At a recent conference in Washington, D.C., attendees discussed recent news reports about increased fire fatalities in residential homes equipped with smoke detectors.

There could be a number of reasons behind the statistics. Perhaps residents hadn’t placed detectors in the proper places or installed enough of them. Perhaps the detectors needed new batteries or were more than 10 years old and needed to be replaced.

While investigators work to determine why the smoke detectors failed to alert the occupants in fatal fires, you can do your part to prevent future tragedies by giving the gift of fire safety this holiday season. Pete Piringer, public-information officer for Montgomery County (Md.) Fire and Rescue, compiled a terrific list of fire-safe holiday gift ideas.

“Why not give a gift that can save a life and/or protect your family?” wrote Piringer.

His ideas include:

Smoke alarms. A smoke alarm should be installed on every level of a home and outside of each sleeping area. Your family is afforded the best coverage with both ionization and photoelectric technologies.

Calendars. Give a calendar with one day a month marked as smoke detector testing day, and include one day each year to remind your loved one to change the battery and vacuum the unit. Also choose two dates per year to practice home escape plans.

Fire extinguishers. Purchase a good fire extinguisher that can be recharged easily. Don’t be fooled by high-pressure door-to-door salespersons making unusual claims.

Flashlights. Encourage family members to use flashlights for emergency lighting instead of candles, to avoid the risk of fire from an open flame.

Escape ladder. This handy device will help people sleeping in a bedroom in a second or third story to escape when the primary escape route isn’t an option.

Sturdy candleholders. These can prevent tip-over when candles are lit.

Fireplace screen. A sturdy screen can keep embers out of the room.

Warm nightwear or bedding. Warm fabrics can help reduce the need for space heaters, particularly at night. Space heaters (fixed and portable) are involved in about 75% of home-heating fire deaths, and NFPA recommends they be turned off at night before going to sleep. Nightwear or bathrobes with tight-fitting sleeves will stay well away from cooking flames and hot surfaces like stove burners.

Large house numbers. Proper marking can help firefighters quickly locate a home at night in an emergency.

Carbon monoxide alarms. While these alarms won’t help keep your loved ones safe from fire, it’s something you should consider for home safety. Often called the silent killer, carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless gas formed when fuels such as natural gas, oil and wood burn incompletely.

Batteries. Batteries in smoke detectors need to be changed annually. And they make wonderful stocking stuffers.

In addition to Piringer’s list, one of my favorite fire-safe gifts is a battery-operated candle. Available through the Congressional Fire Services Institute and at many hardware stores, pillar candles with batteries are almost indistinguishable from the live-fire pillar candles.

The last fire-safe gift you can give your family is your expertise. Take time to make sure the homes you visit over the holidays have working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Also make sure loved ones have an exit plan and know where to meet in case of an emergency.

On behalf of the FIRE CHIEF staff, I wish you a safe and happy holiday season!

By Charles Jennings

The U.S. property-insurance industry is a behemoth. According to the Insurance Information Institute, the industry collected $448 billion in premiums in 2007. As a powerful industry, it has a financial interest in how local governments spend their fire-service budgets. Presumably, higher expenditures by local governments could relate to lower losses for the insurance industry. The insurance industry’s chief tool for imposing its will on local fire services is the Fire Suppression Rating Schedule.

The Fire Suppression Rating Schedule persists as a relic of bygone days when insurance was a speculative and risky industry and catastrophic fires were commonplace. The insurance industry used to be actively involved in fire protection, operating the Fire Patrol, once an elite force predating paid fire services in urban centers. Long ago, the insurance industry socialized the costs of local fire protection and passed it along to taxpayers rather than putting its money where its mouth is. Using the FSRS and its predecessor, the Grading Schedule, it continues to impose its will on the fire service.

Today, the schedule serves as a convenient crutch for local fire services to justify resources. Despite the fine print saying that the schedule is not designed as a management tool, the wink between the fire services and the insurance industry continues to enable the schedule to exert undue influence over local decision-making. When challenged about expenditures, fire chiefs speak in reverent tones about the schedule and implications for insurance rates if its time-honored dictates aren’t followed.

