This past week was difficult for the American fire service with the funerals for the nine firefighters from the Charleston (S.C.) Fire Department. Across the ocean, in a small town in Belgium, a fatal fire apparatus accident also has had an impact on a fire department here in the states.

In June 2006, the Fire Observers, a group of eight firefighters from across Belgium, visited Tualatin Valley (Ore.) Fire & Rescue for an educational experience. As the Fire Observers learned about how the American fire service operates, they exchanged ideas, shared fire stories and enjoyed camaraderie throughout their two-week visit. They also kept a blog, complete with pictures.

Last week, just outside of Brussels, the Asse Volunteer Fire Brigade was responding to a house fire in the neighboring city of Wemmel. The driver of the engine lost control of the apparatus, and the vehicle made “head rolls,” landing upside down against the foundation of a concrete bridge.

The apparatus was carrying five firefighters: the driver, a 27-year veteran with the brigade, was killed immediately; the other four were injured, two seriously.

Of the seriously injured firefighters, one is fighting for his life, and the other, Guy De Bondt, is paralyzed from the waist down. De Bondt, 29, was one of the Fire Observers who visited Tualatin Valley last year. He and his girlfriend are expecting a baby in December. Firefighters from Tualatin and the Asse Volunteer Fire Brigade have been exchanging condolences and updates on DeBondt.

According to one of the Fire Observers, Bttn. Chief Paul Vanlook of the Gavere Fire Department, it’s ironic that the Fire Observers’ next scheduled visit is to the Charleston Fire Department in September.

“I visited them last year during my vacation and talked to the assistant fire chief just two weeks ago [about the visit],” Van Look wrote, adding that the Fire Observers have sent their condolences to the department and hope that the visit still might work out, as they have already purchased their plane tickets and have hotel reservations.

“It’s a tragic incident that happened,” Van Look wrote, “but after some time of reflection and mourning, life has to go on. Let us realize that the profession or the hobby we have is not without danger.”

In their message of condolence to the Charleston Fire Department, the Belgian firefighters wrote: “The brotherhood of firefighters across the world feels your pain at this sad time. We are all trained to help those in need and often put our own lives in peril. The men and women who entered that building to save lives and in turn lost their own will never be forgotten. The scenes of destruction and human tragedy will be etched in our minds forever.”

The fire service is a small world unto itself.

Condolences for Capt. Francois DeRidder, the 55-year-old driver of the apparatus, can be left at http://rouwregister.first-response.be.

We all know that June 17-23 was the week set aside for this year‘s Fire and EMS Safety Stand Down. Tragically that same week, the Charleston (S.C.) Fire Department suffered the single largest number of line of duty deaths since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. While we watched the national coverage of the fire unfold, our numbness turned to reality and reality to action in support of the firefighters‘ families and the city of Charleston. My assistant chief, who attended the memorial service, said that the outpouring of grief and gratitude by the citizens of Charleston was something he‘d never forget.

For many, the Safety Stand Down became a way to honor those Charleston firefighters by placing a renewed emphasis on safety within their own departments. My department participated in three programs: “Managing the Mayday,” “Seatbelts” and “Calling the Mayday.” Unrestrained crashes in emergency vehicles and firefighters who become lost, disoriented or trapped by collapse combine to result in nearly 40% of annual firefighter operational fatalities.

“Managing the Mayday,” held in conjunction with our county fire chiefs association, outlined the specific needs an IC must incorporate into the ops plan before and after a Mayday is called at an incident. For example, more firefighters are lost in single-family dwelling fires than any other occupancy, but more multiple firefighter fatalities occur at fires in commercial or industrial occupancies. The IC needs to assemble the resources to handle a downed firefighter scenario in these specific occupancies before it occurs, and the IC has to remember that two simultaneous actions need to be a part of the amended ops plan: the firefighter rescue and continuing to fight the fire.

“Seatbelts” was an obvious safety training choice for the Stand Down. Members brainstormed at least a dozen reasons why the same firefighters who buckle up when they drive their personal cars will fail to use a seatbelt on an emergency run due to time restraints. This topic, too, had a wake-up call, as in the same week our neighboring Cincinnati Fire Department had a motor vehicle crash involving one of its responding engines and a pick-up truck. All of the firefighters were buckled, but the pick-up driver was unrestrained and had to be extricated from the vehicle with serious internal injuries.

