I was in London on Sept. 10 of this year when pictures of American firefighters at the World Trade Center published in The Guardian caught my eye. They were illustrating an excerpt of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, an award-winning investigative journalist from Canada.

The excerpt begins with President Bush and his cabinet taking office in January 2001, and between the burst of the “tech bubble” and a Dow Jones slide, this new government needs new growth for U.S. corporations. According to the excerpt, Bush‘s solution was “for the government to deconstruct itself — hacking off great chunks of the public wealth and feeding them to corporate America, in the form of tax cuts on one hand and lucrative contracts on the other.” It even mentions then-FEMA Director Joe Albaugh describing his new place of work as an oversized entitlement program. That was before Sept. 11, 2001.

The article states that on Sept. 10, 2001, long flights were cheap and plentiful. Two days later, a $6-per-hour airport security guard was seen as a bad idea and things began to change.

Disasters and how to anticipate them has become big business in America. That certainly was seen in the publishing industry. A plethora of disaster management magazines popped up like dandelions, but who was their readership? Some magazines were a bit too premature for the new crop of disaster consultants and specialists that would be born, and others tried to be everything to everyone on disasters.

Six years later, the fire department still is the go-to agency when something goes wrong and the police department still is the official gun-carrying law enforcer. EMS departments, on the other hand, are growing exponentially because of a worsening health care industry, aging baby boomers and fast-tracking within an emergency department. And there is a new layer of “protection” that includes security services and emergency management.

The excerpt also describes how the Department of Homeland Security was developed by the Bush administration and “… is the clearest expression of this wholly outsourced mode of government.” Through 2006, DHS handed out $130 billion to contractors.

There have been changes in fire departments in the past six years, but not to all of them. There‘s still more need and more grants applied for than can be distributed. I don‘t question the security efforts — especially while flying back this Sept. 11 from London — but I sometimes wonder if the fire service ever will be funded adequately.

The excerpt from The Shock Doctrine was interesting, but I‘m not sure I‘m ready to buy the book, despite it raising some good questions about the government and disaster preparedness. I‘ve just gotten over my last bout of paranoia from reading about plagues.

How many unsung heroes have you lost? I‘ve lost two in the past six weeks. Both were long-serving firefighters in their mid-50s who died of cancer. Like cardiac disease, cancer is much more prevalent in firefighters than in the general population. While the word has been out for sometime for we firefighters to take care of our hearts, the word is only now getting out on the types of melanoma and cancers that are taking their early toll.

Let me tell you about my unsung heroes.

Greg Snyder and I started as volunteers at the Colerain Township (Ohio) Fire Department within one year of each other. Greg rose to the rank of lieutenant and spent close to 20 years fighting fires with me. It may be trite, but he was more than another brother to both me and my wife, Diana.

I remember one incident when Capt. Tom Mann (who died of cancer, as well), Greg and I were first-in on a working residential fire. A gasoline-driven fire had engulfed the entire living room, ignited parts of the kitchen by radiant heat, and was working its way down a hallway toward an occupied bedroom on the first floor. We made it to the opposite end of the hallway and, while the captain and I held the fire in check with a hand line, Greg made his way into the bedroom and saved the occupants who were about to pass out from smoke inhalation. There were no honors for Greg then or for the countless other times he placed his life on the line. Eventually Greg left the department to become Colerain‘s Parks and Services Director and served there for another 10 years.

When I took over as fire chief at the Wyoming (Ohio) Fire-EMS Department, I met John Leavell, the department‘s chief engineer. No one became a driver or pump or aerial truck operator without being cleared by John.

But John was much more than that. He also a supervisor at the Wyoming Water Works. Our water system is actually two systems, a high side and a low side loosely tied together. Because of the hills and ravines in the area, water mains are supplied either from the pumping station or from the water reservoir and tower. John knew the system of 4-, 6-, 8-, 10- and 18-inch mains like the back of his hand. On major fires, John regularly would direct the engines getting secondary water to the best hydrants.

When we first decided to work on bettering our ISO rating, John created a simplified series of overlays that showed the grid system of mains, when or if they intersected, and which hydrants in the area could be counted on for the best flows. Company and staff officers refer to these maps daily when responding to fire scenes. Because of his foresight, we‘ve been able to overcome most of the limitations inherent to our water system.

For 35 years, John‘s soft-spoken presence helped shape our department and our people. John left the water works earlier this year, but remained on as a volunteer firefighter throughout his several bouts with cancer.

