Even though in Chicagoland March is going out more like a wet cat than a lion, the turn of the calendar to April always inspires me to get organized. While cleaning up my desktop, I found several calls-to-action for the upcoming weeks.

Leather helmet. The deadline for the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co. American fire service survey is March 31. Though only 10 participants will win collectible leather fire helmets, the survey ultimately will benefit all firefighters.

Danielle Cagan, Fireman’s Fund’s director of community relations, told me the organization plans to use the survey results to better educate the public on what the fire and emergency services does and how the economy is affecting fire departments.

Free equipment. Could your department use $5,000 worth of equipment for free? FEMSA now is conducting its Sixth Annual State of the Fire Service survey. In previous years, the chances of winning were one in less than 2,000.

Capitol trip. The 21st Annual National Fire and Emergency Services Seminars and Dinner will be held next week in Washington, D.C. The seminars are led by leading fire service and administrative officials, and the fund-raising dinner helps the Congressional Fire Services Institute educate Capitol Hill on the work of U.S. fire and emergency services and keep departments nationwide appraised of what’s happening in Washington.

If you make it to Washington, consider joining the CFSI Associates Club. You can support CFSI efforts (and receive a tax deduction) for as little as $25. Each level of membership receives different perks, and all levels receive annual reports of CFSI efforts on the Hill.

Research study. Dr. Lisa Lit and Dr. Julie Schweitzer of the University of California–Davis are examining occupation-linked traits in first responders. Their goal is to identify adolescents well-suited to first-responder careers. They have created a brief questionnaireto collect data for analysis. Participation in the survey is voluntary and confidential.

Scream for ice cream. The third Baskin-Robbins® 31-Cent Scoop Night will take place April 29 from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. If your department is interested in a sweet fund-raiser that helps increase community support for your department at the same time, connect with a local shop today by going to or e-mail and ask to be matched with a Baskin-Robbins store.

New revenue. Phoenix Fire Department Deputy Chief Ken Leake is looking for other fire departments that are charging for response to auto accidents. If you have experience with auto accident revenue, e-mail Leake.

How will you welcome spring?

Last April, one of my neighboring departments lost two firefighters when the kitchen floor collapsed as they were operating in a residential structure. Several separate items crossed my desk recently that emphasized how frequent such events happen and how without intervention they will continue to happen, especially in residential structure fires.

In 2008, we in the fire service believed we were successful in our quest for residential fire sprinklers when an amendment was passed to the proposed ICC Residential Building Code. The change would universally require sprinklers in all newly built dwellings. Soon after the vote, it became apparent that opposition, primarily homebuilders, were going to mount another effort to obtain a second vote on the amendment, claiming that residential sprinklers were an undue expense in the current economic climate that would drive up the cost of homes.

Several issues demonstrate the importance for us to bolster our efforts and once and for all demonstrate the need for universal sprinklers.

The Georgia Pacific Co. recently unveiled a new twist to the wooden I-beam construction approved for residential housing. My son, Todd, a career firefighter and volunteer fire officer in Indiana, brought this product to my attention. I-beams — which when I started in the fire service were made only of steel — span the length of the house to provide the primary support for floor joists. Current wooden I-beams are little more than lengths of pressed board sandwiched between 2×4s or 4×6s to provide that support. Floor joists that used to be solid 2×8s have been reduced to wooden trusses that result in quicker failures of residential flooring.

The new twist to wooden I-beams is a product that now is also made of truss construction. The Georgia Pacific Web site shows a photo of the new I-beam and its construction material. The beam itself has become a truss or series of triangles with the tagline, “Find your ductwork’s happy space.” The Web page also indicates “Customers can take pride in reduced timber consumption, usage and the ecologically friendly nature of engineered wood.”

Obviously with less solid wood, we can expect not only quicker floor failures but also more frequent and major I beam failures in these newly constructed houses. Both mean that we need to take some new steps to enhance firefighter safety.

There are sobering statistics in the new NIOSH alert, “Preventing Deaths and Injuries of Fire Fighters When Fighting Fires in Unoccupied Structures.” This 12-page bulletin is geared to make us pause during size-up at residential structure fires and conduct a risk-versus-benefit analysis. It reminds us as incident commanders that it is OK to use defensive tactics that do not place firefighters at risk to save just the building. A similar theme is echoed in an article in latest NFPA Journal, “Truss Issues,” written by longtime friends Ben Klaene and Russ Sanders.

