THE NATIONAL: ONE FOOT OVER THE EDGE?
BY BILL MANNING
Behind the placid exterior of the National Fire Academy`s Emmitsburg, Maryland, campus, behind the daily routine of training America`s firefighters, trouble brews. Some insiders believe that the future of the NFA`s fire training and education programs is grim.
“We`re in real serious trouble,” said one inside source. “We`re going progressively and steadily downhill. The Programs side is in real serious trouble.”
“The future of this institution and its impact on the fire service is in real jeopardy,” said another source, also requesting anonymity.
In October 1997, the 13 NFA Program Chairs requested an unprecedented, closed meeting with the academy`s Board of Visitors, an eight-member independent body charged by federal law to review annually the NFA programs and report to the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, James Lee Witt, under whose jurisdiction the NFA falls. One Program Chair said, “We know [of the problems] firsthand. We had to speak out.”
On January 29, 1998, the Program Chairs signed and delivered a 21-page white paper to the Board of Visitors. The introduction states, “… serious conditions exist relating to FEMA`s organizational culture, NFA`s stated vs. perceived mission, available resources, and existing staff development practices … a failure to identify and request relief of the current condition at NFA will result in greater negative impacts related to education and training for state and local level fire and emergency service organizations/members …. NFA is in critical condition, and unless a series of significant steps are enacted soon, the organization as it has been known and recognized will increasingly become less effective in advancing the professional development stature of fire/emergency services at a national level.”
The NFA Program Chairs maintain that throughout the 1990s FEMA has strategically enacted “an extensive series of carefully crafted smaller resource cuts” that in cumulative fashion add up to “death” by “1,000 paper cuts.” The paper provides numerous examples to support the Chairs` contentions.
It complains that the United States Fire Administration and NFA are underrepresented in FEMA headquarters, consistent with FEMA`s general disregard for the Academy`s funding and resource needs. NFA full-time equivalent (FTE) positions have been slashed 28 percent from 1990 to 1997; in the same period, staffing and employee grade levels for the Emergency Management Institute (co-tenant of the Emmitsburg facility) increased. A $25 million congressional appropriation for NFA capital improvements resulted in no additional dormitory or classroom space for fire programs; the equal split in dormitory space between NFA and EMI restricts the NFA from offering more than nine concurrent resident courses from a menu of more than 35 courses.
The paper states that the Volunteer Incentive and Weekend programs lack support. The computer center and Learning Resource Center (library) are undermatched to student demands. Stipends for fire-related outreach programs are not available to NFA students, though they are to students of non-fire FEMA outreach training. FEMA, it is said, does not adequately support–from planning to funding partnerships to course delivery–the outreach education to local and state fire entities. The position of coordinator for the National Arson Prevention Initiative was downgraded and filled with a non-fire service bureaucrat, possibly, as implied, on the basis of personal favoritism. The Executive Fire Officer Program funding has decreased by 40 percent, and the Harvard Fellowship program was scrapped altogether.
The paper charges that Director Witt`s “Project Impact,” a much ballyhooed program to improve preparedness to natural disasters, minimizes the role of the fire service in responding locally as a lead agency–or the lead agency–in such events. “The fire service is the only community based, mitigation-oriented organization already in place, yet it is ignored by FEMA,” the report says. “FEMA is dedicating funding and resources to target hazards and risks in the very communities where the fire service has been unable to receive funding and resources to address those hazards and risks.”
According to the Program Chairs, FEMA treats the federal fire training programs as a weak stepchild. They bemoan the fact that other federal and state agencies are actively seeking and receiving funding for fire-emergency related programs, which ignores or duplicates the NFA`s role as mandated by federal law. Yet, as recent congressional testimony bears out, neither Witt nor United States Fire Administrator Carrye Brown have requested the additional funding needed to develop and support NFA programs. “Why is it that only the other federal and private organizations demonstrate that they know how to use the positive and highly visible accomplishments of the USFA/NFA as the launching point for their [own] projected accomplishments?” the Chairs write. “The proliferation of agencies that are seeking to take USFA/NFA functional elements to include within their mission will result in increased service delivery cost to the taxpayer. Ultimately, the lack of coordination and diffusion of leadership will result in an increase in the line of duty deaths for fire and emergency medical first responders. This is the ultimate negative impact to the nation`s fire service.”
Mr. Witt`s emergency management background may come as no surprise, but acting out personal preferences, as the White Paper implies, places him in contradiction to the FEMA mission, which is to protect the public from all hazards. This year–the 25th anniversary of America Burning–would be an excellent time for Mr. Witt to recognize the capabilities and potential of the American fire service. As our country`s true first line of defense in every type of emergency, the fire service deserves greater support for and an expansion of the Federal Fire Programs, including the NFA, and deserves to be fully integrated as a major player in the national disaster response effort.
It`s high time that both Mr. Witt and Ms. Brown exemplify a level of aggressive, pro-fire service leadership commensurate with the extraordinary job firefighters perform for American communities day in and day out, in incidents large and small.
The NFA Board of Visitors currently is taking the White Paper under advisement. Fire Engineering will print its response, and the White Paper in its entirety, in the April issue.