John and Greg lived within 20 miles of each other, but to my knowledge never met. Their link in life was that they both were firefighters and unsung heroes. I hope at last they‘ve met and have begun to swap stories.

I have been thinking that we need to approach fire investigation and reporting more holistically, much like the National Transportation Safety Board treats a transportation wreck and like many jurisdictions reconstruct vehicle collisions. We need to address the root causes that allow deaths to occur rather than just focusing an origin and cause determination.

There are actions and omissions that enable — and keep enabling — a multiple-death fire to occur in the first place. We need to attack those root causes with all our capacity and energy. Fire chiefs can have the spotlight after a fatal fire to talk about their total disgust for the tolerance for these conditions. Publicize as unacceptable the most common root causes at the local level. Fire chiefs can present a compelling argument for additional fire and life-safety resources. But that teachable moment will evaporate nearly as quickly as the opportunity developed.

I have no doubt that most of the places where multiple-fire deaths occurred have excellent fire departments that did everything by the books when responding to the 911 call. But something happened before the fire department ever got the call, possibly before the fatal fire even began, that tipped the balance in favor of death instead of survival.

There are three essential elements of fire and life safety: education, engineering and enforcement. You can reduce risk significantly if you are approaching all three of these function areas sincerely. But most departments are not. Think about this in terms of Francis L. Brannigan‘s “Fire Slot Machine.” If you pull the one-armed bandit and get three Es, you achieve fire and life safety. If there is a lesser employment or effectiveness of any one of the three Es, then you have a range of risk from “whew, that was close” to the mayor and many of the town‘s residents attending funerals for a whole family who died in a catastrophic breakdown of the principles of protection.

Plug the root causes into a problem-solving flow chart, brainstorm all the different things that could and should be able to prevent them from occurring, and put out whatever effort it takes to eliminate it from happening. This can reduce these multiple-death fires. Shouldn‘t families be safe in their homes?

By the way, multiple deaths occur in newly constructed homes, too, despite what the National Association of Home Builders would tell customers. Recently a fire in a new home in Saint Michael, Md., killed three young people. The home was built just outside of an incorporated area that requires residential sprinklers in a single-family home. Residential sprinklers reduce the chance of flashover by wetting the walls and ceilings and most likely putting out the fire. But the life-saving technology didn‘t wet the walls in that fire because it wasn’t required.

I was in Charleston, S.C., on the three-month anniversary of the fire that killed nine firefighters. Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. gave his first report to the community that day. The report outlined the behavioral health and financial assistance to the fallen firefighters’ families and praised the Post-Incident Assessment and Enhancement Review Task Force that was brought in to assess the fire department and make recommendations to help bring the department into the current century.

Riley repeatedly praised Fire Chief Rusty Thomas and his officers for implementing 19 of the task force’s 27 initial recommendations, including mandating seatbelt use, assigning an assistant to the fire chief, and designating the first dedicated safety and public-information officers. Interviewing procedures have been changed and are under way for hiring additional firefighters and dispatchers; the task force recommended that two dispatchers be on duty at all times.

Riley has committed to finding the money to fund all the recommendations. He’s also pledged to change the city’s fire-sprinkler code and to wave the water system‘s impact and tap fees. Riley, Charleston’s mayor for 32 years, also is up for re-election.

Thomas has committed to changing both his management style and his department. That‘s a pretty big pill to swallow. Can Thomas and his officers do it? They are pretty hungry, but the cost for this meal will be staggering, and the mayor and the community might choke on the tab.

I will have more from Thomas and Riley in FIRE CHIEF’s October issue.

A television reporter tracked me down while I was in Charleston to ask about my editorials and other blog postings. (Read the video and see the interview She asked me if I had questioned the chief about his statement that he would fight the fire the same way.

No, I didn‘t ask him why he made that statement. I didn‘t ask because when he made the statement only 36 hours after the fire, I‘m sure he was grieving his lost firefighters and his mind was on fighting fires the only way he knew how. I didn‘t because I see the widespread changes he is desperately trying to implement.

And I didn‘t ask because more task-force recommendations are on the way and because there are voices out there calling for him and the mayor to resign. He doesn‘t need stupid questions right now.

Where will the fire service’s next generation of employees and members come from? The focus for many years has been recruiting women and minorities to reflect the community that a department serves. Today the challenge is how to attract and keep people from the newest pool of potential employees or volunteers: the members of Generation Y.

