If you asked your firefighters what they know about the Everyone Goes Home campaign, what would they say to you? Have they heard of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation’s 16 Life-Safety Initiatives? Are they part of your department safety program?

In the past three years, the NFFF has invested almost $3 million of FIRE Grants into the program, They have distributed more than 30,000 Firefighter Life Safety-Response Training Kit DVDs and CD-ROMs with six modules on firefighter line-of-duty deaths and injuries.

Where did those training kits end up? How many fire departments actually have opened the kits and used the information?

NFFF Executive Director Ron Sarnicki is constantly asking how the foundation and its programs can be more effective in preventing LODDs. Are the Everyone Goes Home and Courage to be Safe campaigns actually reaching the frontline responders? This week, that question was put to six emergency services practitioners from various parts of the country, and the answer wasn’t good.

A California fire captain hadn’t even heard of the safety training kit, let alone received one. “[It’s] probably stuck in someone‘s office,” he said.

Several fire service leaders were asked to bring someone from the frontline to discuss the NFFF‘s efforts and how to better reach these practitioners.

New firefighters come out of the fire academy trained in the correct way to do their jobs. Proper procedures and techniques are drilled into each new firefighter. But when they hit the fire station and attempt to fit in, proper procedures and firefighting basics are challenged and eventually disregarded.

“There‘s a cancer called the senior-man syndrome in fire stations,” said former FDNY firefighter Vince Brennan, a consultant to NFFF. “Some are good, some are not.” Brennan said captains who, after reading new directives from headquarters, frequently will shrug and say, “This too shall pass.”

Phoenix firefighter Tim Kreis offered insight to reach the new generation of firefighters. “There‘s too much information out there today, but it‘s not relevant,” he said. “Things that I care about are the things that I pay attention to. If these areas of focus are included into the hiring practices and college courses, people will study them.”

Kreis suggested a format similar to the Stall Street Journal, a newspaper-style information sheet that is posted in student bathrooms on college campuses. “I put one of the USFA‘s Coffee Breaks on the door of the [bathroom] stalls and people were asking me about the lessons in some of the articles,” he said.

Another officer asked, “If the union stewards told union members, ‘we need to get you to wear seatbelts‘ what difference would that make? People want to be involved with their unions.”

Another firefighter said he felt challenged by the system. “Am I required or given credit for being fast? The system is timing us to go fast. When I put my turnout gear on going to the fire, I‘m putting my stuff on and making sure it fits right and is properly buckled. If I got dressed in the station before getting on the rig, I‘d feel like I‘d be rushing and wasting time while something was burning.”

Are fire service culture and training pulling responders in two different directions? Are the concepts of the six-minute response time and stopping at intersections contradictory?

“Sometimes riding on the truck is the scariest part of the fire,” said another firefighter from New York. LODD statistics indicate his comment is more right than wrong.

By Dave Murphy

Safety has become the latest buzz word in the fire service. But should we expound on the virtues of safety and the cultural change it necessitates when, in actuality, not much has really changed?

In the fire service, there have been countless speeches given, classes taught, articles written, and presentations offered on safety all across these United States. Yet we continue to kill firefighters at the normal and predictable rate — which averages one every three days. Talk is cheap.

Most of us profess to be advocates of proactive safety, but do we really mean it? It is easy to talk the talk, but do we actually walk the walk? The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation drafted 16 common-sense life-safety initiatives that would have a significant positive impact in reducing firefighter injuries and fatalities if adopted, practiced and enforced at the departmental level. Have you read them? If so, do you plan to actually do anything proactive?

Take a look at some of the initiatives.

Define and advocate the need for a cultural change within the fire service relating to safety, incorporating leadership, management, supervision, accountability and personal responsibility. An incident scene will always be a dynamic place, but we can still be aggressive without being stupid. There is a safe way of operating at an incident without the macho, egomaniac image that we often promote.

At a recent FDSOA conference, Chief Kelvin Cochran said, “… [T]here is a very fine line between a medal of valor and a 30-day suspension.” It put many things in perspective for me. If an outcome is good, you’re a hero; if not, you most likely were hurt or killed or injured someone else. Does your department promote unnecessary risk-taking or allow freelancing? Do you routinely pin medals on your lucky idiots and belittle those who question stupidity?

Enhance the personal and organizational accountability for health and safety throughout the fire service. Everyone, regardless of rank, must be involved in the change process. Change is never easy and seldom is welcome. SOGs and SOPs should always put firefighter safety foremost. Do we hold our people accountable? Is anything done to those who do not follow the established protocols?