So what else can we do? Right now, homebuilders are going green, using alternate energy-saving devices such as solar panels and geothermal heat pumps that won’t recoup their initial costs for many years to come. They are also using cheaper construction methods under the guise that they are more ecofriendly. Residential fire sprinklers are not only beneficial to saving the lives of residents and firefighters, they are also green. They save one of our most precious natural resources, water.

Instead of having to use thousands of gallons at 250 to 1,000 gpm to overcome a well involved structure, a single sprinkler head at 25 gpm in a fire’s incipient stage may extinguish or hold the fire in check for firefighters to extinguish no matter what the construction of the residence. How could our ecologically friendly homebuilders disagree?

In going “green” with sprinklers, one of our logical partners should be the federal government. We should take the opportunity to stress this point with our Congressional Representatives at the upcoming Congressional Fire Service Institute’s visitation and dinner in Washington DC. For example, using the stimulus package to financial institutions, Congress should dictate that no homes will be built with federally guaranteed funds that aren’t both energy efficient and “green”. The residential sprinkler system should be at the forefront of these “green” initiatives. There should be no other choice to save all of our resources, water, citizens and firefighters…because enough is enough.

Last year, I had an interesting conversation with FIRE CHIEF columnist Chief Ron Coleman about building volunteer fire stations. Coleman had just completed a consulting project to determine the minimum a volunteer department would need to effectively and safely operate for volunteer departments in northern California.

In addition to his consulting, Coleman is also with California’s Statewide Training Advisory Committee and has an obligation to make sure their training programs are adequate. Over the last five years, Coleman has either visited or been engaged with chief officers from more than 500 volunteer fire departments. He has visited fire stations made of everything from bales of hay to pole barns to high-tech facilities.

Coleman and Rick Tripp, AIA, NCARB, have developed a program for the 2009 Station Style pre-conference program specifically for volunteer fire departments and departments on tight budgets.

Tripp, a principal with MSA, has a great deal of experience working with fire departments that transitioned from part time to full time.

“Our firm has worked with over 25 departments assisting them with strategic planning and implementing a facilities master plan,” said Tripp. “From our experience, this involves a strategic approach towards staffing/manpower, response times/ number of calls for service, station locations etc and finally an approach towards funding these operations.”

Coleman and Tripp’s presentation will help fire departments identify their service needs and how these needs can be accommodated with a process they call the “Typology of Volunteer Departments.” This typology or standardization process will assist the volunteer department in understanding how to approach the building design process and how the building can be used to enhance a department’s services to a community.

A new standardization process will also be discussed within the larger context on how a national program is being developed to assist volunteer departments design and construct buildings complying with local governing requirements. The process is designed to assist local communities to consider grant programs for their facility needs.

Don’t miss Coleman and Tripp at the 2009 Station Style Conference, Sunday, May 3. www.firechief.com/stationstyleconference.conferenceregistration

In this month’s In Service Online, I wrote about the maintenance practices report. The Boston Fire Department commissioned the report after an accident in January in which a firefighter was killed when the brakes on a ladder truck failed.

The report was written by Paul Lauria, president of Mercury Associates, and is a shocking account of Boston’s lack of preventive maintenance and repairs.

“The report speaks for itself and it’s not very good,” Lauria said. “It’s hard to fathom that when you ask what the oil change intervals are, they have no idea.”

The Boston report shows why fire departments need dedicated, certified maintenance personnel. If your department doesn’t have an adequate fleet maintenance program, start one.

If you’re not sure where to begin, start with state EVT associations. Seventeen states have EVT associations that meet monthly, bi-monthly or annually for training and education. Jon Coutts, president of the Wisconsin Association of Emergency Vehicle Technicians, directed me to a very active forum where EVTs can exchange information and ideas.

The state associations also offer certification testing twice a year. Since 1989, hundreds of mechanics have earned the right to be called emergency vehicle technicians through the Emergency Vehicle Technician Certification Commission. The EVTCC currently offers more than 20 different levels of testing specific to the vehicles and systems unique to emergency services and, according to commission manager Sherry Wilde, new tests are in the works.

The next nationwide EVT certification test is schedule for Saturday, June 6. Registration is required 21 days in advance. For details, go to www.evtcc.org.

If you’re still not convinced your shop personnel need certification, you might want to budget a trip to Orlando next year. The Fire Department Safety Officers Association’s annual apparatus symposium will include a mock trial with a real judge and two real attorneys as they try a case that revolves around an apparatus accident.

Safe apparatus starts with an educated EVT.