Numerous studies have questioned whether compliance with the schedule is correlated with better fire services or lower losses. In the wake of the deaths in the Class 1 Charleston (S.C.) Fire Department, an embarrassed insurance industry trotted out proposed revisions to the schedule, which hasn’t been updated since 1980. In an effort to appease the fire service and shore up support for an out-of-touch and increasingly irrelevant property insurance underwriting tool, the ISO is proposing to revise the schedule to include such subjective criteria as firefighter health and safety and compliance with numerous NFPA standards long-championed by many in the fire service. There’s only one problem: these changes only make the schedule more arbitrary and more intrusive into local decision making for fire services.

Lacking the ability to base decisions on analysis of local fire experience, and with a vacuum of standards on which to base local decisions, the FSRS fulfilled a need just after the turn of the 20th century. In some sense, the ISO FSRS formed a template for American fire service deployment. As technology advanced, that template became wildly biased toward controlling insured fire losses and conflagration avoidance. Uninsured property and life were not explicitly part of the equation.

The result was an over reliance on manual fire suppression and equipment. No matter how much money is spent, the results don’t seem to change. The United States has reaped the terrible consequences of the unchecked bias toward property protection in an unenviable record of fire deaths and losses while public education, fire officer training and adoption of fire protection systems have been left to beg for resources.

The ISO FSRS predates breathing apparatus, apparatus windshields, NFIRS, computers, and widespread adoption of telephones for reporting fires. It is high time the FSRS goes the way of the hose jacket, and end up in the display case in the museum with the filter masks, cotton duck turnout coats and life nets.

The FSRS has degenerated from a tool to avoid conflagrations to a tool for justifying resources and equipment — a tool that benefits a particular industry. Enough is enough. It is time that fire service leaders step up and be willing to be judged based on their performance, and not on checking the boxes on an arbitrary standard, whether self-imposed or dictated by a powerful commercial interest. It is time we are judged based on outcomes, and not merely on effort, or good intentions.

If the ISO wants to help the fire service — it would increase the price differential for unsprinklered or unprotected properties and publish fire losses by community against local expenditures and community characteristics. Everything else is just a continuation of an outdated, paternalistic and flawed system.

Charles Jennings, Ph.D., MIFireE, CFO, is an associate professor in the Department of Protection Management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. He was formerly deputy commissioner of Public Safety for the city of White Plains, N.Y. He has served as a commissioner, officer and active member of fire departments for over 20 years. He does research and consults on fire service deployment and policy issues.

Not too many years ago, the primary rationale for installing sprinklers was property protection, pure and simple. At about the time firefighters came to realize that people weren’t dying in buildings protected by fire sprinklers, they began promoting them in earnest almost everywhere.

As American firefighters are celebrating victory in their efforts to get provisions requiring fire sprinklers in one- and two-family dwellings into the International Residential Code, their colleagues in Australia are caught up in a much different fight with the building industry and its regulatory overseers over fire sprinklers. In Australia, at the moment at least, the fight is not about whether to install sprinklers but whether or not sprinklers must have water supplies sufficient to continue operating after people have escaped a building.

One might wonder how something like this happens. And yes one should!

Australians know better than most what a terrible foe fire can be. The country’s rapidly expanding urban areas remain under almost constant threat from wildfires in or near the urban interface. Persistent drought has compounded the pressures of urbanization forcing most communities to restrict water usage at least part of the year. At the same time, faced with rising costs of providing fire service and increasing construction costs, Australians have embraced regulatory reform eagerly.

Australians, like Americans, have an overwhelmingly positive view of firefighters and place a premium on safety and security by supporting increased wages and improved job security for them. Like their U.S. counterparts, Australian firefighters have aggressively promoted the installation of fire sprinklers, arguing like we have that these systems provide both highly effective and reasonably efficient protection.