Haven‘t heard of Generation Y? They are the children of Generation X and the grandchildren of baby boomers, and they‘re the source of much research and discussion in management and human resources circles. There are many good sources of research and information on the emerging generational issues and potential conflicts within our organizations and the proactive Fire & EMS leaders will assimilate this information into their knowledge bank.

The majority of leadership and management positions in many fire service organizations today are filled by baby boomers, born 1946–1964, and even some from the Schwarzkopf generation (born before 1946). Yet the majority of employees and members are from Generation X (1965–1977) and increasingly from Generation Y (1978–1990). This is where the different expectations of the different generations come into play, especially true considering that the Schwarzkopf generation and the baby boomers have run the business for the past 20-plus years.

Where are the conflicts happening today, and where will they keep on happening in the future? The policies, procedures, work practices and organizational cultures of our departments are where we must reconcile these differing expectations. Many members of generations X and Y have differing views on work, the work environment, compensation, development, advancement opportunities and more, views that differ from the two previous generations who developed the policies and procedures. This conflict between differences in expectations will manifest itself in:

• Work schedules and attendance requirements.




• Leave policies.




• Leadership and management.




• Training and personal development.




• Work personal satisfaction.




• Seniority systems.

Fire and EMS leaders and managers need to become generational savvy, if they have not done so already, and they start having dialogue with those members of their organizations who constitute the other “tectonic plate” in their departments. Otherwise, they should not be surprised by the earthquake that will occur when those plates run into each other.

My previous comments come from the energy of having groups of people nationally networked in an e-mail group called ePARADE. The ePARADE group is a simple Yahoo group composed of more than 400 fire marshals and fire and life-safety professionals who originally got together and identified a communication gap among fire marshals.

The ePARADE has generated advice and familiarity across the continent, identifing problems and in general enabling critical discussion in real-time among people with passion for prevention. Some of the fine writings by national fire prevention leaders such as Ozzie Mirkhah, Jim Crawford and Ed Comeau were influenced by discussions in ePARADE. Crawford initiated and works at the head of a National Strategic Prevention Alliance, which recently has been awarded a substantial FIRE Grant. Good things happen when serious people become familiar and discuss serious issues.

I think Comeau used great innovation in using a very common and free feature of Google to track and visualize the multiple death fires. Look here at the power of seeing a problem right before your eyes. Using Google’s free mapping feature may lead to the right people noticing the multiple death fires who, in turn, ask the right people what are we doing about this.

There‘s evidence that people begin to pay attention to an idea when you start to receive requests for more detailed data. The ePARADE gets passed around like a useful book or magazine does at the station. E-mails are circulated beyond the group, which I think is a good thing. I heard from a Consumer Product Safety Commission staffer who inquired if we had detail fire cause of all those multiple-fatality fires — everyone suffers a gap in information about fires in the United States. I think it would be great if we could pass around real-time data about the fire problem.

I knew as soon as Comeau mentioned that he would map the multi-death fires, that it would tell us something that is not evident on the surface when you only view (or ignore) one fire at a time. Information presented visually, if it is done well, can have a dramatically revealing quality. When I saw the map, I was taken abackr. Seeing it takes the viewer to a higher level of understanding. The next step for people who like to analyze stuff finding out about the, who, what, when, where how of fires. Now this is not a lesson on effectively presenting visual information, but if you want to pass on to your planning and analysis staff some excellent approaches to presenting effective visual information, tune them into Edward Tufte whose seminal book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, is a must-read for effective presentation.

In the case of the Multiple-Fatality Fire Map it tells you where these fires are occurring and where they aren’t occurring. As I recall, there is higher propensity for a multiple-fatality fires to occur east of the Mississippi River. There are some states and whole regions where there have been no reported multiple-fatality fires. Why were whole areas with multiple states able to do this while other single states were plagued with numerou multiple-fatality fires? What conditions are different? In terms of the Pareto Principle, what 20% root behavior cause leads to 80% of these fires? When I say root cause, that‘s either fire cause or the root cause of the circumstances that rendered the people unable to escape the fire.

Here is an opportunity for us to focus on a piece of the fire death problem and try to reduce the risk. If fire deaths stay in the 3,000 to 4,000 range for 2007, as they have been for a few years, then these multiple-death fires could be as much as 6% to 8% of the total deaths. Will all these states that have had more then four of these fires be the same next year? One state had seven multiple death fires and one had six multiple death fires. Previously I referenced the spread sheet with the list of the known multiple-death fires. A bunch of states had four and five multiple death fires. If we were to focus on reducing these states‘ statistics by 50%, this will reduce the number of deaths significantly nationally.

