BY BILL MANNING
Despite the Bush Administration’s request to increase the 2005 Department of Homeland Security budget by 10 percent, to $402 billion, the fire service should expect federal funding cuts if Congress passes the budget as proposed.
Under the President’s proposal, firefighters would take hits in three critical areas. First, the State Homeland Security Grant Program would be cut by more than half, from $1.7 billion to $750 million. These are the terrorism response grant monies flowing from the feds to the states for local distribution to first responders.
Second, the FIRE Act grant program would be decreased by a third, from its current level of $750 million to $500 million. The Administration has been trying to reduce and even eliminate this program for three years. To put it in perspective, $500 million represents about $16,000 for every fire department in the country.
Third, funding for our predominantly fire service-based US&R Task Forces would be discontinued altogether, effectively removing the only operational response units—with specialized expertise second to none—in the federal emergency system. Who will the federal government deploy to support local fire departments at the next major collapse, the next major earthquake? The National Guard, searching the rubble pile with rifles?
The proposed cuts are a betrayal of American firefighters, and your voices need to be heard on Capitol Hill.
The worst thing you can say to an editorialist is “You’re just being inflammatory to ‘sell papers.’ ” Any writer of conviction and integrity, trying to make a difference, will say that’s bull.
In this column, firefighter effectiveness and safety have always been the bottom line, and we take that with the seriousness it deserves. If you can’t get worked up over this stuff, you shouldn’t be in the business, to my way of thinking. Hurt feelings are of no consequence so long as we continue to support, with passion, the ones carrying the heaviest load—you and your fire service brothers and sisters. No shrinking violet here.
Proposed federal budget betrayals notwithstanding, it’s important to reflect on the political gains we’ve made in a relatively short time. And in that regard, remember how the bread is buttered. Remember to thank your representatives in Congress who have supported your cause, be it through the FIRE Act, the SAFER Act, the Hometown Survivors Benefit Act, and so on. And don’t forget to thank the folks from your fire organizations who are working hard behind the scenes to help make it happen.
The fire service has made some real gains in a complex political environment. Political gains are important and sufficient only to the extent that they help improve firefighter safety and effectiveness. Political methods—the structure and mechanism for disbursing federal funds through DHS to local agencies, or the implementation of a national command system, for example—are open to debate, but in the end the fire service must judge them based on the only criteria that matter: Do they help us do our jobs better and do they make us safer?
I want to believe that our political advances have contributed to greater fire department effectiveness and safety, though it’s hard to measure. Surely, new equipment, WMD preparedness drills, and more firefighters on the line are good and necessary things. But we need to look deeper. Last I checked, our firefighters are dying and getting injured on the job in equal or greater rates than 25 years ago. And I could be wrong, but I doubt that anyone could make a case that, outside of the increased EMS function, fire departments are saving more people in their core functions today than yesterday.
Political approaches support the fire service, but they cannot change the fire service. Only the fire service can change the fire service. No standard, no legislation, no amount of money alone will stop firefighters from dying young in the line of duty. That all the best intentions and best minds and best-laid plans have resulted in no appreciable difference in line-of-duty death and injury rates over the past 25 years is to some a conundrum. Insofar as we’ve proved the case, it’s not to me. “Safety trustees” is not a workable concept. Either the change will come from within, or it won’t.
I’ve long harped in these editorials about the imperative need for exhaustive fire training and the need for fire leadership to bring their people back on center to the core competencies. I’ve harped about the need for controlling the built environment before the fire. About stemming the slow erosion of the art of firefighting. About education. On the “radical” concept that long, hard years of fire line experience should be a criterion for fire leadership. And so forth. Why? Because this is what it will take to make real gains in effectiveness and safety, in reductions in fireground operational deaths and injuries. That might not be convenient for the leadership, but that’s what it will take nonetheless.
I received a letter from a firefighter complaining that he’s had enough of rooms filled with chiefs wringing their hands over our line-of-duty death and injury problem, and it never seems to change. He has a point. National referendums run a poor second to changing department focus from within.
We’ve experienced an alarming rash of line-of-duty deaths and injuries on the fireground or incident scene in the first two months of this year. The lessons are evident. There’s no mystery attached. Either we change this from within or stay the same. The starting point is as follows: Firefighter effectiveness and safety are the same thing. But Tom Brennan can explain that to you better than I can.