“Calling the Mayday” not only discussed the proper technique for a firefighter to call for assistance and the IC to respond, but it also explored the fire service culture that in some ways stifles a firefighter from immediately calling for assistance before running low on air. Often by the time a Mayday is called, valuable minutes and the firefighter‘s air have been exhausted. This time factor makes it more difficult to find and resupply a firefighter with air before attempting to get them out.

So here‘s the question: Did your department pass the Safety Stand Down? What did you do, and more importantly what did you learn? Is your department safer today than it was last week?

A couple of months ago I was leading some staff development workshops for a client of mine, Patriot EMS of Ironton, Ohio. The material in one of those workshops, “EMS Supervision for the First-Line Supervisor,” was very familiar to me as I had developed the original program in the mid-1990s for the Officer Development Program at Chesterfield Fire & EMS.

As frequently happens when I’m teaching or facilitating training, my mind suddenly conjures up a story that makes a difficult concept much more easily understood by both my audience and me. While working with this particular group, the differences between responsibility, authority and accountability suddenly became crystal clear, for me as well as my group.

Now maybe I’m a little “dull,” but I’ve always had some difficulty explaining the differences between these three interrelated terms. As this section of the workshop approached, a story that could clearly explain these three concepts came to me. My story was about how I obtained my driver’s license in the state of New Jersey.

My Mom taught me how to drive. She taught me everything there was to know about operating and taking care of a car. She started out letting me drive in parking lots and on the back roads where there wasn’t much traffic. She focused on making sure that I knew the traffic rules, driver courtesy and what happens when you don‘t do maintenance — everything I would need to successfully obtain my driver’s license and become a safe and courteous driver who understood my responsibilities as a driver. But none of that allowed me to start driving the family car on my own.

For that, I had to go down to the local office of the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles to take and pass the driving test, both written and practical. Only by demonstrating competency by passing those tests did the State of New Jersey give me the authority to operate a motor vehicle legally. By successfully obtaining my license, I entered into an agreement with the State of New Jersey: I could legally operate a motor vehicle so long as I obeyed the state’s rules on operating a motor vehicle.

Along with that license came accountability. By obtaining my driver’s license, I also understood and accepted that there would be consequences if I failed to follow the rules. Violations of those rules, such as exceeding the speed limit or being involved in a motor vehicle crash or other such activity would earn me “points.” Earn enough points and the State of New Jersey would revoke my license — my authority — to legally operate a motor vehicle.

Simple, huh? My audience that weekend thought so as well. I had been working with these terms for years and never really felt good about how I was explaining them to my officer development students. If only this “ah-ha” moment had come sooner!

While the acrid smell of smoke still permeates the air, nine families are preparing for funerals in Charleston, S.C. Wives, children, parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends — lots of friends — are in various stages of grief. The Charleston Fire Department and surrounding departments are preparing to bury these men with all the dignity and honor they can muster at a time when their hearts are broken.

National Fallen Firefighters Foundation Executive Director Ron Siarnicki and his team have responded to help the firefighters‘ families. The International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Association of Fire Chiefs and the U.S. Fire Administration are in Charleston to assist the department. Rumors abound that President George W. Bush will attend the memorial for the nine fallen firefighters.

While every detail of the incident and subsequent investigation floods the media, the truth of what really happened will take longer. Right now, there is no right or wrong, only the task of burying nine firefighters and comforting their families and co-workers.

Last week in Command Post, I wrote about this week‘s Stand Down for Safety, ending with the question: “Will we lose a firefighter or EMT during the Stand Down week that could have been prevented?” Well, we did. Nine-fold. Could it have been prevented?

This week during the Stand Down, you owe it to these fallen firefighters to take their last call to heart. Look around your town or neighboring communities. Do you have a super-structure like the one in Charleston that you would respond to in your area or as part of mutual aid? Have you and your crew walked inside this type of structure or anything similar and discussed tactics? What would you do? Who goes inside? When do you get- out? Who makes the call? Would your RIT respond? If these nine dead firefighters could speak in your preplanning meeting, what would they tell you?

