It had been a long, hard winter, but finally Chicago has spring fever. Temperatures have reached the 70s five days in a row. It’s the perfect weather to sit outside with a good book.

In my February FIRE CHIEF editorial, I suggested that fire chiefs form a book club similar to the Marine Corp Commandant’s Reading List. This month at FireChief.com, we launched that book club with a dozen books recommended by several chiefs. And this week, a book recommended by Garry Briese, now director of FEMA Region VIII, makes the list.

Briese suggested The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. While the book sounds totally impractical, it has excellent tips for dealing with mushrooming e-mails, endless meetings and time-wasting phone calls. Is it possible to manage these things? Yes, and that’s just the first third of the book. While a four-hour workweek isn‘t practical, I‘d be happy with just a 40-hour workweek and Ferriss‘ ideas could make that happen.

Through a strange coincidence in my hometown, I heard about another book.

Dayna Hilton‘s parents moved from Pennsylvania, where her father was a volunteer firefighter, to my hometown 10 years ago. Following in her dad‘s footsteps, Hilton later became a volunteer firefighter for the Johnson County Rural Fire District #1, Clarksville, Ark. In 2002 she became the department’s fire and life-safety educator.

Hilton‘s teaching took an interesting turn when she and her family adopted a dalmatian named Sparkles. The dog proved to be an enthusiastic attraction for Hilton‘s safety classes. Hilton and Sparkles appear on PBS Kids Sprout, a 24-hour TV station for preschoolers, and follow Fireman Sam‘s episodes with fire and life-safety tips for children.

“When I take out her red vest, Sparkles gets really excited,” said Hilton. “That‘s when I decided to write about what a typical day is like for Sparkles.”

Working with IFSTA to make sure the book was accurate and appropriate for youngsters, the 28-page, soft-cover book took Hilton 18 months to write and publish. With Sparkles as the focus, the book teaches fire and life-safety tips. Hilton and Sparkles recently appeared in Washington, D.C., and at FDIC in Indianapolis.

While Hilton’s book isn‘t a leadership book for our chiefs‘ book club, I certainly would recommend it for your fire and life-safety education program for primary school children.

Meanwhile, check out the Fire Chief Book Club and suggest additional titles. The list is connected to Amazon.com for quick, easy ordering.

When you whittle down your hours, you‘ll have more time to read.

On the evening of April 1, after two very productive days of intense brainstorming and in-depth discussions, the curtain finally came down on the first act of the Vision 20/20‘s National Strategic Agenda for Fire Loss Prevention. This forum gathered more than 170 participants who represented the who‘s who of fire safety from across the country, the United Kingdom and Australia.

“This project is unprecedented in scope and depth,” said Jim Crawford, fire marshal for the city of Vancouver, Wash., and the Vision 20/20 project manager. “We have assembled an incredible array of experts from a diversity of fields to help craft a national plan to reduce the loss of life and property from fire. Through our collective efforts we will develop strategies that will save lives, now and for the future.”

Vision 20/20 was conceived last year when the Institution of Fire Engineers–U.S. Branch received a DHS Fire Prevention and Safety Grant to develop a comprehensive national strategy for fire prevention. This project’s goal is to help bring together fire-prevention efforts to collectively and effectively address the fire problem in the United States.

It is a noble cause, but the fire service has been down this road many times before. The President‘s Conference on Fire Prevention in 1947, the release of the America Burning report in 1973, the update with the America Burning Revisited report in 1987, and the release of the America Burning, Recommissionedreport in 2000 all focused on the very same issue.

So what‘s different about the Vision 20/20 plan? According to the forum’s Web site:

1. This project involves a large number of participants representing all areas of fire prevention, as well as other advocates and stakeholders to the plan and its recommended outcomes.
   


2. This project is committed to action, with a few strategic recommendations being converted to a national plan that stakeholders will be asked to support with documentation of specific actions and benchmarks instead of a long list of recommended practices that everyone agrees are important (but then never get completed).
   


3. This project will not create recommendations in a vacuum. Other existing efforts that have identified significant progress toward achieving prevention goals will be taken into account to avoid competing efforts.
   


4. A long-term monitoring mechanism will provide regular reports on the progress of the strategic initiatives that arise out of Vision 20/20.
   

If commitment to action is the litmus test, then the fact that despite many challenges Vision 20/20 was able to pull such a high-caliber team together in such a productive forum is a major accomplishment. This forum is a significant step in the right direction, but this is only the first step in beginning the journey. More is still to come.