Limited resources, both in terms of money and water, but mostly money, have forced Australians to wonder whether they can really have their cake and eat it too. If life safety is the paramount goal of building regulation, and firefighters support fire sprinklers as a means of saving lives, then why not rely on firefighters to save the building once everyone’s out? After all, isn’t that what they are paid to do?

Clearly, it is not that simple. Fire sprinklers do save lives: those of firefighters included. But now Australian firefighters are being forced to argue that their lives depend upon fire sprinklers, and that they cannot afford to fight fires in buildings equipped with sprinklers if they cannot be relied upon to continue operating effectively. This brings us back to where we started, the real benefit of sprinklers is and always has been their ability to contain fires at or near the point of origin, not the building or block of origin.

Firefighters are right to recognize the life saving value of automatic fire sprinklers, but emphasizing life safety as the paramount rationale for sprinklers has a down side when people feel compelled to choose between their lives and the lives of firefighters purely on account of cost. Fire sprinklers make firefighting easier and more effective by protecting property. Without the property protection argument for sprinklers, we may discover the true cost of getting too much of a good thing is a misplaced reliance on firefighters and unreasonable expectations of what we can achieve.

The evening of Dec. 1, 1958, is planted firmly in my memory. I was sitting in my dad’s upholstery shop doing my homework and listening to the radio. The news reports told of a fire at Chicago’s Our Lady of Angels School and the increasing number of bodies being removed. The radio announcer also read a list of hospitals where parents could find injured children and victims’ bodies.

On that cold December day 50 years ago, 92 school children and three nuns were burned to death; the fire’s origin remains unknown.

In 1996, David Cowan and John Kuenster wrote, “To Sleep with the Angels.” Their book details the story about the Our Lady of Angels School fire and the significant changes to fire codes and schools not only in Chicago, but across the nation.

The Our Lady of Angels School fire is called “the fire that no one can forget.” And that is why it was so surprising to hear that, as a result of a lawsuit involving a child falling from a school’s window, the Chicago Board of Education has installed bars across windows of Chicago public schools.

We first heard about the Otis Elementary School’s barred windows from a coworker whose friend works at the school. Classrooms on the fourth floor have a mixture of students, including disabled children, and only one door. The school’s teachers were concerned about an emergency and took these concerns to the principal; they were told that the bars were to keep kids from falling out the windows.

My co-worker asked me about fire codes and schools and I deferred to my contacts at the Chicago Fire Department. A Chicago fire marshal soon appeared at the classroom and pronounced the bars on the window as illegal. The bars could not be opened from the inside or outside, and yes, would prohibit firefighters from entering or students exiting through the windows.

The Chicago Fire Department has since stated that it was waiting for the fire inspector’s official report from the fire inspectors. In the meantime, we’ve heard of two more Chicago public schools that also have bars across the windows.

Ironically, I recently received a review copy of “Remembrances of the Angels” by John Kuenster. It will be published later this month and includes interviews with 28 Our Lady of Angles School survivors, family members of the victims, firefighters, police and reporters. I called the publisher and advised him of the latest twist of fate and school security.

We frequently hear that history repeats itself, but this is one history that must not. Schools must deal with security and access issues to protect students, but emergency evacuation also is critical.

When was the last time you walked through the schools in your area? With the 50th anniversary of this tragedy, why not take a team through every school — public or private, pre-school or university — and review the safety procedures for students and teachers. Be proactive and educate teachers about fire safety in classrooms.

Another common saying goes, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” If, God forbid, history does repeat itself, all of us — firefighter, school teacher, parent and community members — will suffer the guilt for not doing everything we could to keep the children safe.

God bless the sleeping angels.

Happy Halloween! While ghosts and goblins mingle with pint-sized Supermen and Cinderellas, it’s a good time to go through my notebook and offer you an assortment of tricks or treats.

Feedback. Since the Charleston sofa store fire that killed nine firefighters in June 2007, the Insurance Services Office has reached out to several national fire service organizations. In an attempt to update its Public Protection Classification program, ISO is “embarking on a project to review and, if warranted, update the content of the Fire Suppression Rating Schedule.” Consequently, ISO is looking for your feedback on the scope and feasibility of possible revisions.