In College Station, Texas, this week, the Texas Engineering Extension Service and FEMA‘s Texas Task Force 1, in conjunction with the Department of Commerce‘s National Institute for Standards and Technology, will conduct the fourth in a series of tests and evaluations of robots to determine their use for urban search-and-rescue teams. These human-transportable robots, designed for commercial and military use, are ground-based and will be tested in realistic scenarios including confined-space rescues and wall-climbing.

Will robots replace firefighters? Not in my lifetime, but they will become one more tool for a fire chief to use in situations that are too hazardous for a firefighter. It‘s the same with commercial and residential sprinklers: one more tool in the toolbox. Until that time, that‘s a mighty, heavy gold badge you wear, my friend.

Our deepest sympathies go out to the families, friends and particularly to the Charleston Fire Department for this devastating loss.

The store in Charleston was only a building with stuff for sale. No building with stuff is worth a firefighter‘s life — not one firefighter and definitely not nine firefighters.

Earlier this month I was privileged to attend a meeting in Kansas City hosted by the International Association of Fire Chiefs as a member of the NRP ESF-4 sub-committee. That stands for the National Response Plan‘s Emergency Service Function 4 (Firefighting), which translates into how fire service assets will be dispatched and deployed to major incidents across the country when there is a declared disaster. This sub-committee is chaired by Chief Jay Reardon, who also is president of the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System in Illinois.

For almost two years the IAFC has been working diligently to provide input to the National Response Plan on several issues, including mutual aid dispatch and credentialing. Mutual aid dispatch across states is a function of EMAC, the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, a document signed by the governors of all 50 states that allows one governor to ask for assistance from another, usually through the state‘s emergency operations center. This state-to-state agreement is the basis for fire service mutual aid involving all non-federal firefighting assets across the country.

Starting with four core states — California, Florida, Illinois and Ohio — the IAFC has assisted 14 other states develop statewide fire service mutual aid contracts and mobilization plans. In the next three years, the IAFC hopes that number will grow to all 50 states. My sub-committee on ESF-4 soon will have a plan on how the initial four states plus the 14 newly on board will be able to be activated and respond in a timely and disciplined manner to disasters anywhere in the country.

A demonstration of this statewide mobilization recently took place in Columbus, Ohio, where under the direction of retired Chief John Preuer, more than 90 fire, EMS and police assets from 67 separate jurisdictions were marshaled into a staging area in less than 90 minutes. Units responded from as far as 75 miles from Columbus, and the demonstration included real-time tracking of each unit‘s status and a live feed from the staging area to the EOC showing the apparatus as they arrived.

As fire chiefs, we need to learn the new language of mutual aid and be active in our state‘s intrastate and interstate mobilization plans. The overall goal, which is still several years away, is for us to respond in a seamless, integrated manner and show up with the right equipment and the properly trained, credentialed crews. More on the mutual aid primer can be found on the IAFC Web site.

So today‘s question is simple. Tell me what your state is doing to ensure it is ready for large-scale emergencies within your borders and beyond to neighboring states or across the country. Are you familiar with the EMAC and how it affects your role in your state? Drop me a line as it will help our NRP ESF-4 sub-committee when we meet next in August.

I struggled a bit in writing this blog because I kept having mixed feelings about wanting to report the residential sprinkler initiative and promote fire chief involvement in the development of building and fire codes in the same paper. So what I allowed to happen with this writing is a mix of the two. Sometimes you cannot separate inter-related subjects as each depends on the other for background or linked information, so I’ll let you try to sort it out. In an earlier blog I wrote about the residential sprinkler initiative that was being proposed to the International Residential Code as part of the International Code Council family of codes. After witnessing a code hearing for the first time, I found it an intense but understandable process with which fire chiefs need to be actively involved. To get to a national requirement for residential sprinklers, we need to be involved in this code process.

Fire Chiefs and Code Development

I have heard frequent comments about the negative aspects of building codes that decrease mass of materials and make the firefighter’s job even more dangerous than it already is. Codes that reduce the window of time that the firefighter can either stand on or under floors that are supported by beams engineered to be just over the threshold necessary to support a designed load but that can be consumed in minutes may just put the firefighter on the scene at the worst time, just before potential collapse. There are many more examples where, for the sake of economy and efficiency, engineering has facilitated a built world that is not as forgiving to firefighters as it once had been.

