Fire Chief

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.

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.

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.

The last week of the year is a good time to look back and acknowledge lessons learned from the past 12 months. Recently I looked through the 51 Command Post editorials I had written this year and I found a few questions for you to ponder when you have a quiet moment.

Scene of the Accident’s Executive Director Todd Hoffman spends a good deal of his time with fire departments, particularly volunteer departments, with his accident-scene training company. Recently Hoffman contacted me because he was concerned about a recent Occupational Safety and Health Administration ruling that will affect volunteer fire departments — that all PPE, with a few exceptions, will be provided at no cost to the employee.

Make no mistake, fire and emergency medical service is physically demanding work — always has been and always will be. Despite the technology that has made the job safer and less punishing, fighting fires still involves people lugging hose into burning buildings and carrying Mrs. Smith down two flights of stairs at 3 a.m. Over the course of a 25- or 30-year career, the small aches and pains can accumulate into larger health issues.

The Fire Department Safety Officers Association’s Annual Safety Forum was held this week in Orlando, Fla. “We’re not afraid to talk about safety,” Orange County (Fla.) Fire Chief Carl Plaugher said in his welcoming remarks. “In the fire service, we have [gotten] to the point that we’ve said ‘enough is enough’ and we’re not afraid to talk about safety.”

When my father and brothers were firefighters in the 1970s, I listened for calls about an injured firefighter on our scanner, hearing the chief called for the chaplain and the chief’s wife to pick up the injured firefighter’s wife.

My mom and I would freeze at each call. With three family members at a fire scene, the risk factor is higher. Thankfully, the department never lost a firefighter, and my two brothers since are retired safely.