Focus greater attention on the integration of risk management with incident management at all levels, including strategic, tactical, and planning responsibilities. Who makes the rules in your department? Those who actually do the job or the upper brass who never get out of the air-conditioned Crown Vic at the scene? The entire membership must be included in the change process and allowed input in areas of importance. Firefighters create most of the problems, but they also hold most of the solutions.

All firefighters must be empowered to stop unsafe practices. The paramilitary organization of the fire service does not easily adapt or tolerate subordinate questioning in the heat of battle, but maybe it should, A four-person company with the freedom to speak up increases your potential visual and mental acuity and ultimately your decision-making capacity by 75%. Think about it.

Develop and implement national standards for training, qualifications, and certification (including regular recertification) that are equally applicable to all firefighters based on the duties they are expected to perform. The National Fire Protection Association standards are written by a diverse group of intelligent, experienced, well-intentioned professionals from many different perspectives. NFPA publications outline the minimum baseline qualifications essential to safety and efficiency in the ever-changing modern fire service. Do we use them? They apply to all departments, not just ones in the big city.

Develop and implement national medical and physical fitness standards that are equally applicable to all firefighters, based on the duties they are expected to perform. Look at what’s killing us. Pre-employment and annual medical/physical re-testing are absolute must. As the adage says, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The nature of the job will always require a fit work force. We must make the distinction between those who are able to perform and those who are not — end of story.

Create a national research agenda and data collection system that relates to the initiatives. Every national fire service agency that deals with firefighter safety issues should attend a U.S. Fire Administration–sponsored/funded annual summit where safety is the only focus. Committee assignments then could focus on specific areas and make subsequent recommendations. Don‘t reinvent the wheel. If a specific safety intervention has worked for your fire department, it will most likely be of benefit elsewhere.

Use available technology wherever it can produce higher levels of health and safety. We should strive to fix what can be fixed before it hurts someone. It may be a simple as eliminating the water in the bay floor or adding a ladder guard to the end of the rig. Search for possible injury-causing mechanisms before they hurt someone. Technological advances occur almost daily that can affect firefighter safety. Assign some of your younger recruits to investigating possible inclusion of these advances into our daily operations. A national task force (possibly arising from the USFA summit suggested above) should be formed to foster needed innovations through the federally funded National Science Foundation and other key research think tanks.

Thoroughly investigate all firefighter fatalities, injuries and near misses. Let‘s give NIOSH broad investigative authority and support it with adequate funding to quickly respond and investigate to every line-of-duty death. Most fire chiefs dread the thought of big brother being in their fire department, but NIOSH is there to help not hurt. The near-miss program is another valuable tool that is either ignored completely or isn’t mandated by fire chiefs, therefore is very limited in its usefulness. As my third-grade teacher aptly said, “only the guilty flee when not pursued.” Would you welcome these tools into your station?

Grant programs should support the implementation of safe practices and/or mandate safe practices as an eligibility requirement. Instead of handing out funding to those with the greatest political alliances, show us what you have done to improve your existing safety program and how money will further what you are already doing. We will never completely remove politics from a system that systematically hands out free money, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to apply for them.

National protocols for response to violent incidents should be developed and championed. The world is changing and will continue to change. Don‘t wait till it happens to you. Anticipate your worst-case scenarios and act accordingly. Again, don‘t reinvent the wheel. An existing standard can be tweaked to meet your specific needs.

Find a like-size department with well-written, proven SOGs to adapt to your department. An effective SOGs is the first piece of an effective risk-management puzzle. State what you will do, train for it, test for comprehension/documentation, and re-evaluate at least annually. Once adopted and trained on, your incident responses will standardized, resulting in a much safer and efficient outcome.

Each town, regardless of size, should strive to promote interoperability to affect an acceptable outcome before the actual event transpires. The inability to communicate and work together will make a terrible event much worse.

Firefighters and their families must have access to counseling and psychological support. Let‘s take it a step further. Families should be contacted to explain the available services and possibly schedule an appointment. There are many positives that can be realized form this effort.

Public education must receive more resources and be championed as a critical fire and life-safety program. Very little of a typical fire department budget is applied to this proven life-saving activity. In the firehouse, members often complain about this type of duty and look down on those in prevention and education as lesser beings. It is often hard to measure what does not happen. But as Ronny Coleman once said, there is no honor in fighting a fire that could have been prevented.

Advocacy must be strengthened for the enforcement of codes and the installation of home fire sprinklers. We are most often our own worst enemy. It is not uncommon for firefighters to speak against sprinkers. But sprinklers in the home save lives, and there is no valid argument against them.

Safety must be a primary consideration in the design of apparatus and equipment. Engineering is always the best solution — let‘s fix it before it breaks. Fire apparatus and apparel manufacturers exemplify this concept. Why? Fear of litigation. We should learn from them. The fire service is no longer exempt from liability. Why must we wait until we are sued to do something that should be done anyway?

