By John “Skip” Coleman, technical Editor
I was amazed at the responses to last month’s Roundtable question concerning the treatment and handling of morbidly obese patients. Technology has again stepped up to assist us in the delivery of our service.
Another advancement lets us videotape ourselves working at fires, specifically with helmet cams, with good and bad results. At first, it seems exciting to memorialize our profession by videotaping ourselves working inside fires. However, many fires do not provide a good backdrop for taking video: Thick, black smoke at good working fires has a negative effect on video quality. That being said, some great videos are available that you can and should use as training tools. Too often, however, these videos end up on YouTube as either “look-at-me-and-what-I- do” posturing or as a spoof when something goes wrong.
I would be interested to know if, when a department allows the use of these cameras, the video becomes available to everyone under the Freedom of Information Act. If so, do you really want to “memorialize” everything you do on the fireground? What may seem like harmless fun in an attempt to show your children what Mom or Dad does at work may end up part of a legal nightmare.
Does your department permit the use of helmet cams? Answer this month’s Roundtable, and share your ideas.
SIMULATIONS
FDNY Battalion Chief Frank Montagna, Underwriters Laboratories fire research engineer Steve Kerber, and award-winning Web simulation producer CommandSim have provided eight online simulations to hone your skills and train your instincts. They are also in the Training section.
DRILLS
Visit the Drills page, located in the Training section. Forest Reeder has provided hundreds of drills on a variety of topics. If you are a company officer looking for some excellent “canned” drills that are ready for the kitchen table or apparatus floor, take advantage of Reeder’s knowledge and experience as a pivotal fire service instructor.
FIRE ENGINEERING UNIVERSITY
Look for three new courses being added to the Fire Engineering University curriculum: Mike McEvoy’s “If Pigs Could Fly: Swine Flu Lessons”; Anthony Avillo’s “Firefighter Casualties: When ‘Old-School Firefighting’ Doesn’t Work”; and Brett Snow’s “How Prepared Is Your Engine Company?”
EXCLUSIVES
In “Stepping Up: The Grocery Store,” Assistant Chief (Ret.) Ron Hiraki of the Seattle (WA) Fire Department, writing on how citizens view firefighters, discusses how to handle a situation in which a community member gets agitated about a firefighter’s trip to the grocery store. When I was an operations deputy, about once a month I would get a call from a citizen complaining about a fire truck parked in front of the grocery store. Worse were the frequent complaints of apparatus going “lights and siren” to the store. I had to explain that personnel were on a fire call and got cancelled when they were almost at the store and how it “looked” like they were in a hurry to go to the store when they were actually saving the taxpayers money by making a store trip after a call. Hiraki offers tips on how to handle the inquisitive civilian.
Lieutenant David DeStefano of the North Providence (RI) Fire Department writes about a fire on a communications platform. In “Odd Job: Fire on a Communications Platform,” he describes the incident, which may become a recurring problem for all of us.
In “Organizational Re-Engineering: The Key to Safety,” Lieutenant Brian Houska of the Urbana (IL) Fire-Rescue Services suggests that we compare our annual firefighter line-of-duty death rate with casualty rates from other occupations and looks at how we can impact firefighter fatalities once and for all.
What determines a “win” on the fireground, and what are the characteristics of a good fire service “team player”? In “Teamwork and the Big Red Truck,” Assistant Chief (Ret.) Dave Murphy of the Richmond (KY) Fire Department writes on using teamwork to assist our citizens. He takes lessons from Yogi Berra’s book You Can Observe a Lot by Watching: What I’ve Learned About Teamwork from the Yankees and Life, applies them to firefighting, and describes what is required to complete the mission.
Firefighter Joshua Shumate of Durham (NC) Fire-Rescue gives “10 Drills for Company Success.” In our day-to-day operations, it is sometimes easy to overlook the things that we learned the first week in the fire academy. Training is the foundation for safety, and training on these 10 drills in this article will make us safer and more efficient.
In “It Happened to Me,” Jeff Turkel of Fairbanks (AK) International Airport Police & Fire writes about a life-changing experience in which he was badly injured in an explosion during a training exercise. He describes the incident and its aftermath, the psychological repercussions of his brush with death, and the benefits of undergoing critical incident stress debriefings.
COMMUNITY MEMBER OF THE MONTH
Name: Mike Demastus.
Residence: Franklin, Tennessee.
Department: Spring Hill Fire/Williamson County Rescue Squad.
Title/rank: Engineer.
Years of public service:Seven.
Agency structure: Paid fire department.
Top issue in your department: Staffing.
Areas of expertise: Driving, pumping.