According to its Web site, the list of items being considered are fairly broad and include more references to NFPA standards. ISO also lists reviewing recognition of residential fire sprinklers, using GIS, and eliminating the current ISO equipment inventory and replacing it with equipment listed in NFPA 1901.

Keep in mind that ISO is a $4 billion private-sector company that makes about $50 million in revenue from communities and the fire service by selling the information they have obtained from them to insurance companies. Charleston’s ISO 1 rating was certainly called into question many times during and since the investigations.

ISO has reached out to the Center for Public Safety Excellence and its Commission on Fire Accreditation International and the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Hopefully, ISO will upgrade its classification program and perhaps someday, even give credit for Class A foam and CAFS (as it does in Texas).

Scary. At the recent Fire & Emergency Manufacturers & Services Association meeting in Tucson, Ariz., Deputy Chief Ed Nied and University of Arizona’s Dr. Kelly Reynolds talked about their research on infectious diseases in fire departments.

The number-one source of bacteria in a fire station was the couch; next was the television remote control. Both Nied and Reynolds encouraged firefighters to use hand sanitizers (without skin-drying alcohol) for themselves and disinfectants to clean surfaces. “If it doesn’t say disinfectant, it is not going to kill germs,” said Reynolds. They also said to remove carpets from stations.

For cleaning fire stations and equipment, Reynolds recommended downloading the EPA’s Registered Products Effective Against Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus faecalis or faecium.

Help. A local training officer is looking for a copy of the American Heat video tape on the Bryson Street fire in Philadelphia that killed three firefighters. The officer has been on a quest to find a copy of the tape for a class he is teaching. The Fire Emergency Television Network promised him a tape, but closed its doors for good earlier this month. If someone has a copy to share, please send me an e-mail.

Question. We’re looking for volunteer fire departments’ experiences with building fire stations on small budgets, less than $100,000. Send me an e-mail

Consider. Motivational business speaker Scott Deming talked about branding at the recent FEMSA/FAMA annual meeting. Deming said every company has a brand, but also each individual has a brand. It was an amazing presentation about customer service, relationships and trust.

“As I’m getting older, I’m learning that life can change in the blink of an eye,” Deming said to conclude his presentation. “The past is over for all of us. The future is promised to none of us. All we get is this one [life]. Let’s make this one an experience no one will ever forget.”

Have some fun this Halloween. Be safe and go for the chocolate!

By Alex Cohilas

At 2:15 a.m. on March 2, 2007, Clayton County (Ga.) Fire Department Medic Four, an ALS ambulance staffed by Paramedic/Sgt. Darcy Blow and Firefighter/EMT LaQuinn Walker, was dispatched to a routine sick call. After assessing the patient, the unit reported to dispatch that it was transporting one female patient to Crawford Long Hospital, some 20 miles away. The dispatcher acknowledged the transmission, entered the time and made a mental note that Medic Four would be reporting arrival in about 15 minutes. Then, this came over the radio:

“Medic Four to Dispatch! We have been involved in a head-on collision with a wrong-way driver on I-75 in the city of Atlanta near Turner Field. The ambulance has overturned and we’re injured. Send help!”

Shift Supervisor/Capt. Bill Lowe was startled from his sleep around 3 a.m., hearing screams over the department’s EMS channel. Since the location was inside Atlanta, Clayton County’s 911 dispatch center alerted Atlanta police and fire and Grady Memorial EMS that firefighters were in trouble. Three of Clayton County’s four on-duty fire shift supervisors and two Clayton County ALS ambulances also responded to the location seven miles inside Atlanta city limits.

As Lowe drove at high speed to the accident scene, Medic Four’s crew kept trying to broadcast updates, but the signal was too garbled to understand. Clayton County’s 911 Center announced, “Atlanta police is on the scene reporting one fatality.” As Lowe approached the accident scene, an Atlanta police officer was directing all northbound I-75 traffic to exit the interstate before the accident scene. Lowe’s marked fire department Crown Victoria with emergency lights activated was allowed to approach the scene.