I commend the NFFF on the drafting these common sense and achievable recommendations; however, they are merely words on paper if ignored by those who can actually affect cultural change.

What is missing from the initiatives? There is no mention of the importance of higher education. When is the last time you visited a doctor who did not have a diploma on the wall? To be viewed as a true professional, we must elevate the fire service requirements to what other professions have long mandated. But this alone is not enough. A well-rounded firefighter/fire officer will always require a mixture of common sense, actual experience, physical ability, training and education to be effective. Every fire department should strive to promote and provide the means necessary to obtaining and maintaining all of these essential elements.

Who do we expect to effect cultural change within the fire service? If we don‘t reach the younger generation, the cycle of 100-plus annual LODDs will continue if not rise. Higher fire service education offers the greatest opportunity for us to change the current culture. Please make a valid attempt to follow these 16 initiatives - your department will be much safer if you do. I would also encourage you to support higher education; I am convinced they go hand in hand.

Dave Murphy retired as assistant chief of the Richmond (Ky.) Fire Department and is currently an associate professor in the fire safety engineering technology program at the University of North Carolina–Charlotte. Murphy is the eastern director of the Fire Department Safety Officers Association and also serves as the health and safety officer for the Harrisburg (N.C.) Fire Department.

“Comfortably Numb” is a song from Pink Floyd’s The Wall; it’s also how Las Vegas Fire & Rescue Chief Ozzie Mirkhah described the U.S. fire service‘s response to 4,000-plus fire fatalities and 100-plus firefighter line-of-duty deaths each year.

This week, Mirkhah was a speaker at the Annual Residential Fire Sprinkler Summit hosted by the Illinois Fire Inspectors Association, Illinois Fire Chiefs Association and the Northern Illinois Fire Sprinkler Advisory Board. More than 270 fire chiefs, officers, inspectors and local government officials attended the program devoted to the importance of codes and residential fire sprinklers.

If you‘ve never heard Mirkhah speak, please, make a point of it. Not only does he passionately believe in fire prevention, but he is a voice of reason who asks some hard questions. Mirkhah‘s extensive research shows that billions of dollars spent on property loss from fire proves something is wrong with the fire service‘s reactive versus proactive approach to fire.

“The message is from my heart,” Mirkhah began. “I am a proud member of the fire service. More importantly, I am a public servant. We, as public servants, are trusted by our communities to provide the highest level of safety for our community and our country.”

It‘s lessons from the past that prove the fire service must plan for the future, and Mirkhah offers his passionate criticism as tough love. Mirkhah quoted Chief D.W. Brosnan, who in 1928 said that “Any person who is at all conversant with fire safety knows that at least 85% of fires could be prevented.” Brosnan had a fire sprinkler system in his home 60 years ago, as sprinkler technology became available in 1947.

“We had a means of stopping the fire problem back then and we failed to use it,” said Mirkhah. “Responding to fire alarms is not going to reduce the fires. We need to be more focused on fire prevention. We‘re still where we were 60 years ago! It‘s our responsibility to explain to the public why we had the technology and why our we‘re not using it.”

The U.S. Fire Administration‘s push for smoke alarm technology 30 years ago helped reduced the annual number of fire fatalities down from the ten thousands, but the number remains around 4,000 annually.

“Are we comfortably numb with 4,000 people dying each year?” Mirkhah asked. “We have the means to save those people. Shame on us! Is that the way to protect our people? Do we believe that the current statistic of 4,000 annual fire fatalities is an acceptable loss?”

Mirkhah said that in the four years of war in Iraq, “We have spent $433 billion and lost 3,464 soldiers. In that same time, we have spent a trillion dollars in fire loss and lost three-and-a-half times that many citizens [fire fatalities]. What is your exit strategy?”

Mirkhah asked the attendees for their game plan and about accountability. “Why don‘t we have to be accountable for our actions? The president of General Motors is accountable to the stockholders.”

I remember, it took 10 years of budget cuts, liability issues and new technology to prove that preventive maintenance on emergency vehicles was worth the investment. It took another 10 years for exercise to be acknowledged as important for firefighter health and it‘s taken five years to understand we need to change the culture of the fire service with regards to firefighter safety. How long before fire prevention becomes an accepted part of the mission?

Every day fire marshals, prevention officers, public educators, inspectors, plans examiners and fire engineers make decisions that will affect the public for years to come as they deal with new construction or enforcement of the existing fire code. These decisions guard the welfare of the community and make it safer for residents and firefighters should a building catch fire.

