Fire Chief

If you asked your firefighters one on one 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?

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.