Reviewing the reports from the previous national conferences, a common theme for increasing efforts in fire prevention is always emphasized as a key component to the fire-safety problem in the United States.

Recognizing the importance of fire prevention, IFE invited panelists from Australia and England to share their experiences. The “International Perspective” panel discussion was quite interesting and of tremendous value in disseminating information about the incredibly innovative approaches and programs that are currently being done overseas, which we could learn a lot from.

Neil Bibby, chief executive officer of County Fire Authority, Victoria, Australia; Philip Hales, head of community fire safety of Cheshire Fire & Rescue Services, Winsford, England; Phil Schaenman, president of Tri-Data Systems Planning Corp.; and Mick Ballesteros, epidemiologist/team lead of the Home and Recreation Injury Prevention with the Centers for Disease Control; shared their experiences and successes in reducing fire fatalities and losses, which only underlined the fact many of us in the United States are only beginning to realize about how far behind the rest of the world we are in our fire prevention efforts.

At the end of the two days, the participants of the Vision 20/20 Forum identified five specific strategies and developed action plans for reducing fire fatalities and losses in America. The specifics and the details of these strategies will be posted on the Vision 20/20 Web site in the very near future, but here are the outlines:

• Advocacy. Get on the agenda to make America safe from fire.
  


• Public education. Establish a consistent, sustained, multi-faceted educational/social marketing campaign to reduce risks and losses from fire by getting people to change their behavior toward fire safety.
  


• Fire service culture. Shift the organizational culture within the fire service so that prevention is accepted and supported as a primary service for public safety.
  


• Technology. Promote and leverage existing and new technology to enhance fire and life safety.
  


• Codes and standards. Development and application of codes and standards to enhance public and firefighter safety and preserve community assets.
  

“Everyone wants to see something happen,” said Crawford. “They just don‘t want another report sitting on the shelf. They want to see action. They want to show that taxpayers‘ money was not wasted.”

According to Ed Comeau with writer-tech.com, “Everyone was in agreement that it will be critically important for there to be an ongoing commitment to this project and its ideas. Many people signed up to continue working on the various strategies as this project continues to move forward, demonstrating such a commitment.”

I hope that this level of excitement and commitment continues in the future, and just like the participants, we all recognize that this forum was not the conclusion, but merely the beginning of our journey in addressing the fire problem in our country. Back in the 1947, at the conclusion of the Conference on Fire Prevention, it was stated “we have enlisted not for a brief skirmish, but for the whole campaign. In winning that campaign we shall have the satisfaction of knowing that we are saving lives and putting an end to the wanton destruction of our nation‘s resources.” It just can‘t be said any better than that.

I am amazed and very grateful for the hard work and long hours that Peg Carson with Carson Associates and Bill Kehoe with the IFE–USA spent to bring this first act to the national stage. Without their admirable commitment to the cause, this indeed would not have been possible.

April is a strange month. It starts off lightly with April Fools’ Day, becomes stressful midway through the month with tax day, and ends with anticipation while waiting to see if all those showers will give way.

For the fire service, April is a full month of meetings and conferences starting with Vision 20/20, the Congressional Fire Services Institute events, and FDIC — and that‘s just the first two weeks of the month.

I’m just catching my breath before the last two weeks bring the International Association of Women in the Fire and Emergency Services’ Eighth Biennial Fire Service Women‘s Leadership Training Seminar, April 24–27 in Glendale, Ariz. That event will quickly be followed by FIRE CHIEF’s 2008 Station Style Conference April 27–29 in Phoenix, and IAFC‘s Metro Chiefs Conference, starting April 29 in Virginia Beach, Va.

Before we rush into the final weeks of April, I have collected a number of items from my correspondence that might make you smile — or just make you shake your head in wonder.

Disregard the noise. An article in suburban Chicago’s Daily Herald recently reported on the trial of 28 Chicago firefighters who are suing Federal Signal for hearing loss purportedly from siren use. The trial was interrupted when the fire alarms sounded on the 16th floor of the Daley Center. The judge had tried to postpone the alarm-testing drill, but failed. Instead, he had to instruct the jury that the alarms were not part of the trial.

Detour. Erlanger, Ky., is located on one of the nation‘s busiest stretches of Interstate 71/75, which also is the main corridor from Michigan to Florida. According to American City and County magazine, Erlanger Fire Chief Tim Koenig is frustrated that the department responds to hundreds of accidents on the highway each year, most of which involve drivers who are just passing through the area.