Let me share with you one victory and suggest how we can all share in another. For the past several weeks, my fire inspector has been working with the county building department on plans review and construction inspections of a lightweight frame building to be used as a “high hazard” occupancy that will be operational in approximately three months. Our primary concern is that the clientele who will use this building may or may not have the physical or mental capacity to exit the facility should a fire occur. For that reason the designs of the fire sprinkler, alarm and suppression systems are of paramount importance.

The initial site plan and construction drawings were submitted without complete sprinkler plans. The sprinkler plans were delayed while several discussions ensued on the most effective means to run a new 6-inch main for an additional fire hydrant and the sprinkler system. This new main, however, required at least one easement from a nearby property owner. To avoid construction delays, both the city and county agreed to a partial building permit for the foundation and framing while awaiting these completed sprinkler plans.

In the meantime, the fire department specified that the fire department connection needed to be moved closer to the new hydrant so that it freed the driveway for ladder company operations and allowed remaining fire apparatus better access to a third means of entry and egress from the building to assist with evacuation. As the deadline for the final sprinkler drawings approached the city water works at the suggestion of the fire department agreed that the new 6-inch main could be run from an existing tap on a 12-inch water main that would save the contractor time, cost and the legal entanglement caused by the easement.

In exchange for the concession, the department required the addition of an OS&Y valve with a tamper alarm to shut down the sprinkler system from the outside of the structure should the need arise. With the solution to the easement problem solved, the architect and sprinkler contractor quickly finished the sprinkler plans that included the added requirements and satisfied both the building and fire officials.

In working cooperatively, we hope this high-hazard occupancy will be free of any fire fatalities. While we possibly scored a life-long victory for fire safety in this building, there are many of us who are also working on a cooperative front to make changes in the national culture that will impact fire and life safety in the same way that working smoke alarms started to reduce fire fatalities beginning nearly 35 years ago.

Vision 2020 held a successful Web cast on Feb. 13 with more than 750 participants from across the country. The preliminary suggestions shared on that day will be the basis for a three-day symposium in Washington, D.C., late next month hosted by the Institution of Fire Engineers with a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. The symposium will bring together some of the best minds in fire and life safety from many other fire safety organizations to determine the next steps in reducing fire deaths, injuries and loss.

While these results are not yet known, it may take the form of several initiatives such as the self-extinguishing cigarette to reduce the greatest source of fire fatalities. It may be a wider use of fire sprinklers, especially in residential occupancies, or it may be some as yet unknown safety initiative. Whatever recommendations are forthcoming; stay tuned for what may be the beginning of the most significant victory in the reduction of fire loss since the advent of the smoke alarm.

It looks like the Dayton (Tenn.) Fire Department will be looking for a new fire chief. According to the Rhea County Herald-News, Fire Chief Jack Arnold has quit after 29 years with the fire department.

The paper reported that during an inspection, a fire management consultant from the University of Tennessee‘s Municipal Technical Advisory Service noticed that National Fire Protection Association–required equipment was absent from a fire truck — equipment that was present during an ISO rating inspection in 2001. It seems that the equipment was borrowed from another department for that inspection and since had been returned.

The Dayton Fire Department has 12 full-time firefighters and 14 volunteers. The city hired the University of Tennessee‘s Municipal Technical Advisory Service to assess the fire department and possibly recommend another fire station to lower the town‘s ISO rating.

Since the consultant’s findings were release, the town‘s been buzzing with talk of deception and dishonesty to the community, and the chief walked.

After I wrote two editorials questioning the credibility of the ISO rating system, I heard several stories of departments moving equipment between stations or borrowing from other departments — including an aerial — to meet ISO inspections. If the equipment is necessary for the safety of the personnel, then obviously it should be supplied and maintained. However, I have heard repeated complaints that the ISO requirements don’t keep up with upgrades and new products, and that ISO requirements aren’t consistent with current NFPA standards. Complaints covered ISO‘s requirements for hose clamps, smooth-bore nozzles (“the ones we have are brass and sit in the display with antiques”) and “15 pike poles.”

Dayton Asst. Fire Chief Bo Kaylor told me that ISO requires an acetylene torch on every engine. “In all my 30 years of firefighting, I have never seen us need one,” he said. “Same with a straight bore; we used it one time.”

Was Arnold trying to save the department money by not purchasing equipment that was out of date? Probably. But isn‘t it deceptive to tell a community you have an ISO 1–rated fire department only to have another group of inspectors report major deficiencies? The ISO 1–rated Charleston (S.C.) Fire Department now faces a list of 200 improvements, ranging from urgent to long-ranging.

Perhaps the Dayton city council needs to check out the Center for Public Safety Excellence and invest its money in the Commission on Fire Accreditation International program to assist in determining its fire department‘s performance.