How often after a fire or response do you hear firefighters complain of headaches, dizziness or achiness? These symptoms are pretty typical after a long, strenuous physical activity, dehydration or lack of sleep. Recent research indicates, however, that these symptoms could indicate cyanide poisoning, which occurs in firefighters more often than recognized.

Early last year, a firefighter in Providence, R.I., was diagnosed with cyanide poisoning after responding to a building fire. Over a period of 16 hours, seven more firefighters were diagnosed with cyanide poisoning, including one who suffered a heart attack. It was only through a series of coincidences that emergency-room physicians checked that last firefighter for cyanide poisoning.

After the diagnoses, Providence Deputy Asst. Chief Curtis Varone turned his attention to the dangers of cyanide poisoning. He said that quite a bit of research had been done about the effects of cyanide poisoning and possible impact on firefighters, but that research isn‘t reaching the mainstream fire service.

According to Varone, blood tests aren’t done routinely for cyanide poisoning, and the nature of the chemical makes it difficult to detect. The half-life of toxic cyanide is one hour. If a firefighter is close to being toxic when he leaves the incident, within an hour his toxicity level has dropped by half. Another hour and it‘s half again. It leaves the blood quickly, but continues to cause harmul effects, Varone said.

A second problem with diagnosing cyanide poisoning is that only eight laboratories in the United States can process the proper blood tests. Rhode Island Hospital is one of those eight and it stocks cyanide antidote kits.

Varone has been tracking the link between firefighters and cyanide poisoning and its correlation with firefighter heart attacks. Cyanide affects the organs involved with respiration, the brain and the heart.

Repeated exposure to cyanide can affect the heart, Varone said. “It would be possible for someone to show cardiac arrhythmia for up to two weeks after exposure.” Varone says that we could be underestimating the rist that cyanide exposure causes heart attacks.

Awareness is the important first step to prevention, Varone said. “Wearing the [SCBA] packs goes back to staffing: how many trucks at the fire, how many crews are available so nobody has to take their packs off.” Also using longer-duration bottles allow firefighters to be protected earlier and for longer.

Varone will present more information in “Cyanide: The Tip of the Iceberg” at the Fire Department Safety Officers Association Safety Forum, Oct. 31–Nov. 2 in Orlando, Fla. For details, go to www.fdsoa.org or call 508-881-3114.

Dr. Thomas Bay was one of the keynote speakers at Fire-Rescue International in Atlanta. As a cancer survivor, his main theme was to remind us as chiefs to protect both our firefighters and ourselves from the carcinogens that surround us daily. He challenged us to make sure our people were regularly cleaning their turnout gear and equipment, as well as showering and donning a change of clothes after any smoky fire or possible exposure to a potential cancer hazard.

His sub-theme, however, was that firefighters easily are the most respected group of public servants in the United States. Firefighters’ actions are trusted so universally that every day citizens afford us specific privileges, such as coming into the privacy of their homes, without question. Bay has experienced this respect first-hand, as he regularly participates in the Orange County (Calif.) Fire Authority’s ride-along program. He challenged us to “polish the badge” every day, to maintain the public trust and realize that we represent more than ourselves; we represent the collective fire service.

While this wasn’t a new realization, Bay‘s words stuck with me. During the first weeks back at work, I had two experiences that reminded me how much we are respected and how often we are called on to help.

On the way home and still in uniform, I stopped at a supermarket in a neighboring community to get some last-minute items for dinner. When leaving the store, a car stop abruptly in front of me with a man and a woman inside. Both obviously recognized my fire uniform. The man tried to speak to me through the windshield, while the lady opened the door with concern in her eyes. She explained that while driving through the parking lot, a bee had stung her husband in the arm and he was already showing signs of anaphylactic shock. She asked me if I could do anything. A quick call to dispatch and handful of ice on the affected area was all I had time to do before the medics arrived. I know these folks eventually would have gotten the needed EMS assistance, but seeing a firefighter assured them that things would be okay.

The second instance came later in the month as I attended both a 9/11 remembrance service and the dedication of the new state fire marshal‘s office in Ohio. Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland addressed the crowd of approximately 500 and described how still etched in his — and the public’s — mind are the faces of firefighters at the World Trade Center on that fateful day. Despite their concerns, the firefighters saw the desperate situation of those who were trapped in the Twin Towers and they never hesitated as they climbed the stairways to guide the occupants to safety and to attempt to control the fires. Strickland concluded with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut: “There is nothing more that stands as a symbol of humanity than a fire engine.”