So what are we going to do about it? No doubt about it, the building industry controls the building code, and maybe this is their domain and should be this way. But we have had little impact in this arena over the years and need to. Chiefs, we all need to join the International Code Council and provide staff who can be involved in committee work — at least in those areas that are critical to safety and survival of firefighters — and ultimately vote at the code hearings. Considering that we are afforded significant opportunity to positively affect the codes, the price of membership ($280 for governments representing populations greater then 150,000; there are graduated prices based on population) is not bad. This gives you voting opportunity for up to 12 staff. Click here to see ICC membership information.

The ICC is a somewhat new animal to the code world. It was formed in 2003 by combining the legacy codes we used for years, such as Building Officials and Code Administrators, the Uniform Building Code developed by the former International Conference of Building Officials, and Southern Building Code Congress International. Fire service members in some areas of the country have been working over the last couple of years to adjust the new International Building Code to accommodate their concerns.

These officials found that, after a consensus code was developed to accommodate all three legacy codes, some good features were lost from the former codes. In particular, the California Fire Chiefs Association has been very aggressive at committee and ultimately in votes at the hearings to try to make adjustments to the IBC. This past year has seen a lot of hard work by the California group and other fire service ICC members to make adjustments and hold onto some of the more restrictive language in IBC relating to height and area allowances. While this critical work was going on with height and area code language, the fire service and fire protection industry also were working to move a code requirement for residential sprinklers from the appendix to the body of the code. We need to continue this activity and increase it significantly if we are going to be able to get on equal footing with the building industry and improve fire and life safety for firefighters.

Speaking with Jim Tidwell, retired chief of the Fort Worth (Texas) Fire Department and the ICC director of fire service activities, he describes the fire service’s ability to come in at the end of the code development and revision process and still have the opportunity to make needed changes. Proposed codes do not become set until a final hearing and vote before the ICC government members. It is strictly a final vote from the government members to finalize a code change. What has been the norm is that it is mostly government building officials who are directly involved in this voting. The final process occurred the week of May 20 in Rochester, N.Y., and even though the fire service and fire protection industry (because this was an effort that involved all fire service players) were not successful, we did make a statement about being committed to having an influence on the codes.

Now is the time to apply for membership on ICC Committees. These committees are formed anew after the final hearing. One important feature of ICC Committee involvement is that committee expenses are fully covered by the ICC.

Residential Sprinklers Come Close

At the Rochester ICC code hearings, the fire service was able to vote down committee action to sustain the code and not allow the residential sprinkler requirement into the code body. (One of the core values of ICC Committees is to sustain the code’s status quo.) Once the floor had overturned the recommendation of the committee, it was then necessary to have a new recommendation to take the place of the defeated recommendation. Successful achievement of a floor amendment requires a vote of 2/3 majority (a super majority) of the floor to sustain the new recommendation. The fire service came up 80 plus votes short of the super majority. Upon failing to get the votes, the original committee action, as described in the ICC rules, stands.

So it was that close this year to the fire service obtaining a national residential sprinkler requirement. In the future we need to be proactive and drive the code process as much as possible as opposed to merely reacting. While there were some excellent amendments achieved at the code hearings, with a super-majority requirement we cannot depend on this as a strategy. The National Association of Home Builders spent over a quarter of a million dollars to fight the fire service on residential sprinklers.

We need to be involved in the code process throughout the whole cycle, which means developing and exercising more influence and participation in the committee work. You have heard that it often takes more energy to solve a problem then it took to create the problem. In the ICC process of code amendment, it takes more energy, resources, converted opposition, etc. to overturn the action of the committee than it took for the committee to take its normal action. If there are areas of building codes that we want to influence, we need to be able to have aggressive involvement throughout the process. By the way, our concern for lightweight construction could be offset by residential sprinklers, which are designed to reduce the potential for a fire reaching flashover. Maybe this is our trade-off for allowing lightweight structural materials that do not stand up well to a fire that gets into the structure.