Do you remember the old television commercials for the financial advice firm EF Hutton, which had as a tag line, “When EF Hutton talks, everyone listens”? A more contemporary twist on that tag line would be, “When the nation’s largest wireless operator outlines a plan for the proposed nationwide broadband communications network for first responders, everyone in Washington should pay attention.”

Yesterday at the International Wireless Communications Exposition, keynote speaker Steve Zipperstein, Verizon Wireless‘ vice president of legal affairs and general counsel, outlined a plan for the network that would give the 10 MHz of airwaves in the 700-MHz band, the so-called D Block, to public safety, rather than auction it to commercial operators. The spectrum would be allocated in the form of local, regional and state licenses. This is an interesting about-face. Recall that the wireless carriers, led by their lobbying group, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, were adamantly against giving the D Block to first responders when the notion of this network first was floated three years ago at IWCE by Cyren Call’s Morgan O’Brien.

Under Verizon Wireless plan, agencies would figure out their individual needs and then contract with commercial operators through a bid process to build out the network, leveraging existing infrastructure, which would save considerable time and money, Zipperstein said. He noted that some estimates put the cost of building such a network from scratch at $60 billion or more.

The result would be a network of networks that would leverage IP technology to enable interoperable communications when major incidents requiring a multi-jurisdictional response occur. Also, public safety would have enough spectrum to meet its broadband needs, and have local and/or regional control over the airwaves.

Here’s the best part: Verizon Wireless wants the taxpayers to foot the bill. Zipperstein called on Congress to create a stand-alone stimulus bill dedicated to public safety interoperable broadband communications. He said that interoperable communications should no longer be treated as “some adjunct project,” but rather as a national security imperative, on the same level as “procuring aircraft carriers and fighter jets.”

I couldn’t agree more with this position. I have written at several junctures that the federal government should be looking at this network as it did the interstate highway system a half century ago. Of course, the difference between now and then is that today much of the highway already has been built, which is a huge advantage. Congress has proved that it can find money for initiatives when it wants to, even in a very tough economy. It needs to make this network a priority and fund it accordingly.

An important aspect of this plan is that the company, which authored it, wield incredible lobbying power on Capitol Hill. Harlin McEwen, the chairman of the Public Safety Spectrum Trust, which currently holds public safety’s 10 MHz of broadband airwaves in the 700-MHz band, asked during the keynote session whether the first responder sector could count Verizon Wireless and its lobbyists to be supportive should it embrace this new approach and lobby for it in Washington. Zipperstein didn’t hesitate in saying yes.

The underlying message delivered yesterday by the most powerful force in the commercial wireless sector is this: “If you want this network to become reality, here’s how to get it done.” It’s a message that public safety, as well as federal lawmakers and policy-makers, need to hear, loud and clear.

What do you think? Tell us in the comment box below.

The report “Maintenance Practices Assessment for the Boston Fire Department” should be mandatory reading for every fire chief, city manager and fleet supervisor across North America. As EVTs have told me, Boston’s haphazard approach to vehicle maintenance is what happens when chiefs and city managers fail to accept responsibility for emergency vehicle safety.

“The report speaks for itself and it’s not very good,” said Paul Lauria, president of Mercury Associates, the fleet-management consulting firm that produced the report. “They did a few things right, but there are a lot of things that need to be improved in the management and in the maintenance, vehicle specification and driver training.”

The fire department commissioned Maryland-based Mercury Associates after the January accident in which Lt. Kevin Kelley after the brakes on a ladder truck reportedly failed. Mercury Associates is an employee-owned firm that advises fleet owners — from Fortune 500 companies to public safety and municipal agencies — on ways to improve the management and operation of their fleets. Lauria conducted the assessment over a two-day period and delivered the report.

“I have been a consultant for 25 years, and for a city its size and stature, it was pretty amazing,” said Lauria. “It’s hard to fathom that when you ask what the oil change intervals are and they have no idea.”

The introduction of the report focuses on the negative versus positives because consultants were tasked with identifying “… the department’s primary goal in commissioning our review was to identify weaknesses that it needs to overcome.…

“No amount of attention, expertise or money can eliminate bad habits overnight that have developed over many years…”

The report cited the department’s lack of a professional fleet manager or professional apparatus maintenance technicians, formally defined preventive maintenance program for fire apparatus, documentation for annual inspections or oil changes reportedly performed, and inadequate driver training “other than what they receive at the fire academy, firefighters receive on the job training.”