Nobody carries a slide rule anymore. It’s time for a new measuring device.

By Anthony Piontek

Gone are the times of guaranteed budget increases, facility and equipment expenditures, and staffing allowances to fit the needs of a changing and growing working environment. Departments across the country are being asked — or required — to do more with less. As it was with many businesses in the 1980s and ’90s, fire departments are now faced with downsizing, a word thought unmentionable in the fire service until recent times.

Unlike business and industry, which tend to have positive cash flows or they don’t survive, fire departments and municipal entities are virtual money pits. Services cost money, but people rarely see the results of the expenses. Although most people are grateful at the time of service, few remember in the long-term the services they receive and the price we sometimes pay. But the demand for a high level of service is never questioned — it is expected.

When the business world was affected by the trend, it was due to a pull from ownership to cut costs and increase profitability. Shareholders demand certain percentage increases in profit, dividends, and prices as a return on their investments. For the workers who face added work and responsibility with less funding and compensation, it is a hardship. But it is the same hardship the fire service is staring in the face right now. Can the fire service be run as a business? Not completely, but there are some basic principles from the business world that can make the fire service more profitable — but your profit margin should hinge on safety and effectiveness, not the bottom line.

The residents we serve are our shareholders. Like it or not, they hold the purse-strings in their hands with their power to vote. The average person will call 911 once every 10 years, so the public will come in contact with us eventually, either first, second or third hand. Therefore, the fire service needs to impress on them the importance of its existence like no salesman ever could. If a businessman could only count on one sale every 10 or so years, he would either be bankrupt, have to sell to a lot more customers, or have to sell more kinds of goods to open his market. The last of these is known as diversification.

The fire service has diversified in the last 20 years, adding hazmat response, EMS, technical rescue, public education and building inspections, to name a few. Our “business” has grown, possibly into an uncontrollable monster. Customers have come to expect that we are outfitted and capable of fixing every emergency they may have, minor or major. Some may call this job security, and I tend to agree. The more the public depends on us, the better off we will be. But unlike business, we often do not have the time to do the required research, development and training to make these new divisions “profitable” — safe and effective.

The fire service relies on its primary work force to do R&D, and the majority of that occurs at an evolving incident. Although it works, it is much less efficient and effective and it can be extremely unsafe. Consensus standards, policies and procedures, and chief‘s orders all are developed after something occurs. Although there must always be a step involving evaluation and change, the fire service must look forward to be “profitable.”

So how do we look into the future? Steal it from someone else, or listen to the ideas from within your own business. The fire service has never been good at inventing new ideas and equipment. Most of what we use and how we do things has been adapted from elsewhere, and that is unlikely to change. What can change is the attitude that only the decision-makers have enough brains to have a good idea. Bugles and brains aren’t always proportionate.

Most companies award bonuses for new ideas, products, or cost-saving/-generating plans. The fire service has no such luxury, other than an “attaboy” now and then. Positive reinforcement can be successful, but there needs to be a huge power shift in the fire service for inventiveness to become truly successful. People have to be empowered to make change, and they must be supported in their endeavors by management.

The rank-and-file members are the future of the department. The success of change hinges on members’ support of ideas. This support is easily gained when the ideas are members’ own. Successful managers in business are concerned with their people, not their processes and products. If you have and build successful people, management in any business can and will be easy.

The majority of a fire department‘s budget is dedicated to staffing in the form of wages and benefits. The remaining is set aside for operating costs. In business, there are two other major items included in a budget: profit and reinvestment for growth. Fire departments have a form of reinvestment: prevention and training. The fire service doesn’t set aside the proportions for reinvestment that business does (15% to 25%), and I often wonder why that is.

Both training and prevention are expenses with values that are hard to track. How do you put a value to structures that did not burn, lives that weren’t lost, or decisions and actions that brought about these things? If we did have a concrete number, our budgets would be a lot easier to justify. We dedicate huge amounts of money to our work force, but spend a fraction to develop and assist them in attaining our goals. The average business spends thousands of dollars annually training and developing their work force. The result is motivated, dedicated, self-sufficient and profitable employees. Conversely, after a recruit has gone through initial training, very little is ever spent on additional training when you look at things proportionately. As a fire service, we must continue to educate and train our biggest liabilities — our people. The more trained and effective they are, the harder it will be for those holding the purse strings to cut your budget.

As we continue to battle to survive as the fire service of our past, full of tradition, camaraderie and sacrifice, we must also envision a new world order for the service. If the products and services are of the highest quality, people will buy them and gladly pay whatever the cost.

So are you selling a Chevy or a Cadillac?