We may never be able to convert home builders into residential sprinkler advocates, but we can educate them on every detail of how they work, what they are and what they are not. The builder associations should be hounded by us with our sales pitch. We need to get them to sit through a workshop and demo on how sprinklers work. Maybe more important then convincing the builders is to market the good sense of residential sprinklers to the government building officials who, as a group, do not understand the technology and fear that sprinklers will create nightmares for them in their work world. Like the code committees, the building officials try to achieve calm and normalcy among their customers (builders), so if we can help them do this we may be able to convince them that including sprinklers in the residential code is not going to be a bad thing. It was the government building officials who did not support our efforts in Rochester. They are a critical group.

What are the next steps in selling the need for residential sprinklers? To begin with, fire chiefs at the local level and fire protection professionals can start today by opening a dialogue with local building officials. Meet with them for the sole purpose of showing them how these systems work. Bring in groups like Fire Team USA to assist in a regional education workshop on sprinklers. Borrow or build a side-by-side sprinkler demo. There’s nothing like visualizing how well the technology works, and building a sprinkler demonstration trailer is an excellent and relevant use of a Fire Prevention and Safety Grant.

We also can try to create the next successful safety feature that people just have to have. Somewhere out there is an influential person who can turn residential sprinklers into the next vehicle airbag, child safety seat, anti-smoking or Mothers Against Drunk Driving campaign. We need to copy the model for those programs and convert our product, residential sprinklers, into something everyone must have. We were close at the hearings to obtaining requirements for residential sprinklers in the International Residential Code. We start today to make sure we have the IRC committee recommendation during the next code cycle.

In preparation for the International Association of Fire Chiefs’ Stand Down for Safety next week, I asked Dr. Burton Clark, training specialist for the U.S. Fire Administration’s Management Science Programs, about his goal to have one million firefighters sign a National Fire Service Seatbelt Pledge by the end of the month.

Clark said the pledge has been signed by almost 40,000 people. An increasing number of departments are 100% compliant, and certificates have been sent to these departments. The certificate includes a logo and signature from the IAFC, National Volunteer Fire Council and the National Fire Protection Association — but nothing from the International Association of Fire Fighters.

I asked Patrick Morrison, IAFF health and safety director, about the union’s support of the Stand Down. He assured me that the IAFF is committed to the IAFC’s Stand Down and that members’ interest is about the same as last year.

“We’re making it a pretty high priority, yet a lot of people are complacent,” Morrison said. “They don’t realize that they get a true benefit from participating in the Stand Down. It’s back to the basics and what kills us. Whether it’s communication, size-up and seatbelts, all of those things are what we want people to focus on.”

I asked Morrison why the IAFF logo wasn’t on the National Seatbelt Pledge certificate.

“It’s not that we disagree; we don’t think signing a piece of paper will make a difference,” he said. “We’re really sick and tired of the accountability on the seatbelt thing. Does it make a difference if a guy doesn’t sign?

“No fire truck, no ambulance, no unit should go out of a firehouse that the occupants are not buckled up. We want accountability in leadership: from our own members; the union; fire chiefs; and in every single fire truck, ambulance and unit. If a person is not buckled up, they should be looked at right away and dealt with immediately. We don’t say ‘Let’s sign a pledge to put out fires’ — we do it!

“I’m so tired of the leadership not taking responsibility,” Morrison went on. “If a fire chief finds out someone is not buckled up, discipline them! If you have accountability, when those people that are not buckled up are disciplined, their behavior will change. Put the damn seatbelt on now!”

Morrison’s frustration was obvious: “We lose over 100 firefighters every year because of heart attacks. In almost every case, there has not been a heart screening. We’re going to continue to lose firefighters again and again.

“A fire chief has a lot of priorities, but [medical] screening never gets the number-one slot. It’s a leadership issue that we are missing today, and we’re picking and choosing our priorities. NIOSH repeatedly recommends a stress test. I wonder how many of these firefighter fatalities we could have saved with a screening?

“When I was a recruit at the academy they taught us about safety, but when we got to the fire station, other firefighters would say that stuff’s for the academy. Yet when I worked for some officers, when they said, ‘You will buckle up and you will follow the rules,’ we did it.”

Will we lose a firefighter or EMT during the Stand Down week that could have been prevented?