As Bay said, from the ordinary citizen on the street to the most senior public officials in our community, the fire service, and each of us as its ambassador, holds a special place of trust with people. How do we as chiefs set the example to teach this concept of public trust to our firefighters?

A recent outbreak caused approximately 198 deaths in four months. The medical examiner found pulmonary edema and damage to the trachea, bronchi and alveoli in the upper areas of the lungs. Most of the victims were children, who have been particularly vulnerable to this menace. The disease has turned up throughout the country, and the medical examiner was concerned about the root cause of the disease process. Then the weather began to warm, and the disease diminished in intensity. Yet occasional outbreaks still occur throughout the country.

Diseases emerge and go away, and while this disease killed more than 198 people, it did not reach the threshold necessary to raise public fear. In fact, this disease actually has killed an average of 4,000 per year without national concern because most of the deaths occur one or two at a time.

The disease is residential fire deaths. House fire are no longer feared by most people — in fact, many feel indifferent. People are more afraid of weapons of mass destruction than a frequent threat that can involve anyone at any time. In fact, there seems to be an unusually high number of what NFPA calls catastrophic multiple death fires this year.

Ed Comeau, a technical writer on a range of fire service subjects, started to focus attention on these fires because we have all become just a little too accepting of these deaths. He started keeping track of the multiple death fires and has made the fire events available online. It’s a pretty impressive list for only a little over six month’s data. He also identified a critical gap in available information and noted that such information could be useful to keeping the the threat of fire on everyone’s minds.

There is a saying that “what gets measured gets done.” As a result of Comeau’s life-safety activism, the U.S. Fire Administration has begun to make available daily information about fire deaths nationally. Quick Response: Fire Safety in the News monitors news media outlets to learn of residential fire fatalities nationally. The USFA’s approach is to make available for the media up-to-date information about fires and relevant fire safety information.

Fire chiefs also can play a role in reducing the acceptance of residential fire fatalities by taking tragedies to advocate more attention to the problem. Some departments will place full focus on the fire and send operational firefighters door to door with the teachable moment. If the fire chief shows leadership by expressing concern, it will likely get the attention of local media, elected officials and community leaders, which could offer unanticipated opportunities to talk more about the fire problem and the need for residential sprinklers and working smoke alarms on every level of a home. The fire chief also could benefit from this exposure by being able to talk about what their department needs more of to make the community even safer.

While the disease of fatal fires does not spread through the normal epidemic process it can be as insidious if we ignore and even tolerate it. Is it possible for acceptance of fatal fires to become like crime and blight where tolerance brings about more of the same? Look at how municipalities have dealt with graffiti and other unacceptable social conditions, immediately eliminating the evidence by repainting the surface that was vandalized. Could we do the same for fires by aggressively attacking the root causes when the fires occur?

This week, I watched as the Lisle-Woodridge (Ill.) Fire District led Rolling Thunder, a group of motorcycle riders, while it escorted the American Veterans Traveling Memorial Wall into my hometown. The traveling wall is a replica of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. It is 378 feet long and has 58,245 names listed on it. This includes the names of fallen soldiers from both Gulf wars and the names of those who died on Sept. 11, 2001.

As the fire department raised its two aerial ladders to form an arch to welcome the Memorial Wall to Main Street, I couldn‘t help but think how fire departments add honor and dignity to their communities.

Honor also was the subject of a forwarded e-mail I received this week. I‘m not sure where the e-mail originated, so I can‘t give credit to the author, but I received it from Mike Petroff, a member of the Fire Department Safety Officers Association‘s Board of Directors.

The e-mail suggested that this Tuesday, Patriot Day, “… an American flag should be displayed outside every home, apartment, office and store in the United States.” The reminder to display a flag is a good one. If every school-aged child put a small flag on the lawn of their school, that would make quite a statement. Perhaps every fire truck and ambulance could display an American flag as well.

The e-mail also reminded us that in the days after Sept. 11, the American flag was displayed on vehicles, in windows and in front of houses. Did you ever think Americans would forget the passion and emotions we felt in 2001 after our country was assaulted? The 343 FDNY firefighters who died were heroes, no question. The least we can do is raise the flag on Patriot Day.

We will never forget the Vietnam War and the Gulf wars, for the reminders walk among us daily. But Sept. 11th hit home — we can’t forget.