Anthony Piontek is a 16-year veteran of the fire service and a firefighter for the Green Bay (Wis.) Fire Department. He is certified Fire Instructor II and teaches for Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Fire Protection Associates Degree Program, the state fire certification program, and is lead instructor for the rapid intervention training and acquired structure training programs. Piontek also is president and chief operations officer of Fire and Industrial Response Enterprises, through which he instructs on a variety of fire service and industrial emergency response topics throughout the country.

By Jameson R. Ayotte

Do you want to be promoted? Would you like the satisfaction gained from being given more responsibility? Do you have goals and aspirations beyond your current situation? Career paths should lead somewhere; do you want to climb?

In 1999, I climbed Mount Washington. The peak of the highest mountain in the Northeast is 6,288 feet above sea level. My wife and most of her family also climbed that day. We took the Ammonusic Trail to the Tip Top House and descended Tuckerman‘s Ravine to Pinkham. The trip was four hours up and four hours down. We rested at the top for almost an hour.

My fellow hikers will attest to my ability to bellyache and complain about most things. Sore knees, sweat in my eyes and mosquitoes tormented me. I was hot and everyone heard about it. For me, that‘s part of the excitement of hiking. Creating new ways to say the same thing is a challenge.

When I reached the top, all of my aches and pains went away. I was able to see for better than 50 miles, which is rare on the site of the “World‘s Worst Weather.” The reward for the journey was greater than I could ever imagine.

While the scenery engulfed me, many of my neighbors became engulfed by me, trying to keep a reasonable distance from the odor I had acquired on my journey. I had been sweating for about three hours and 57 minutes of the four-hour hike, and my extra-strength deodorant had given up below the Alpine line.

That day, people literally turned their noses up at me. They still smelled of perfume and laundry detergent and had not a drop of sweat on their brows, as they had arrived at the top via the auto road or on the historic Cog Railway. We occupied the same mountaintop, but not the same quality of experience. I was elated at reaching this height and annoyed at the people experiencing this sight without having put in any effort to get here.

The promotional process follows a similar process — work is required to gain altitude. Promotions should be based on merit. The American Heritage Dictionary defines merit as:

1. Demonstrated ability or achievement.




2. Superior quality or worth; excellence.




3. A quality deserving praise or approval; virtue.

Anything less discredits those who work hard. If you want to be promoted, you should work hard. Hard work should pay off.

You must constantly strive to elevate your position. Have you worked hard enough to deserve a change in status? How much effort have you given to increasing your education? Do you have the qualifications to do the job? Do you demonstrate the ability and willingness to constantly learn? Do you improve yourself everyday?

A great place to start is the certification system set up by the National Board on Fire Service Professional Qualifications. Firefighter I & II, Fire Officer I & II, Fire Instructor I & II and all levels of hazmat certifications exist. The International Fire Service Accreditation Congress also allows for testing and certification. College degree programs abound and many can be delivered through distance learning. The National Fire Academy and state fire academies offer countless methods of increasing your knowledge. Resident, direct-delivery and virtual-campus learning opens the door to anyone wishing to expand their education.

Training, education and performance are the stones that you must climb in the workplace. This is where you grunt and sweat. In fact, any less is stealing.

A corollary to this is that a person approving a promotion should not dishonor the act by just giving it away; he or she must feel the promotion is being bestowed on the best candidate. Politics and favoritism should have no place in the process. These remove credibility and cause a potential breach of ethics. Discrimination against people who are qualified should never be tolerated.

Are you a person of merit? Have you earned a promotion? Reflect on the earlier questions. Can you honestly say you‘ve done your best? If so, then you deserve the reward. If not, then begin right away. Start working to improve yourself immediately.

Being promoted needs to be seen as a starting off point not an ending. You must constantly work to keep that position. There is a long list of people that are working to get to where you are. There is also a list of people that will pass you by if you do not try.

The climb up Mount Washington was a crucible of sorts. I was tested and tried. I accomplished my goal of reaching the top. I gained a new perspective.

In 2005, I returned to the peak with my family. I drove our minivan to the parking lot at the summit; my small children never could have hiked the mountain. I looked out on the range just as I had done six years earlier. It was another great day and we enjoyed that view.

Next to me was a hiker. I smelled him from six feet away. He looked at me with a small amount of contempt. I felt no ill will. I had that expression when I climbed. We both looked at the scenery. I saw mountains and valleys. He saw miracles. The difference was not in our point of views but in our effort expended to reach our goals. He certainly did merit that reward.

Jameson R. Ayotte is a fire lieutenant/paramedic with the Amesbury (Mass.) Fire Department, where he is a company officer and shift commander. He holds a bachelor’s in exercise physiology and an master’s in physical therapy. Ayotte is a certified Fire Officer I, Fire Officer II and Fire Instructor I. He also instructs anatomy and physiology and medical terminology. He can be reached at jamesonayotte@yahoo.com.

