Information is Power
The U.S. Fire Administration came up with an ingenious — if not necessarily original — idea: an online archive where members of the fire service can share information. Fire Prevention and Public Education Exchange aims to serve as a centralized location for national, state and local fire-prevention practices and public-education materials. I recently spoke to Chief Sandy Facinoli, Prevention & Information/National Fire Programs for the USFA, about the program and how it can help chiefs in their day-to-day decision-making.
Facinoli said the administration has been working on ways to make it easy for information across the U.S. fire service, and the new archive provides such an opportunity.
“We have noticed for some time that there are all kinds of great materials being generated nationally and regionally and it’s hard to find it all,” Facinoli said. “Sometimes it’s on the Web, sometimes it’s not. … And so our strategic plan from 2009 to 2013 included a goal to create a repository of fire-prevention and public-education materials.”
Information-sharing between leadership and those in the field can only lead to positive results. Where one department might have a lessons learned on aerial rescues at a high rise, another may have documents on how to tackle a wildfire in the wildland-urban interface. Facinoli said the USFA’s goal is to make such resources available to the fire service. If one department has a successful program, fact sheet, podcast or other media, it can be sent to the USFA for posting on its Web site.
It only makes sense that the USFA should create a forum where all of the information will be categorized and organized for all of the fire service to use. It’s long overdue. If other departments have found the best way to tackle an issue, why should another re-invent the wheel? Instead, they now can tap into the Web site and read the strategies that were successful to other departments.
“Anything that will be helpful to our fire service in helping reducing fire loss is what we are looking for,” she said. “We just want to be a conduit of sharing the information from one source to another. We are not in the middle of loaning the materials but hope the exchange allows collaboration across the fire-safety community.”
October 6th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Good piece Mary! Very timely and pertinent and should become a great tool for information sharing in the fire service community. I’m going to ensure that all our Fire & EMS departments across the U.S. Army know that it’s now out there.
Robert
Leave a Comment