“Their Local 718 has been relatively quiet,” Lauria said. “It’s hard to imagine that they are the ones that got firefighters exempt from getting CDLs.”

The report also includes specific recommendations for the department to make within the next three to 18 months.

Lauria and his staff frequently serve as expert witnesses, and he said that if a private citizen had been killed instead of a firefighter, the Boston Fire Department potentially would have been liable for millions of dollars. “A plaintiff would have them dead to rights,” he said

Whether a citizen or a firefighter, no one should die because of a faulty or poorly maintained emergency vehicle.

Recently, I attended an 80-hour instructor course for my instructor position at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center. I’ve been a fire service instructor since 1986 and have been fortunate to teach many topics in many locations across this great country, but I learned a great deal from this program, for which success is based on preparation and delivery of a 50-minute class presentation.

Though the Instructor Training Course is listed in the course catalog as an 80-hour class — there’s a week in between the first and second week to work on your presentation — students put in those 80 hours and another 40 plus during the off week. The presentation has to come from a narrative outline that provides the details for every word you want to speak, activity you want to conduct, and questions you want to pose to your students, in this case, the rest of the class. The goal is to produce a teaching outline that any qualified instructor could use to present the class and have the students receive a consistent “product.”

Facilitators Tim Melton and Melissa Pittman, who are members of the GPSTC Instructional Services Division, run a tight ship and earned the course its reputation as the premiere instructor training course in the state. The first day of class, Tim delivered a remark that had a huge affect on me and my cohorts and really let us know what he and Melissa expected.

He introduced us to the acronym HBO/HSO: Help a Brother Out/Help a Sister Out. Tim told us that those terms would take on meaning and significance as we went along and he was absolutely right. He meant supporting each other as we learned and that concept manifested itself in many ways:

• During our two-minute impromptu presentation from a range of topics that “arrived” to you when you caught the small soccer ball that was tossed to you while you were at the front of the class.


• During our practice deliveries of the five-minute introduction section of our individual presentations in front of our colleagues who then provided critical analysis of your work for improvements.


• During the dress rehearsals of the full 50-minute presentation where fellow students held up flash cards showing how much time you still had to finish on time! And when they asked impromptu questions to slow you down because you were going too fast with your delivery.


• During the actual presentation, the full delivery of your presentation that absolutely had to fall between 45 and 55 minutes.

Since my successful completion of that course — the hardest class I’ve ever been in, including the sixth grade with Sister Loretta — I’ve notice several things while delivering training programs. Many of my student populations at GPSTC include a broad cross-section of knowledge and experience — firefighters just starting their careers learning alongside experienced company officers and chief officers. Sometimes those more experienced folks speak up and actively participate in classroom discussion and sometimes they don’t.

When they do, everyone in the class has an opportunity to learn, including me; their silence is a missed opportunity for all of us. I have a term for that meaningful participate: they’re actively present. Actively present means that a student is not only there to listen and learn, but to actively engage in group activities, ask pertinent questions — which are probably in the minds of the less-experienced students, they just don’t know it — and add relevant personal experiences to supplement those of the instructor. Actively present students enrich the learning experience for everyone including the instructor: Help a Brother Out, Help a Sister Out.

Many training programs use post-course student evaluations to assess the student’s attitudes and opinions about the training that they just completed; such evaluations are required for all classes conducted at GPSTC. I provide the student evaluations to my students at the beginning of each class and encourage them to not only fill out the “check” boxes, but also to use the space provided for written comments to record their thoughts as we progress through the course. Many students — new and old alike — don’t take advantage of this as another opportunity to be actively present. These surveys are an excellent opportunity to provide feedback to instructors and training program managers so that they can keeping doing the good things and make improvements where needed: another example of HBO/HSO.

Next time you’re in a training class or educational program, think about how actively present you are during your time in the classroom or on the drill ground. Help a Brother Out, Help a Sister Out

Some fire departments take customer service to new and amazing levels and provide interesting stories in the process.

Take, for example, the Glendale (Ariz.) Fire Department. Its Crisis Response Program program is made up of dedicated volunteers with backgrounds in EMS, behavioral health and crisis intervention. In addition to assisting firefighters, the team provides immediate crisis intervention, referrals and resources to victims, families and witnesses after a traumatic event.

The newest member of the team is a 2-year-old yellow Labrador named Topaz. Topaz was adopted from Paws with a Cause, an organization that trains various service animals for people with disabilities. The organization originally trained Topaz as a seizure-response dog. He then was familiarized with typical fire service sites (turn outs, sirens, air packs, etc.) before being placed in service.

