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BY BOBBY HALTON |
They say there are two sides to every issue and that every good deed has potentially disastrous results. A case in point occurred in 1888 involving the Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel. In 1888, Alfred’s brother Ludvig died while visiting Cannes, and a French newspaper published an obituary for Alfred by mistake. It was extremely harsh and damning of Nobel’s invention of dynamite. The obituary stated, “Le marchand de la mort est mort” (“The merchant of death is dead”). It continued, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”
The legend goes that when Alfred read his obituary, he was crushed and was extremely upset that he was viewed in such an unfavorable way. It is part of the legend that this mistaken obituary brought about his decision to leave a better legacy after his death. Alfred, disheartened with what he read and very distressed with how he would probably be remembered, was inspired to create the Nobel Prizes. On November 27, 1895, at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and set aside the bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without regard for the nationality of the recipients.
Alfred Nobel recognized nitroglycerin, dynamite as a blessing and a curse. It gives us the ability to mine and build with incredible efficiency, but it also is extremely effective at killing when weaponized. Ironically, Noble, himself, took the medicinal nitroglycerin for his heart condition in his later years.
There are many things, processes, and tools that have the same duality. The American fire service, having finally secured some limited access to the federal government for fiscal support, can view this as both a blessing and a curse. Many leaders are now recognizing that in some ways we can look at our federal grant programs, including the Fire Act, as a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing in that it has allowed many departments to access vital equipment they would never have been able to acquire without that federal assistance. It is a blessing in that it has allowed departments to use federal monies to staff apparatus when their communities were hit hard during this extended and deepening recession, a recession that has dried up state coffers and decimated municipal budgets.
There are more than ample justifications for federal funding for certain aspects of firefighting. The most obvious appears when one considers the tremendous amount of effort that goes interstate among fire service agencies in mutual aid along our state borders and internationally along our Canadian and Mexican borders. Within our state urban search and rescue (SUSAR) and urban search and rescue (USAR) programs, every year millions of well-spent federal dollars reach Americans and citizens in nations friendly to America in times of crisis and disaster. And, we can never underestimate the valuable role well-spent federal dollars have played in adding to homeland security by having well-prepared first responders should a terrorist-caused or a natural disaster occur.
Our access to federal support through grant monies might be considered a curse when we look at how some organizations have become overly dependent on financing critical activities such as staffing and equipment with these funds. In some of those organizations, leaders complain that they have lost the ability to sell themselves to the local community. They no longer know how to effectively communicate and win the support of the very people they serve. They have lost the ability to create and build strong, meaningful relationships with the social and political organizations in their communities. They have stopped being a local champion for their ability to be part of the solution for local issues, thereby bolstering their standing in the community when funding issues come before the local decision makers and voters.
Putting all of your hopes on the fact that you may win a grant is not a reasonable or an intelligent way to run a fire department. Good fire department management pursues every possible funding source just as aggressively as it does the grant programs. If we look at the state of some of our federally managed programs, we can readily see that they are highly effective in some cases and highly ineffective in others. Funding for firefighting is and always will be a predominantly local issue. But, arguably, there are times when we will involve ourselves in events for which it would be reasonable to be funded with federal funding, but the majority of our funding and responsibility for critical and sustainable funding should always be and will always be, first, a local issue.
Today the fire service finds itself at risk of losing some of our hard-earned federal support as our government tries to deal with its massive debt issues. Much like dynamite, this can be a blessing and a curse. Now is the time for America’s fire department leaders to reconnect with their communities in vibrant and dynamic ways. We need to lead a resurgence in local community involvement reestablishing the fire service as the solution to many of the shortcomings created by the current recession.
There will never be an obituary written for the American fire service. We will always be known as merchants of life, as beacons of light in dark and challenging times. And, as we have risen to the task in depressions and recessions before, we will meet the challenges before us today and exceed the expectations of those we serve. The local fire department is the grand prize of the community.