All five traffic lanes were covered in debris, and a full-size SUV was destroyed and resting against the median wall. Medic Four was overturned and resting on its passenger side as a dozen police officers, firefighters and paramedics worked at the back door trying to remove the injured firefighters and their patient. As Lowe approached the back of the ambulance, he could hear Blow yell, “Captain, we’re ok! We’re trying to get our patient extricated from the wreckage.”

Medic Four’s two firefighters and their original patient were extricated from the overturned ambulance. Grady EMS took responsibility for treating and continuing the transport of Medic Four’s original patient who had suffered serious injuries from the collision. Firefighter Blow and Walker both sustained bruises and lacerations from the accident and were transported by Clayton County Medic One to the hospital. The wrong-way driver was dead on the scene and trapped in his SUV.

I serve the dual-roles as both county fire chief and county emergency management director. I was the on-call executive staff chief. In Clayton County, the executive staff chiefs rotate being available for consultation if the four on-duty shift supervisors (two battalion chiefs and two captains) encounter unusual or serious issues. Whenever the phone rings late at night or early in the morning, it’s rarely good news.

As I was given an initial briefing, I started mentally organizing my actions. I feared for the health and safety of the firefighters. I was standing on the emergency room ambulance ramp, with others firefighters, when the ambulance arrived. After the doctor had completed his initial exam and I was satisfied that their medical needs were being met, I left the hospital to assess the accident scene. The two injured firefighters would be treated and released after a few hours of observation.

My initial view of the accident scene left me aghast at the devastation. The police’s lead accident-reconstruction expert’s initial findings were that Medic Four’s firefighters were completely clear of any fault in the accident. The investigator their lives were probably saved because they both had their seat belts on. The firefighter riding in the patient compartment providing patient care was most fortunate. The only warning he got was hearing his partner scream and then the ambulance rolled onto its right side and slammed onto the pavement. The patient remained strapped to the ambulance stretcher with a five-point restraint harness and the stretcher remained bolted to the ambulance frame.

The Clayton County Fire Department has a mandatory seat belt usage policy. Officers are responsible to ensure that all personnel are seated and belted before the apparatus can move. Furthermore, as an element of the department’s continuous quality improvement committee, all ambulance stretcher straps were recently upgraded to a five-point restraint harness system to provide patients more protection. Clearly the emphasis on seat belt use and driver awareness saved the lives of both firefighters and their patient.

Medic Four’s close call was discussed in Clayton’s 13 fire stations over the next few weeks, and firefighters went to the county’s impound lot to view the damage to the ambulance first-hand. There was much discussion of just how lucky the department was not to lose fellow firefighters.

In the aftermath of the accident, every Clayton County Fire Department employee, sworn and civilian, signed the National Fire Service Seat Belt Pledge. The pledge was created by Dr. Burton A. Clark, EFO, CFO, a program specialist at the National Fire Academy, to honor the memory of Amarillo (Texas) Firefighter Brian Hunton, who died in 2005 when he fell from a responding fire apparatus. One of the long-term goals established by Clark is have all firefighters wear their seatbelts every time they occupy a vehicle — both on or off duty.

The National Fire Service Seat Belt Pledge is a simple statement that offers an opportunity to save firefighters’ lives: “I pledge to wear my seat belt whenever I am riding in a fire department vehicle. I further pledge to insure that all my brother and sister firefighters riding with me wear their seatbelts. I am making this pledge willingly; to honor Brian Hunton, my brother firefighter, because wearing seatbelts is the right thing to do.”

Download pledge forms here. The lives of two Clayton County firefighters were saved because they took a moment to buckle up on the morning of March 2, 2007.

Alex Cohilas is fire chief and emergency management director for Clayton County, Ga., where he has worked for 31 years. Prior to his appointment as fire chief, he served as the president of the department’s largest employee organization for 10 years. Additionally, he was an investigator with one of the southeast’s most prominent law firms specializing in public administration law. Cohilas is a National Fire Service Staff and Command graduate, and a frequent author of fire service management topics.