According to his handler and Human Services Division Manager Lynette Jelinek, Topaz can actually sense when people are frightened or grieving. “The dog helps build a therapeutic bridge between the customer and the crisis interventionist,” she said. “Topaz can lighten the mood and bring a calming effect to a situation that may seem out of control.”

Topaz made headlines after a school bus transporting 40 middle-school students collided with two vehicles. Only one student required hospital transport; the rest were taken to the school on a different bus. The students found Topaz and the rest of the CRT waiting at the school, and they quickly shifted their focus from the accident to dog.

“Topaz can be a distraction for people to help divert their attention to good things and get back to critical thinking,” Jelinek said.

Topaz has comforted elderly and children after a sudden death and brings smiles to firefighters’ faces.

“He was going to be a good tool, but we had no idea how much he would contribute,” Jelinek said. “What Topaz can do in a few seconds or minutes that would us much longer. The police have had crisis-response dogs and used pet therapy, but it was out of the box for a fire department.”

Research shows that Animal Assisted Crisis Intervention can increase interaction with crisis interventionists, emotional expression, trust, memory recall and a host of other benefits. A trained dog also can decrease heart and pulse rates, alleviate confusion and depression.

Jelinek said that when Topaz puts on his crisis response vest, he knows it is time to work. “Topaz has a schedule much like any city employee a 40-hour work week, and is on call for critical fire department calls.”

Dalmatians have long been associated with fire departments because back in the old days of steam engines, the dogs had a calming effect on the horses. “Now here we are using dogs to calm the community,” she said.

There is no shortage of watershed events in U.S. history, events that changed the course of history. Two that come immediately to mind are Colonel Jimmy Doolittle’s daring bombing raid on Tokyo, which shifted momentum to the U.S. in the Pacific during World War II, and President John F. Kennedy’s declaration in 1961 that America would place a man on the moon before the end of the decade, which delivered a sharp blow to the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The common denominator between these events is that in both cases the conventional wisdom was that it couldn’t be done. In Doolittle’s case, bombers had never before flown the distance they would have to fly to bomb Japan, more than 2000 miles. Also, none of the raiders had ever launched from an aircraft carrier before. In Kennedy’s case, America was well behind the Soviets in the space race; in fact, nine months would pass after the president’s declaration before the U.S. put its first astronaut into orbit.

Despite all of this, both of these previously unthinkable events not only occurred, but they did so with stunning impact. It makes me wonder whether another seemingly unthinkable event might one day be possible: satellite technology providing the basis for public-safety communications.

Imagine the impact that would have: no more terrestrial infrastructure to build and maintain; no more network outages because infrastructure has been rendered inoperable by natural or man-made disasters; and, perhaps, drastically reduced coverage and interference issues.

Of course, there are limitations inherent to satellite communications in their present form that preclude their use for mission-critical communications. For example, weather can wreak havoc with satellite signals, the so-called rain fade phenomenon. It’s the reason many people continue to get their TV service from more-expensive cable providers rather than the satellite providers.

However, satellite technology providers are finding solutions to weather-related interference, according to George Choquette, senior vice president of engineering for Hughes Network Systems. Choquette said Hughes can control how much downlink power its satellites transmit on a spot-beam basis to overcome the effects of weather.

“We get radar data from the National Weather Service and other sources, and when weather comes into an area, we step up the transmit power,” he said. “It’s pretty cool. Now, when the 30,000-foot thunder cloud comes in and it’s hailing, [communications cease]. But you can effectively use this technique with much more severe storms than any conventional satellite system.”

Latency and jitter are taboos in public-safety voice and video communications. But Hughes has addressed the latter, according to Choquette, by engineering into its system both constant-rate and on-demand bandwidth. “The satellite keeps track of how many of the connections are active at any particular time, and gives out slot-by-slot, packet-by-packet bandwidth to these terminals to service them,” he said.

In other words, the satellite can be programmed from the ground to allocate necessary bandwidth to public-safety terminals, essentially taking it from the general commercial pool when needed. “Not only is each terminal a router, the satellite is a router,” Choquette said.

Given the pace of technology evolution, it seems reasonable to think that the satellite technology developers will figure out a way to address other shortcomings, such as the fact satellite signals don’t penetrate buildings particularly well, which would be of utmost concern to first responders, particularly firefighters.

