained to minimum Firefighter I-level standards. It’s hard to believe that sometimes when firefighters from the same department get matched up on a fireground, they’re meeting for the first time. It’s hard to believe there are fire departments in this day and age whose idea of a training division is to circulate a few bulletins and let it go at that. Much more effort is spent on promoting the next social event than the next training event—if there even is a training event. If there were an ounce of conscience left in the “leadership” that runs these places, they’d be begging forgiveness of the families and the citizens in advance for playing a dangerous game of “firefighter roulette.”
Even where that’s not the case, the tails side of the minimum-standards coin means living down to, well, bare minimums. Many, if not most, firefighters are trained to the lowest common denominator, and, unless they’re one of the lucky ones, that’s pretty much what they’re going to get for the rest of their careers, as far as the city or town is concerned, unless the firefighter seeks promotion, in which case another set of “minimums” is dragged out for the occasion. And by this dumbed-down education, the city fathers—and maybe even the fire chief—think they’ve held up their end of the bargain.
But our recent history is littered with firefighters killed and injured on firegrounds wherein obvious and egregious strategic, tactical, and procedural errors are committed by firefighters and officers who have been trained to “minimum standard,” at least officially and legally speaking. There’s a major disconnect between our training levels and training curricula and the real world where mistakes and unpreparedness have catastrophic consequences.
I remember a few years back, after an FDIC HOT training day, I met up with the late Andy Fredericks. He was visibly upset. I asked him what was the matter. “The American fire service is in serious trouble,” he said, shaking his head. I asked why. “Most of the American fire service doesn’t know how to properly stretch a line to the second floor,” he said. It was his way of saying the “art” of firefighting is absent.
Most of our training programs, while proof of minimal task-oriented competencies, offer in themselves no proof of superior firefighting—too often, the record speaks otherwise. Combine this with an utter lack of developmental programs for officers and systems that promote for reasons other than firefighting genius, and we have a recipe for disaster that’s ongoing and self-perpetuating.
Current institutionalized training systems do not a thinking firefighter make. The multidimensional, complex art of firefighting is downplayed amidst fire service politics, fire department budgets, and the ever-expanding role of the modern firefighter. Maybe it’s not lost altogether, but I guarantee there are many thousands of firefighters in this country who’d know or care why the words “art” and “firefighting” are next to each other in the same sentence.
We’re getting more and more firefighters on line every day with terrorism training but, generally speaking, we still don’t know how to properly stretch a line to the second floor, in Andy’s words.
If you know what I’m talking about when I say the “art,” then you know that advanced-level training for superior firefighting and survivability within the context of the mission usually occurs within a mostly un-formalized subculture of those who still live and breathe fire and practice what the management consultants call “mentorship.” You also know that, while it’s imperative to continue to advocate aggressively for increased budgetary expenditures on system-supported firefighter training, a lot of the “make do” training that makes for real firefighters occurs far from most sanitized minimal training programs—rather, it happens at kitchen table critiques and discussions, in company-run drills, in a battalion chief’s scheduling jurisdiction-specific training, in one or two guys getting creative and finding some cheap props for a drill on Wednesday night. And you also know that, if not for the precious few like yourselves, the people who push to make these mind-expanding training opportunities happen, this fire service would fall apart at the seams.
What are you going to do this year to advance the artistry in your department and to train as if your lives depend on it, because they do?
A happy and healthy new year to you all. God bless.