Capt. Bill Lowe and Deputy Chief Jeff Hood, both with Clayton County Fire Department, contributed to this blog.

I wonder how many chiefs actually read the reports on line-of-duty deaths or pay particular attention to the lessons learned from each fatality. If they do, how many chiefs themselves into believing that the unthinkable will never happen to them or their department?

I‘ve tried to pay close attention to several studies that have similarities with occupancies in my own area. The most recent of these is the Charleston report, issued just three months ago. But in my travels, I continue to see some of the same mistakes occurring over and over again at fire and emergency scenes.

Charleston‘s communications issues, especially in missing the multiple maydays, reinforced the need for command to operate in an environment that is free from the distractions on the fire ground and allows the IC to concentrate on the progress of the incident while evaluating the strategy and tactics being employed. I marvel at how many in command fail to use a vehicle even if it‘s just the closest engine company to run the incident. Worse yet is they continue to use portable radios from various locations on the fire ground while wearing nothing to distinguish themselves from other arriving officers. This practice is compounded when sufficient progress isn‘t being made and command tries to simultaneously work at the task level.

The Charleston report clearly indicated the failure of not having a single person in command who was attentive to monitoring the radio traffic. This lax greatly contributed to missing the maydays that in part lead to the firefighter fatalities. The problem remains that this situation is almost identical to multiple firefighter fatalities that occurred in Chesapeake, Va., and Patterson, N.J., 10 to 20 years ago. When will we get the message?

The Charleston report also re-enforced the value of a 360° walk around any structure, and the need to limit how far a crew should stretch into a big-box unsprinklered building without clear multiple exits. It emphasized that with drop ceilings it is imperative that ceiling panels be popped every few feet to check for overhead fire extension. Adopting these practices has already paid dividends to officers around the country, but many more still have paid attention to these lessons.

In one instance here in Wyoming, the initial company officer arriving at the scene of what appeared to be a smoky, heavily involved kitchen fire extending into the living room grabbed the thermal imaging camera and used it during a walk around. That brief reconnaissance made him aware that the main body of fire was in the basement, and that he was seeing the fire extending through the partially collapsed floors of each room. His tactics changed and he decided on alternate ways to attack the basement fire without endangering his crew on the weakened floors.

The bottom line is what are we learning from these tragedies? What will it take to get chiefs to alter their “business as usual” mentality; to become role models for safety to their firefighters which includes the chief wearing full PPE; to have adequate and enforceable SOG‘s and to get back to the basics of incident command. Until we heed these lessons, we have doomed more firefighters to similar tragic fates.

One of the most important votes in fire and firefighter safety will be held next week. Everyone’s participation is needed.

The fire service must participate with full force in the International Code Council’s code-development process. We must take the long-overdue historical measure and revise the 2009 edition of the International Residential Code to require residential fire sprinkler systems in all new homes at the ICC final action hearing in Minneapolis on Sept. 21.

The residential fire sprinkler requirement is on the hearing’s agenda as proposal RB-64. In the ICC process, anyone can debate the merits of a proposed code change, but only the government members (fire and building officials) can vote. It is of utmost importance for the fire service members of the ICC to attend this final action hearing. Every single vote is important; to pass, this recommendation will require support by a two-thirds majority of the voting governmental members present at the meeting.

All of the major fire service organizations in our country made history by pledging their full support for the movement to require residential fire sprinklers in one- and two-family dwellings. In its resolution dated Feb. 14, the International Association of Fire Chiefs declared its support for requiring residential fire sprinklers in new one- and two-family dwellings and town homes.

Under the proactive leadership of U.S. Fire Administrator Greg Cade, the USFA clearly stated its stance on this issue in its USFA Position Paper–Residential Fire Sprinklers:

“It is the position of the U.S. Fire Administration that all citizens should be protected against death, injury, and property loss resulting from fire in their residence. All homes should be equipped with both smoke alarms and automatic fire sprinklers, and all families should have and practice an emergency escape plan. The USFA fully supports all efforts to reduce the tragic toll of fire losses in this nation, including the proposed change to the International Residential Code that would require automatic sprinklers in all new residential construction.”