Hughes, SkyTerra (formerly Mobile Satellite Ventures) and TerraStar have launched, or will soon launch, giant satellites—“birds,” as they are known in the industry—that will allow form factors for satellite communications antennas and devices on the ground to shrink. Given that, let’s say, hypothetically, that these smaller-form-factor antennas are placed in every apparatus a fire department has. Would it be too far-fetched to think that, in the future, satellite communications from a remote command post or a dispatch center could be received by these in-vehicle satellite antennas, relayed through a gateway to an in-vehicle land mobile radio system that would then transmit the signal to firefighters on a peer-to-peer basis or via an in-building system?

I’m not an engineer, and I’m sure that some of our readers who are will scoff at this suggestion. But before you say it can’t be done, think back to Doolittle and Kennedy. And then think back to a decade ago. Did anyone 10 years ago think that IP-based communications ever would be used in the public-safety sector, for any reason? Or that satellite handsets one day would be in form factors similar to today’s cellular handsets and PDAs? Talk about the unthinkable.

What do you think? Tell us in the comment box below.

Communities everywhere are confronting difficult budget decisions the likes of which many leaders have never faced. Not since the early 1980s and in some cases the mid-70s have so many communities faced the combined problems of rising costs and falling revenues.

Mayors, commissioners, city managers and finance directors have finally succumbed to the realization that the public’s priorities and ability to pay for them are on a collision course. Unfortunately, many chiefs and unions have not yet arrived at that point.

Avoiding a collision requires someone to yield. In most cases, this means adjusting our priorities or finding altogether new ones since few state or local governments have the authority to fund deficit spending on operations. Even with the recently passed federal stimulus package, most communities have no choice but to cut back services in the near term.

This reveals the root of the problem facing fire and emergency services. Following the last big round of recessions in the mid-70s and early 80s — the unusually mild ones we experienced in the early 1990s and 2000s were little more than speed-bumps compared to the ditch we are now in — state and local governments have adopted many reforms to improve government efficiency and accountability. Relatively few of these interventions, however, have found their way into fire and emergency services delivery.

Now that is not to say such reforms did not have an effect on us. As jurisdictions looked harder at the way they delivered public safety services, chiefs and unions — prone to a sort of siege mentality around budgeting — formed an unnatural, if not unholy, alliance to set national standards and develop accreditation models.

The combined effect of the apparent labor/management compact and reasonably stable budget environments made it unattractive for communities to do anything other than go along without giving up. The result: Few jurisdictions recognized NFPA 1710, but most found it worthwhile to grudgingly accept recommendations that advanced their agencies toward compliance anyway. To recap, from the labor/management perspective using standards in place of sound reasoning about local conditions was not only simple, it was often successful.

In light of the current economic situation, our definition of success now requires close and careful scrutiny. Who benefits more from staffing and response time standards, firefighters or the citizens they serve? Who suffers when libraries close instead of fire stations? Which capability can the community more easily replace if government no longer delivers a service?

Benjamin Franklin, recognized by many as the father of the American fire service for his founding of a fire company funded by fire insurance premiums, first established schools, libraries, and other civic institutions. I suspect he could scarcely have imagined the fire service as it exists today. By the same token, I am supremely confident he saw investments in literacy, education, and civic participation to be his most important and lasting legacies, as indeed they are.

Franklin’s own writings underscore this sentiment: “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Clearly, our reverence for Franklin does not spring from our acceptance of his sage advice or we would not so easily marginalize or even ignore his other words of wisdom, like “A penny saved is a penny earned” and “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” You get the picture.

Rather than looking for ways to bolster our arguments in support of more firefighters and shorter response times — the current NIST study comes to mind — we should be looking for ways to rebuild the community’s capacity to care for itself. I am not talking about a return to purely volunteer fire companies in every city, but I am thinking about ways we can support badly needed reforms in the way we deliver and pay for health service for instance.

As the current economic crisis plays out we would do well to look at some of the genuine innovations spawned by the last big dips we faced almost 30 years ago. These included the creation of fire investigation task forces to combat arson, fire service involvement in the model code development process, a renewed commitment to fire and life safety education and the creation of new school-based curricula, improvements in personal protective equipment, new radio and computer-aided dispatch systems, lightweight response vehicles, and the introduction of fire service-based emergency medical services. All of these innovations occurred in large measure because of — not in spite of — meager resources and tough budget conditions.

This all suggests the time has come to take off our fire helmets and put on our thinking caps. The destiny of fire and emergency services is in our hands if only we choose to take hold of it and be creative.