I’ve been very fortunate, especially in this male-dominated profession, to have worked with several outstanding female leaders and managers. Those experiences have helped immeasurably in the development of my “soft skills” — people skills — which is why I believe the research findings of the Hagberg Consulting Group in its 1998 study Women and the Glass Ceiling to be so on the money. (Hagberg is now part of Accenture.)

Using data from more than 300 male and female executives, director level to CEO, Hagberg compared personality characteristics and coworker-rated leadership and management styles of male and female managers. The study says that as of the mid-1990s, women made up 50% of the work force; however, women held only 13% of all management positions and only 7% of executive positions.

The study posed the following questions:

• Are men actually better leaders than women?




• Are women’s interpersonal, management and leadership styles better suited to the leadership challenges of the ’90s?




• Are specific elements of women‘s management and leadership styles helping to create the glass ceiling?

According to co-worker feedback, “women scored better than men on 38 of the 47 measured management and leadership dimensions.” The study also determined that:

• Women are better managers and leaders




• Women’s style may be better suited to the leadership challenges of the ’90s




• Women may be better at managing a diverse work force




• Women are better at motivating others

“So why aren‘t more women moving into the executive suite more quickly?” Hamberg asked. “Our data strongly suggest that basic personality characteristics, combined with management behavior and strategies women have used to succeed at mid-management levels, are now preventing them from breaking through the glass ceiling.” The study notes that women’s self-created obstacles fall into three major categories:

1. Risk. Women are more reluctant to take risks without having covered all the bases. This hinders them from being given the high-risk assignments that offer visibility and opportunities that make careers.




2. Rescue. Women face have a highly developed sense of responsibility combined with a concern for and loyalty to the team. Their orientation toward the group causes them to take on too much responsibility, moving them into a rescuing and mothering mode.




3. Righteousness. Because they have done their homework, women may dig in their heels when challenged by less-informed coworkers and present issues in terms of right or wrong. They tend to move from presenting a case for action to defending a cause they believe in.

What does all this mean to female managers?

• Women often have better management skills than men.




• A women’s leadership style is often more motivating and inspirational.




• Women contribute to their own inability to break through the glass ceiling in subtle ways stemming from both personality attributes and learned management styles.




• Self-awareness, combined with focused mentoring and coaching, can help women push through the glass ceiling.

Further progress up the corporate ladder will require women to:

• Start taking risks, focusing their energy and letting go of the details.




• Continue to communicate, develop and motivate staff, and lead by example.




• Stop getting mired in the details, rescuing and mothering, and wearing their hearts on their sleeves.

I also have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with women subordinates, both as a supervisor and as a coach and mentor. Those experiences have helped me understand the challenges of being a woman in an organization dominated by men. I like to think that my influence helped them grow and develop as leaders for Chesterfield Fire & EMS, as several of them have becomes lieutenants and captains in the organization; others are continuing to develop themselves for such promotions in the future.

Our profession continues to face a multitude of challenges that we’ve faced for many years, e.g., increased demands for service delivery, funding that does not match the growth in those demands, recruitment and retention of qualified people, etc. Among the new challenges being presented to leaders and managers of fireand EMS organizations is meeting those challenges with an increasingly diverse work force. Dr. Steve Robbins of S.L. Robbins and Associates says this about diversity: “Diversity is not about counting people, it’s about making people count.” If we are to make that so in our fire and EMS organizations, we would be wise to start maximizing the skills and talents of the women in our organizations.

The quint owes its evolution as a piece of fire apparatus to a lineage that began almost a century ago. The “triple-combination” engine — a vehicle with a pump, hose bed and a water tank — first appeared on the scene around 1910. The “city service” or quad, which added a full complement of ground ladders, soon followed, with the quint and its 55- to 100-foot aerial appearing just prior to World War II.

The modern quint, which can have a price tag of well over $750,000, has been described by some as a fire truck designed by a city manager who thought four firefighters could do all the work of both an engine and ladder crew from a single apparatus. Twenty years ago, the “Total Quint Concept” was the buzz of the American fire service. The idea of replacing all engines and ladder companies with quints was developed first in Richmond, Va., with some success, but it was adopted most notably by the St. Louis Fire Department about 15 years ago. St. Louis developed extensive SOPs that discussed how and when each quint would act as either an engine or a ladder on the fireground.