“Our citizens are paying,” Koenig said. “It‘s their tax dollars that are putting the fire truck on the expressway.”

In January, Erlanger became one of many cities across the nation that charge out-of-town divers’ insurance companies emergency services fees. On average emergency response calls costs the Erlanger Fire Department between $500 and $700, so the city has contracted with an Ohio-based company to bill and collect money from the insurance companies. According to the article, municipalities in 18 states have implemented similar fees, including Ocala, Fla., where 70% of the accidents (3,300 annually) involve non-city residents.

You who? A couple years ago, Chicago Fire Department Commissioner Ray Orozco told me the department was making fire prevention videos for YouTube. “You have to get the message to the people [who] need to see it,” Orozco told me, and was he ever correct. Currently there are 2,840 fire-safety videos on YouTube.

Fresno Fire Department‘s public-service announcement on fire sprinklers has had more than 57,000 views, and rightly so. Introduced by the very professional Chief Randy Bruegman, it quickly captures viewers attention and delivers the message. Watch it and consider this medium to send your fire-safety message. Philadelphia; Renton, Wash.; and South Terre Haute, Ind.; already have.

Passion and coffee. A recent issue of Michigan’s South Lyon Herald featured a story about Tom Malcolm, a firefighter with Lyon Township, paramedic with Huron Valley Ambulance, husband and father of two small children. Malcolm “works 24-hour shifts for HVA on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, and then goes straight to work for the fire department on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on call for the department in case anything happens overnight.”

Malcolm said that “passion and a pot of coffee” help him get through his 100-plus-hour work week. While he naps frequently, the firefighter has even “stayed up for 72 consecutive hours without sleeping” and considers eight hours of sleep a “waste.” Passion is admirable, but sleep deprivation causes accidents.

And you thought April 15 was taxing.

Apparatus manufacturer Rosenbauer recently held a 10th anniversary celebration. One of the company’s U.S. partners is Kevin Kirvida, who is president of General Safety Equipment in Wyoming, Minn. He was on a mission — he wanted everyone know about three fellow Minnesotans. He told their story to those of us who shared his table at a small dinner in Sioux Falls, S.D. The following evening at the company’s formal celebration, he repeated the story for all the dealers, media and others in attendance.

What makes these men so noteworthy is their charitable efforts. Last year, Ron Gruening partnered with Greg Johnson and Mark Allen to form International Fire Relief Mission. Their mission was to deliver serviceable but unwanted fire apparatus and equipment, such as turnout gear and SCBA, to Moldova. Moldova is a former Eastern Bloc country of about 13,000 square miles wedged between Romania and the Ukraine. The U.S. government estimates Moldova’s population at just over 4 million. Our government also says that Moldova remains one of the poorest countries in Europe — about 30% of the population lives in poverty.

At the Rosenbauer event, IFRM hung a rubber bunker jacket, a thin metal helmet with no liner and bunker pants cut at the knees. Any protective properties these items may have had at one point were long since gone.

Gruening, IFRM’s president and a retired EMT, says this is the gear used by the Moldova fire department trying to protect Chisinau, a city of roughly 1 million residents. In 2007, IFRM collected some used equipment, made a trip to Moldova, presented the gear and provided some training. He says they visited one fire station where tankers were filled by a line of firefighters originating at an old well and passing water-laden buckets toward the trucks. Gruening and his crew connected a pump to the well.

The problem, as Gruening explains, is that the fire service was neglected during the communist era and economic conditions have kept it from recovering since the iron curtain fell in 1991.

Gruening and Kirvida met over lunch to discuss how to do more for firefighters in that fledgling country. Kirvida hooked IFRM up with the Minnesota Fire Chiefs Association, which began soliciting and collecting donations. Kirvida also opened up his facility’s warehouse to store these used apparatus.

Since then, IFRM has made return trips to Eastern Europe, enough in fact, to have set in place checks to make sure the equipment gets to and stays with the fire service. This is important because equipment sent from Seattle and Miami went missing, Gruening says.

Gruening says interest in this program is growing on both sides of the Atlantic. Here, more and more departments are looking to dispose of apparatus with little to no resale value and gear that no longer meets safety requirements. But SCBA that is no longer NFPA-compliant is decades ahead of anything currently used in Moldova. Having seen the equipment coming into Moldova, Ukraine and Romania are seeking assistance — as are some South American and Asia countries.

