Pressure-regulating devices article: food for thought
Kudos to David M. McGrail on his article “Engine Company Standpipe Operations: Pressure-Regulating Devices” in the February issue. It is very informative and helpful and on a topic that most of us have not thought much about.
Oscar Wiltse, EMT-P
Fire Inspector
Palm Beach County, Florida
Appreciates The Ol’ Professor
I have been involved in EMS since 1979 and became involved in volunteer firefighting in 1999. I always look forward to reading The Ol’ Professor by Francis L. Brannigan. I may never have to fight a serious structure fire, rescue someone from a building, or extricate a victim of entrapment, but should I be called to do any of these things, I know that my education has been advanced by reading these columns.
Certainly, a lot of firefighters are alive today because of Brannigan’s writings and teachings. I wish we all could experience his fortitude and longevity.
Danny Wiggins
Dixie Volunteer Fire Department
Hattiesburg, MS
Let’s fight fire, not each other
This refers to Andrew Marsh’s response (Letters to the Editor, February 2005) to Wayne Sutherland’s Letter to the Editor in the December 2004 issue.
Marsh raises several issues with regard to “specialty training” and whether doing without it would be taking “tools from the toolbox.” His point relative to the diversity of the firefighter’s job today is well made.
Sutherland’s point is that homeland security money is going to be around for a limited time only and that as departments race to spend the money and use the limited available training hours to do it, we may be missing the big picture.
If training were available for “structural firefighting technician” and it were funded by federal dollars, how would your department’s emphasis shift?
I wish to point out that 343 of our colleagues lost their lives because someone knew more about building construction than we did. They were my colleagues, and I hope Marsh doesn’t believe that any amount of specialty training would have affected the outcome of their mission that day. On January 23, we in the Fire Department of New York lost three more colleagues. Maybe Sutherland’s idea might have helped them!
I believe Marsh and Sutherland are very passionate in their beliefs. I don’t think either needs to rethink his career as a firefighter, but we need to fight fire, not each other. It is our right to disagree, and bless those who defend that right for us!
Christopher Flatley
Lieutenant
Ladder Co. 21
Fire Department of New York
Wayne Sutherland’s letter in the December 2004 issue really should be viewed as a wake-up call for many of us. He suggests that the American fire service has gotten away from our basic job, duty, and responsibility-firefighting-and that our attention and focus have been diverted by haz mat, WMD, and other issues of the day and that the basic skills required on the fireground may not be as sharp as they should be.
In his response to Sutherland, Andrew Marsh (February 2005 Letters to the Editor) suggests that Sutherland needs to “rethink his career as a firefighter.” This attitude is bad, and bad attitudes kill. Marsh then links specialty training (EMS, haz mat, WMD) with tools in the toolbox that may save our lives someday.
When I joined the fire service 30 years ago, we went to a few fires, cut people out of wrecked cars once in awhile (literally with a power saw), we could not spell haz mat, and WMD was clearly a misprint. Our toolbox was pretty small.
Well, the world has changed and the fire service needs to change with it. The real questions are as follows: How do we change with it? How much? How little? How fast? How slow and, ultimately, how far? How do we change the fire service? How big do we want our toolbox to be? What do we add? What do we keep? What do we not pick up?
Interestingly, we have not deleted any types of responses; we just keep adding tasks. How many tools can we expertly use? Consider other trades. Plumbers don’t carry a square, carpenters don’t carry a pipe wrench, and neither carries an ohm meter. Trying to be an expert in all of these areas probably would not work, especially when the stakes are life and death for our customers and us.
One of the first steps in answering these questions is to respect others’ opinions (especially brother firefighters) so we can have a reasonable discussion. Reasonable discussion (logical disagreement) often leads to new ideas, brainstorms, and ultimately practical solutions. I don’t think anyone in the fire service has a bad attitude. A firefighter may disagree with a position, but we should not label the person or point fingers. Just because a brother firefighter has a different opinion does not mean he is an idiot. He may have a vision that none of us sees yet.
Both authors asked questions to the effect, how many times does the public call for a chemist? A chemist is a specialty tradesman, and all the successful haz-mat teams I know have chemists, or at least members who have a vast knowledge of chemistry, on their team. The point here is that if you are going to respond to and mitigate haz-mat calls, you had better bring the tools (chemist in this case) with you. It is unrealistic to expect all firefighters to have the expertise to respond and mitigate a haz-mat incident safely and successfully.
If the fire service is going to respond to all types of calls, including confined space, high angle, trench rescue, haz mat, WMD, medical, auto extrication, building collapse, and so on, your department leadership must decide the level of response you will provide. This will dictate your training requirements and the tools you will need. Take on too many tasks, and you may not have the time to train adequately. Your leadership must also determine your department’s limitations and plan how and where to get expert help that is beyond your capabilities-in other words, decide how big your toolbox will be. Sutherland’s assertion that some fire departments have wandered from being effective firefighters is true. We can’t be the “Everything Department.”
In large departments, specialty units have been developed using personnel and equipment within the department. For smaller departments, we need to look at getting specialty resources from the county, the state, or neighboring jurisdictions.
I interpreted Sutherland’s letter to say we must be experts in firefighting first and then decide what level of other specialty responses we (your specific department) choose to accept, and then train to respond safely and effectively.
Sutherland expertly identified two key issues we all face: (1) keeping our firefighting skills honed to a razor’s edge (after all, we are still the fire department and not the First Responder to Everything Department); and (2) each individual fire department must change to keep pace with the changing world in which we live, to provide the right level of customer service. Determining what that level is for every department is our challenge.
This column, this magazine, and the national conferences we all attend are great venues for sharing ideas, solutions, and concepts. Let’s use them as tools to assist us and not as an opportunity to bash one another.
Jerry Knapp
Training Officer
Rockland County Fire Training Center
Pomona, New York