With no particular allegiance to either the Patriots or the Giants, I watched Super Bowl XLII. I did so after a year of weekly updates on the Glendale (Ariz.) Fire Department’s four years of planning for the game from Asst. Chief Tom Shannon, who also wrote our January cover story.

Immediately after Glendale was awarded the game, Fire Chief Mark Burdick established a planning team to create a comprehensive fire service strategy for the game and all sanctioned events in surrounding communities. The plan established working groups of surrounding cities, and county and state agencies to plan and provide support services for the entire valley.

This plan needed public safety, public health, public works, transportation and environmental agencies within the region to partner for effective communications.

Did it work? According to FIRE CHIEF Associate Publisher Greg Toritto and West Coast Sales Manager Andy Van Sciver, who were onsite for the event, Glendale‘s game plan set a new precedent for safety and security support.

“The challenges that the public-safety sector was facing were amazing,” Toritto said. “Going forward, there are huge challenges for future cities of Super Bowls and similar large-scale events.”

Toritto and Van Sciver were invited to participate in the Public Safety External Liaison Group, which included representatives for the next three Super Bowl cities: Tampa, Fla.; Miami; and Arlington, Texas.

“Every fire department in the country could learn from Glendale‘s approach and its use of a unified command system for this type of event,” Toritto said. “All the agencies involved worked together — and with the public — and were on the same page. All the agencies worked as peers and left their egos aside.”

“… Incident Command was clearly unified and spelled out,” added Van Sciver, who also is an officer on the Ventura County (Calif.) Search and Rescue–Upper Ojai Team. “Area command was very important. Eyes on the actual event in any given location reported up to the local emergency operations center and were monitored by the joint-operation command.”

For medical emergencies, first-aid teams roamed the area with EMS backpacks with ALS capabilities. Two ALS mini ambulances also were staged. Small John Deere Gators with slip-on suppression systems were available for first response.

Glendale will share its lessons learned in an upcoming issue of FIRE CHIEF.

“The cooperation between all of these departments and the willingness — starting at the top — to share control and take care of their assigned responsibilities was very impressive,” said Toritto. “Continuously, the message was that it was everyone working together.”

A great deal of time, effort and money was put into planning for the what-ifs. Thankfully, they didn‘t come last Sunday, but there are always lessons to be learned by every first responder from every size department — from what goes wrong and what goes right.

For decades, American school children have practiced fire drills as often as monthly to ensure they react safely and swiftly in the event of fire. The fire code requirements mandating these exercises stemmed from disasters that claimed dozens of young lives and remain in effect despite — if not because of — the fact so few have perished in similar circumstances since they took effect.

The conditions under which such requirements came into force bears some scrutiny today as at least one school district in Maryland asks whether fire drills have become outmoded, if not simply outdated.

Neglected maintenance and decaying school infrastructure — which included combustible interior finishes, unprotected exit pathways, and poor maintenance or outright absence of fire-safety features like alarms and manual firefighting equipment — contributed to disaster. The 1958 fire at Our Lady of Angels school in Chicago, which claimed the lives of 92 children and three teachers, serves as a chilling example of what can happen. This fire, more than any other, served as the impetus for most of the requirements we take for granted today.

We could ask ourselves whether things have changed much. Many school districts cite aging infrastructure and competition over declining tax revenues as a major concern. At the same time, they face new threats never really envisioned when the current fire code requirements first came into effect.

School violence has jumped ahead of fire safety as a concern in most schools, although recent evidence that such dangers are less prevalent today that just a few years ago.

Nevertheless, at the insistence of parents and politicians, many schools have instituted comprehensive security programs that include access control, barriers, and individual screening. Armed security guards now patrol schools in many communities, meaning that firearms are now commonplace on many campuses.

In response to advice from security consultants and experience of massacres like the Columbine High School shootings in April 1999, many schools have gone so far as to institute complex lockdown procedures for securing students in classrooms in the event of an “active shooter” incident.

Decisions about whether to stay or go during a fire make a crucial difference in who lives and who dies. Neither strategy works flawlessly all of the time, and which action works best in any set of circumstances requires careful consideration of both what is happening and what is already in place to manage its continued development.

In essence then, fire drills have already moved from being simple rule-based exercises in which everyone follows a simple set of instructions that are more or less standard for any public building — hear the alarm, get out, and stay out — to very particular instructions tailored to individual buildings and quite often tailored to the very peculiar ways in which each of these buildings and the people within them operate.

By their nature, fire code requirements have difficulty accommodating the necessity of such diversity. We would like to believe that by reducing complex problems to their essence, we can discern a set of rules by which everyone will be properly instructed in what is safe.