In addition to fire department donations, IFRM is getting a shot in the arm from corporate sponsors. Besides Rosenbauer (Frontier Emergency Products and General Safety Equipment), Lion Apparel, Gear Grid, Fire Research Corp., Stryker and MSA have signed on as sponsors. Even the State Department has come on board by shipping containers of these goods for IFRM.

The group currently has about three full containers ready to ship, and are planning their next delivery to Moldova late this summer.

There are certainly a number of groups doing similar work, but IFRM is a small operation that is making a big difference in the global fire community. Those interested in more information on IFRM can visit their Web site at ifrm2007.googlepages.com or e-mail Gruening at rgruening@gmail.com.

The haunting sound of the lone bagpipe lingers in my ears. There isn‘t a dry eye as I watch the final hugs at the cemetery. I am miles away at the studio of WKRC-TV in Cincinnati trying to add a firefighter‘s perspective to the procession, the mass at St. Peter in Chains Cathedral, and their burial at Spring Grove Cemetery. With the news anchors, Kit Andrews and Rob Braun, we‘ve been on the air for six hours of uninterrupted coverage. No commercials, no soap operas, just a tribute to the fallen firefighters, their families and the fire service. Literally thousands of viewers are mourning their loss.

Perhaps receiving the Secret List for many years has numbed my mind, or perhaps it was the number of LODD investigations I’ve been involved in. But this time it‘s different; this time it‘s my family.

In the early morning of April 4, Colerain Township Fire Capt. Robin Broxterman and Firefighter Brian Schira died — swept from us by some invisible hand that seems to take our best and brightest in an instant — even though fire operations followed the SOP and everything was “textbook.” The tragedy defiantly announces that the job, despite our best efforts, is inherently dangerous.

I served at Colerain for 27 years and still live within the district; my own department is less than five miles from its border. Our departments are intertwined. We operate nearly the same and, more importantly, our people know each other and train together. Robin became a part-time firefighter while I was still a Colerain assistant chief, and I remember her even before then because she is the daughter of Don and Arlene Zang, both former Green Township firefighters. I remember her smile, her laugh, her ponytail, her two young daughters. Mostly I remember how she came to Wyoming‘s aid as a firefighter/paramedic on Colerain‘s Engine 26 when two of our Wyoming firefighters were critically injured as they fell from a roof in 2004.

Brian was relatively new to Colerain, but worked part-time at both Colerain and Delhi townships to gain experience while also holding a full-time job at a nearby Home Depot. The times our paths crossed were few, but I remember him as a likeable young man who always addressed me as “Chief,” whether at the fire station or at Home Depot.

After an LODD, a literal army of firefighters swings into action. Departments from across greater Cincinnati continually staff Colerain‘s five stations for four days — no citizen or area is left unprotected. Colerain fire officers divide over a dozen areas of responsibility in preparation for the funeral, shadowed by officers and firefighters from other departments. The Cincinnati Fire Department — which experienced it’s own LODD five years before at the death of Firefighter Oscar Armstrong — takes the lead with the assistance. No family request is overlooked.

In tribute, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, State Fire Marshal Michael Bell and more than 7,000 firefighters and families attend the combined visitation on Tuesday. The cathedral can seat only 2,000; 10,000 stand outside the cathedral and the cemetery. Firefighters from as far away as Australia were there — they had to be there — to pay honor to their comrades. Thousands more line the seven-mile processional route and fire apparatus spans as far as any eye can see, no matter how high the vantage point. Tens of thousands more watch on TV, in their homes, schools, stores and offices. E-mails stream into the TV station as ordinary people from all over the United States, including my son and daughter-in-law in Hawaii, watch the live stream on the Internet. And then there is the final ringing of the bell, the final dispatch over the radio, and the haunting sound of the lone bagpipe.

Robin and Brian are laid to rest. The investigation continues. I‘ve been through the fire-ravaged house and have seen where they fell. I‘ve watched and marveled as the Schira and Zang families celebrate the lives of their son and daughter and have allowed us to honor them as well.

Stay safe!

How many free baseball caps, buttons or thermal cups do you really need? Trade show freebies are nice, but one company came up with a different approach to attract show attendees to their booth.

This week at the Fire Department Instructors Conference, Pierce Mfg. provided art and music that became a gift to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. The company sponsored Michael Israel, an internationally famous artist and entertainer, to create original paintings during the show. The paintings later were presented to NFFF Executive Director Ron Siarnicki for a fund-raising auction later that evening.