The problem today is that in many small to medium departments, the quint may be the only initial responding unit. Determining which role it will play has major consequences to the incident‘s outcome. I recently watched as a quint was first-in to a fire in a multifamily apartment building but failed to position itself to the best advantage for either deploying hose lines or using its aerial. Due to the narrow street access, the quint‘s placement doomed the subsequent arriving apparatus to less than ideal positions for conducing fire operations.

Because of the potential confusion of roles on the fire scene, several departments are moving away from quints and back to dedicated engine and ladder companies, where the roles of the fire crews are clearly defined. How do you feel?

If you use a quint as your first-out or only apparatus, how do you govern its use and train your company officers and crews to properly select and perform one role or the other? How does that role determination affect your initial and subsequent apparatus placement?

Or do you feel its time to dedicate crews to either engine or ladder company operations, avoiding the role confusion and improving apparatus placement?

After 35 years in the fire service, 30 years full time at the Lisle-Woodridge (Ill.) Fire District, I retired as deputy chief and became the executive director at a busy 911 center: the Western Will County Communications Center, aka WESCOM. I feel very fortunate to have landed a job — as a second career — that allows me to stay connected with emergency services while chasing my life-long interest in telecommunications.

Starting out as a fire cadet, I became a paid-on-call firefighter at Carol Stream, then Wheaton. This set the stage to test at various fire departments, and I became full-time in 1976. These were the halcyon days of the Emergency! TV show and the explosive growth of paramedic services. I tested around northern Illinois and Southern California — the Johnny Gage influence, I guess. In Illinois, paramedics were known as EMT-IIs — the training was a whopping 90 hours! Many of us took the training before the ink was dry on the EMS Act of Illinois.

A parallel interest was in amateur radio and electronics, after being brought into the hobby with the help of Officer Will Sperling, now retired from the Woodridge Police Department. Will and I have been good friends for over three decades and we have continued in the hobby. He has parlayed his experience in the radio hobby and is now in the two-way radio business. For me, the hobby led to a part-time job at a two-way radio shop, because every firefighter has a side job, right? The owner, Bob Hodge, is an excellent technician, tutor and patient instructor in the two-way business. Bob and I still talk about trends in the business some 20 years later. The part-time job exposed me to telephone systems, radio telemetry systems, HEAR radio systems, repeaters, base stations, pagers — you name it. We had service contracts with local public safety agencies, public works entities, businesses and federal agencies. We also designed and built two tunnel-based radio systems, the Deep Tunnel projects in Chicago and Boston — weird stuff. Much of my work was installations for squadcars, service calls, and repair of portables and pagers.

As I rose through the ranks at the fire department, I represented our agency in our dispatch consortium, DuPage Public Safety Communications in Glendale Heights. With 12 police agencies and 15 fire agencies, I was exposed to mobile data systems, CAD systems, regional mutual aid systems, unique needs of police agencies, microwave systems, 911 technology and the interesting politics of working with multiple agencies. DU-COMM is a model consortium and has had a 25-plus year history. It was my pleasure to be the technical services chairman at DU-COMM for many years, being urged on and supported by longtime DU-COMM technicians Jim Briggs and Dan Sykes. (Bob Hodge also is now with DU-COMM.)

As my 30-year career came to its conclusion, I was recruited by WESCOM, a nearby consortium of five police agencies and eight fire agencies. WESCOM was in the middle of a construction project that required a change in location, implementation of a new 911 phone system, installation of new radio consoles, wrapping up labor negotiations, and the beginning of a new budget — a great time to be “the new guy.”

It is my hope that this blog will facilitate an exchange of information on current topics such as interoperability, 700MHz, NFPA 1221, trunked radio systems in the fire service, tactical radio systems, Project 25, Next-Generation 911 systems, and other topics that you ask about. It will be my challenge to service the needs of those who are either technically inclined or not technical at all. This can become a complicated and contentious subject, but leaders in the fire service need to be well informed on communications. Accountability involves command, control and communications — essential for safety and success.

Please go to www.mabasradio.org for more information on fire service radio information. In the future, I will be discussing other Web sites and sources of radio news.