And during its annual conference in Las Vegas in August, the International Association of Fire Fighters voted in favor of Resolution 16 in support of the residential fire sprinklers. The IAFF recognizes the importance of residential fire sprinkler systems in protecting our communities across the land and our own firefighters.

The National Fire Protection Association’s “Fire Loss in the United States During 2006” reports that “with home fire deaths still accounting for 2,580 fire deaths or 80% of all civilian deaths, fire safety initiatives targeted at the home remain the key to any reductions in the overall fire death toll.” Similarly, the Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition claims that “installing both smoke alarms and a fire sprinkler system reduces the risk of death in a fire home by 82% relative to having neither.”

The fire service indeed knows where and on what we should be focusing our efforts. We see the target and we have both the know-how and readily available life-saving technologies, such as smoke alarms and residential fire sprinkler systems. But while 96% of homes have smoke detectors installed in them, only 2% have residential fire sprinkler systems installed.

What is holding us back? Why aren’t there residential fire sprinkler systems in all newly constructed homes? Why don‘t we put all our support behind installing such life-saving technology in all our new houses nationwide?

Installation of the residential fire sprinkler systems in all of the new homes may not have an impact on the fire losses in the more than 100 million existing homes throughout the country. But it would definitely have a long-term positive impact on the more than 1 million new homes constructed every year. And if we don‘t address this problem now, it will be in these new homes where we will be fighting the fires of tomorrow, and where we will be collecting our future fire fatalities and loss statistics.

Change will only come about through mass participation in the established process. By participating in the ICC final action hearing next week in Minneapolis, we in the fire service will have a unique opportunity to take a monumental step in addressing the root of the fire problem in our country, the home fires. To succeed, we must face the opposition with full force. It is time for the fire service to stand up and be accounted for.

The ICC hearing will begin Sept. 20, at the Minneapolis Convention Center. The agenda can be downloaded here.

The fire service takes ladders for granted — until one fails. Boyd Cole saw too many aerial ladder problems as a volunteer firefighter. Consequently, he spent his career raising industry awareness and advocating safer ladders for firefighters to climb and crawl on.

Firefighters lost a good friend this week when Boyd died in Lincoln, Calif., after a brief but tough fight with acute myelogenous leukemia. He was 75.

In the early ’60s, Boyd was a fire equipment salesman and volunteer firefighter in Rancho Cordova, Calif. Wearing both hats, he saw the need for safer ladders and standardized testing for those ladders. Boyd started National Testing in 1978 and went on to work for Underwriters Laboratories from 1981 until he retired in 1996.

During his time with UL, Cole tirelessly worked for research and standardized testing of ladders. He traveled extensively to investigate and improve ladders and aerials for the fire service. Boyd also was a popular presenter on ladder technology and testing, speaking at hundreds of seminars and workshops across North America.

I first worked with Boyd in the early ’90s through the Emergency Vehicle Technician Certification Commission and the IAFC‘s Apparatus Maintenance Section. As the seasoned member of the team, the well-dressed Cole had an extraordinary way of clearing the political hurdles and getting to the point. He always had simple answers for complicated questions.

Whenever I saw Boyd at a trade show or a conference, I anticipated getting the third degree: What was I doing? What wasn‘t I doing that I should be doing? Why not? Boyd held everyone accountable for improving some aspect of the fire industry.

Boyd was a doer, not a talker. He served on numerous NFPA standards committees including 1500, Fire Department Occupational Safety and Health Program; 1901, Automotive Fire Apparatus; 1904, Aerial Ladder and Elevating Platform Apparatus; 1914, Testing for Fire Department Aerial Devices; 1921, Portable Pumps; 1931, Manufacturer’s Design of Fire Department Ground Ladders; 1932, Use, Maintenance, and Service Testing of In-Service Fire Department Ground Ladders; and 1971, 1972, 1973, relating to turnout gear.