“Today in a small way we want to thank you and want to give back to you,” said Pierce President Wilson Jones. “Please accept this next 20 minutes as Pierce‘s gift to you. We hope it will speak to the sincerely from all the people at Pierce.”

With that introduction, artist Israel stepped onto the stage in front of an oversized black canvas and greeted close to 1,000 attendees crammed in and around the booth. Israel commented that he believes art not only educates and entertains, but it assists victims across the nation. Israel‘s paintings have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charities.

“Art should express something,” Israel said. “It should express passion and it should mean something.” With those words, the song “Burning Down the House” blasted from the speakers. Israel jumped up and dabbed red paint in the middle of the canvas and threw the brushes down. Next he hit the canvas with two brushes dripping white. Israel spun the canvas with splashes and splotches — it wasn‘t till the last broad strokes that the cab of a red fire truck appeared.

In front of a second blank canvas, Israel recalled his memories of Sept. 11, 2001, and thanked firefighters for their inspiration. Lee Greenwood‘s song “Hero” began and the audience cheered as paint again hit the canvas. The second painting was of an American flag and a firefighter holding a child.

In the first four hours that FDIC was open on Thursday afternoon, bagpipers played through the aisles and firefighters filled every nook and cranny of the convention center. Just when you think they couldn‘t possible squeeze more exhibits in this conference — inside or out — they do. Rain didn‘t stop people from crawling around the trucks outside, but lightning did slow a few people down.

As I left the exhibit hall after the first day, I saw a mini-ambulance on a Polaris chassis. The patient-carrying vehicle is designed to fit into smaller areas such as arenas and parking garages and for off-road access. Several were in use during the Super Bowl earlier this year. As the need for apparatus grows, bigger isn’t always better.

One first-time attendee told me that FDIC reminded him of Las Vegas with all the flashing lights and noise. He might be right in that the cost of a food and beverages is right up with Vegas prices too, but the show goes on.

By Quinn MacLeod

What better gift is there than to pull a structure fire on your birthday? It was a warm summer evening and I was straddling the roof peak of a single-family residence, looking out over the lights of south-suburban Denver. I cradled the saw so it wouldn‘t fall off the roof and looked around for somewhere to stash it. We decided to just pull off the vent caps instead of continuing to cut, trying to minimize the damage. Damage, I thought to myself, was a joke — the place was trashed.

Ten years later I find myself retired from the fire department and out on a new venture to improve firefighter safety through conceptual workshops. One of the workshops, “Risk Management at the Company Level,” strives to teach individual that they have a responsibility for personal safety and identifying hazards on the fireground. I want to affect change at the company level. I believe that I could have made better decisions during my 20-plus years in the fire service had I known about some simple guidelines and concepts that are being batted around now.

One such concept is the need for a culture change. I don‘t think we can change our culture. Firefighters love the job when at its most dangerous. I don‘t know any firefighters who signed on to run medical calls or conduct a company fire inspection. We can, however, make the culture safer.

In both structural or wildland firefighting, dangers yield the same results if you miscalculate. I was out scouting a fire in Oregon one summer and planned to walk the fire edge back to where the crews were working. Someone talked me out of it, even though fire activity was low and it was early in the day. Later that afternoon we and two other supervisors needed to run down a trail to escape the fire. When we got clear, we all laughed. The safety officer did not.

I had been in the fire service for 17 years at that point and didn‘t see a problem with that scenario. The safety measures we had in place gave us proper advanced warning, we simply ran to pad our time cushion. Firefighters will place themselves in danger and like it. The challenge is to be in a dangerous situation and make it safe.

Company officers probably are in the best position to affect a safe attitude within their companies, as long as they themselves buy into it. When a firefighter accepts the promotion to officer, does he or she go from being a risk-taking firefighter to a safety-conscious company officer in the 15 seconds it takes to say “yes”? If you can get the safety message across at the firefighter level, chances are they will carry that mentality up through the ranks.

Back on that roof looking for a place to stash the saw, I walked just off the peak because that is where it was easiest — not safest — to walk. I came to a vent and had to either walk above it or below it toward the bottom edge of the 2-story roof. I had good situational awareness and had to decide which way to go around the hazard: the safest way of straddling the peak, the safer way of going above it close to the peak, or the lure of going below it toward the danger of the edge.