Maybe the time has come for us to reconsider the purpose of fire drills. I can think of no better context for such reconsideration of their utility than schools. We can start by deciding whether fire drills represent a test or simply an opportunity to practice and learn not only what works best but how to appreciate what makes it work when needed.

Fire drills work poorly as tests, unless, of course, we take the opportunity to learn from what went right, what went wrong, or at least what we can improve the next time. The efficient conduct of fire drills involves much more than assessing the travel time of students and staff. The time it takes to get everyone where they need to be depends more on how long it takes them to decide the proper course of action and implement their decision. Even necessary distractions like determining where particular students are or whether the fire blocks an escape route can have a significant effect on the time taken to complete an evacuation.

With the introduction of complex security procedures in schools, the decisions teachers must make about what to do and how to do it have become much more involved than they were right after the Our Lady of Angels tragedy. When a fire alarm sounds, we like to think that we need not think about whether it signals a real fire or not, the action should be the same either way. But now we must consider whether the activation of a fire alarm places teachers and pupils at-risk if the sounding alarm is used as a means to draw people into the line of fire.

Despite the fact the number of school children and teacher dying due to gunfire in schools is dropping, it remains evident that this risk remains as high or higher than that from fires. If we are truly committed to the safety of schools, we should be thinking of ways to ensure they prepare those who use them for all sorts of emergencies.

We know the importance of exercises and experience in honing the effectiveness of fireground decision-makers. Why not apply the same reasoning to the preparing school administrators, teachers, and staff who must look after the safety of young people in the ever more complex world in which we live? In the absence of significant new spending on school buildings, we are becoming ever more reliant on their ability to get things right.

Last week, the Fire Department Safety Officers Association held its annual Apparatus Specification and Maintenance Symposium in Orlando, Fla. A record-breaking crowd of over 560 attendees crammed in the ballroom. In honor of its 20th anniversary, the symposium had three keynote speakers with three distinct views: a voice of the future, a voice of the law and the voice of experience.

Monday‘s keynote speaker, Oren Bergasel-Briese, a fire engineer from Castle Rock, Colo., offered a look at the future for apparatus designers and spec writers. He gave attendees five concepts to consider when designing future apparatus: regionalizing and standardizing apparatus as CAL FIRE did in California; getting the right fire trucks to the right fire department; using more simulators for driver and operator training; considering environmental changes, including urban sprawl and wildfires; and preventing accidents, such as with specialized training for drivers.

“No longer should we allow the youngest member of the department to drive the fire truck,” said Briese.

Briese offered Southwest Airlines as a corporate model for standardization. “Southwest has only one type of aircraft,” Briese said. “Not only does it ease maintenance with knowledge of standardized equipment, but awareness of aircraft…. With a large turnover of fire maintenance personnel, it will be tougher to work on specialized apparatus.”

Tuesday‘s keynote was attorney Jim Juneau, an ever-popular presenter who never lacks for case studies of apparatus accidents. Juneau offered his list of things that get fire departments in trouble: ignored or inconsistent inspection or preventive maintenance programs; old, tired, obsolete apparatus; unrestrained occupants; intersection and negative right-of-ways; and excessive speed and inadequate or non-existent operator training — especially for tankers.

Juneau offered his insight on accidents and cautioned the importance of judgment calls, particularly in regard to traffic intersections. “Ask yourself, ‘What is the benefit of my action? What is the risk? Is it worth it?‘” Juneau said. “Every run is not an emergency.”

Wednesday morning‘s keynote speaker was the fire service sage of common sense and harbinger of safety Chief Billy Goldfeder, Loveland-Symmes (Ohio) Fire Department. “What‘s in your wallet? Your wife, your husband, your kids‘ pictures?” Goldfeder asked. “It ain‘t about you — it‘s about the people who love you and get left behind.”

Goldfeder also identified two kinds of line-of-duty deaths: heroic and non-heroic. “Half are heart and stroke,” he said, “The rest are avoidable.” Goldfeder said he‘s changed his view recently on heroics and shared several personal stories that have contributed to a more realistic view of firefighting — “I want to be around for a little while longer,” he said.

Goldfeder challenged attendees to make sure their apparatus drivers have licenses, receive driver training, and are warned, “If you run a red light with my fire truck, I‘m going to fire you. You have no discretion; you don‘t run a red light.”

“Excited people are getting us hurt,” Goldfeder said. “Slow down and enforce the policies.”

Each keynote speaker touched on the need for training for apparatus drivers. Goldfeder asked, “Who‘s in your wallet?” Perhaps you should ask who‘s behind the wheel of your fire truck.