For 10 years, Boyd also chaired the committee for NFPA 1071, Emergency Vehicle Technician Professional Qualifications. He supported and recognized the work of the emergency vehicle technicians and never missed an Apparatus Maintenance Section workshop.

Boyd is survived by his high-school sweetheart and wife of 57 years, Betty, and their six children, including three firefighter sons and one Air Force police officer daughter.

Boyd Cole climbed many ladders and aerials in his career, demanding improvements to ladder technology and recognition for the guys in the shops. This week, he reached new heights.

On any given day as United States Fire Administrator, I receive an abundance of information regarding the nation’s fire service. As one can imagine, some of the information is good — and some is tragic.

It is the information I have been receiving over the past weeks which motivates me to comment today regarding the use — or more importantly, the lack of use — of seatbelts. It is a tragedy when we lose a firefighter to a fire; it‘s a national fire service tragedy and embarrassment when we lose firefighters from vehicle ejections.

This is something we can put an immediate stop to. Each and everyone one of us owns this problem. We are each responsible for the actions we take, or don‘t take. We are each responsible for stopping these preventable losses from ever occurring

Is riding fire apparatus unbuckled an act of bravery? What will you tell the survivors of a firefighter lost simply because they would not buckle up? What will the burden be of the survivors during future graduations, weddings and other significant life events be, knowing their firefighter could have shared it all by taking the simple step of buckling up? As company officers and supervisors, how could you possibly leave a station without your firefighters strapped in? I ask you today as fire service members, what part of firefighting is so important that you must be unbuckled riding on fire apparatus? What part of the mission of the fire service is so important that we allow firefighters to travel (by fire vehicles or POVs) without being securely belted into their seats? A common excuse is that riding unbuckled saves time, but in fact ejection and actions resulting from lack of seatbelt use impede the missions of your departments.

Enough is enough. Buckle up.

Several weeks ago I received word that Dallas Fire Chief Eddie Burns Sr. successfully led a department-wide effort to secure the 100% support of seatbelt usage by the members of the Dallas Fire Department. Over 1700 employees of the Dallas Fire Department have taken the simple and straight forward national seatbelt pledge to ensure that each and every member of the Dallas Fire Department is safely secured to moving fire apparatus. My sincere congratulations to the members of the Dallas Fire Department and to Chief Burns for this achievement.

Just yesterday I learned that Frederick County, Maryland has also achieved their 100% seatbelt pledge commitment. They join the growing ranks of departments that have achieved 100%. Given the recent actions of the Dallas Fire Department, Frederick County Fire Department and others including the IAFC Board of Directors, the staff here at the USFA have taken the pledge as well. We do not have fire apparatus here at USFA; we do however have a dedicated staff traveling back and forth from Washington, DC in official vehicles and involved with national response efforts of FEMA. Just as important, a significant number of USFA staff also volunteer in local fire and EMS departments.

I am pleased to announce that the Canadian Fire Services have also joined this effort.

When I heard the news of these and so many other departments now taking the pledge, I knew immediately there was no department in this nation — or Canada — that could not take this simple step to improve firefighter safety.

As many of you already know, and many others should know, firefighter Christopher Brian Hunton, age 27, was a member of the Amarillo Texas fire department for one year. On April 23, 2005 he fell out of his fire truck responding to an alarm; he died two days later from his injuries. Brian was not wearing his seat belt. It is in his name — and in the names of others who suffered a similar fate — that we continue to work to ensure all firefighters buckle up. It requires such little effort to ensure all firefighters go home at the end of the day and not become victims of this preventable death.

This is the second time I have addressed this issue with the fire service through the Chief‘s Corner, yet people keep dying, in part, due to their not wearing a seat belt. In my opinion, each and every one of these deaths is preventable. I truly wish I could understand why this act is looked upon with disdain by firefighters. I would like someone to explain to me why they feel putting their lives, their fellow firefighters and family at risk is a part of their job. Instead I continue to get line of duty death notifications where firefighters have made the conscious decision to risk everything and not wear their seatbelt.

Buckle up and take an extra moment to make sure your fellow firefighters are also.