Situational awareness is something that every firefighter processes on every incident. The levels of awareness are what differ. By providing better communications and encouraging everyone to pay better attention, we can somewhat level out those differences.

Most firefighters have been in some sort of situation where they have been at risk of injury or death. And in those situations, if we pick them apart, we would probably find common situations that shout, “watch out!” The 18 watch-out situations in wildland firefighting have been around for 50 years and have helped many firefighters identify hazards. There are a few different versions of the structural watch outs. I have created my own. The idea here is to present 20 situations that even the rookie firefighter can pick out. These can be viewed and downloaded at www.integrated-firesolutions.com.

LCES (lookouts, communications, escape routes, and safety zones) is used by a number of fire departments to help mitigate hazards. In addition small modifications to a tactic, task, or just limiting the exposure of personnel may be enough to avert the danger.

The IC will decide on the course of action, but who will notice the impact first? It will be the companies on the line, so they need to be included in the process. If a course of action proves to be a higher risk, companies need to be free to voice their concerns.

This process does not get in the way of fighting the fire; it becomes the desired way of fighting the fire. We should find ways of consistently identifying hazards and standardizing the incident briefings. Those briefings need to be encouraged at all levels so as to be more effective. Interactive and detailed crew briefings are not normal for us. We need to take the time to do them and make sure they are meaningful, what is produced in the end speaks volumes. The fire service is on the right track and our awareness level is raised everyday by some pretty strong voices out there who want us all to have long, productive and healthy careers and to make it to retirement.

If you‘re wondering how I went around the roof vent, I can‘t honestly remember. But my love of the job and life in general probably steered me above the vent so if I slipped I could grab for the peak.

Quinn MacLeod is the owner and lead instructor of Integrated Fire Solutions. He recently retired from the Parker (Colo.) Fire District at the rank of engineer/acting company officer. MacLeod is NWCG-qualified as a wildfire division supervisor and holds a fire science associate‘s degree and numerous state and national certifications, including Fire Officer and Fire Instructor.

Fire safety education. That idea doesn‘t give the same adrenalin rush as the wail of a siren or the sight of black, billowing smoke, does it? I‘ve been around the fire service long enough to remember when the most memorable things about fire-safety education were the animals: Sparky the Fire Dog or Smokey Bear.

For the past 15 years, however, a small but growing force has worked to change firefighters’ perception of fire-safety education. More individuals are now attracted to the challenge of educating a broad range of citizens in need. Educators have been spurred on by fire deaths and injuries among the young, the old, and fellow firefighters.

Meri-K Appy has played a tremendous role in that change. As vice president of public education for the National Fire Protection Association, Appy brought the field beyond coloring books and good-old Sparky. In her current role as president of the Home Safety Council, Appy not only has focused on a broad range of safety issues in homes, but she has elevated the role of fire-safety educator nationally.

Two years ago, Appy and the HSC created the Dr. Anne W. Phillips Award for Leadership in Fire-Safety Education. The award is presented annually at the Congressional Fire Services Institute‘s Fire & Emergency Services Dinner, allowing more than 2,300 fire chiefs, officers and congressional dignitaries from across the country to acknowledge one person for his or her efforts in educating the public about fire safety.

This year Nancy Trench, assistant director for Fire Protection Publications, Oklahoma State University, was honored for her “lifetime of commitment to advancing fire and life-safety education.” Trench has been involved with the fire service for more than 30 years. She attended OSU and earned her associate’s degree in fire science. After completing her bachelor‘s degree, she began to work with Richard Struther, who developed the NFPA‘s Learn Not to Burn campaign.

Over the years, Trench also has leveraged that expertise and fostered valuable partnerships to develop the Fire Safety Solutions for People with Disabilities program, which provides fire-safety education and smoke-alarm installations for people with hearing, visual or mobility impairments. Her ongoing dedication to Fire Safety Solutions research projects has yielded successful programs that promise to refocus life-safety approaches to high-risk populations, including young children and people with disabilities.

“In some ways, being an advocate for fire-safety education — especially when you try to institute it in the fire service — is like you‘re robbing Peter to pay Paul. The only winner here is Paul,” Trench said.

Trench believes that sometimes you have to be unorthodox to be heard. “My entire career, I think I have been that person,” said Trench. “The fire service tolerated me because I was a woman — most of the time the only woman in the room — so they expected a different view.”

When accepting her award, Trench quoted anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Who in your department has the thoughtfulness and committment to change your fire-safety–education program?