Fire Chief

Exhaust fumes and air quality frequently are sited as a cause or contributing factor in firefighter cancers, and the list of possible carcinogens gets longer all the time, but a recent outbreak of skin disorders in one California fire station has raised another concern about how firefighters can get sick inside fire stations.

Sometimes the only people who can understand your devastation are those who have experienced it themselves. Their “I survived, so can you” attitude can offer the most hope to a person in a difficult situation.

This past week was difficult for the American fire service with the funerals for the nine firefighters from the Charleston (S.C.) Fire Department. A fatal fire apparatus accident in a small town in Belgium also has had an impact on a fire department here in the states.

We all know that June 17-23 was the week set aside for this year’s Fire and EMS Safety Stand Down. Tragically that same week, the Charleston (S.C.) Fire Department suffered the single largest number of line of duty deaths since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

While the acrid smell of smoke still permeates the air, nine families are preparing for funerals in Charleston, S.C. Wives, children, parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends — lots of friends — are in various stages of grief. The Charleston Fire Department and surrounding departments are preparing to bury these men with […]

In preparation for the International Association of Fire Chiefs’ Stand Down for Safety next week, I asked Dr. Burton Clark, training specialist for the U.S. Fire Administration’s Management Science Programs, about his goal to have one million firefighters sign a National Fire Service Seatbelt Pledge by the end of the month.

Every morning I drive to and from work along Virginia’s Route 10, one of the major thoroughfares in my county. Each day I note how many people are talking on their cell phone while driving. It seems like very few people can manage to drive without having their cell phone to their ear, and those are just the drivers whose phone I can see — who knows how many are talking on hands-free devices.

There was an article in The Washington Post of significance to those of you who need to and want to influence people. Even though the environment is changing, the mechanics of connecting has not changed much. What has changed is the speed by which it operates.

In March, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study that examined the duty specific risk of death from coronary heart disease among on-duty firefighters in the United States. The study looked at data from 1994 to 2004, as well as estimates of time spent at fires and other emergencies from 17 metropolitan fire departments. A similar study released in May by the Center for Disease Control concluded that firefighting duties were associated with a risk of death from coronary heart disease that was 10 to 100 times greater than the risk from the non-emergency duties of the general public.

Many of us in the American fire service have been placing a great deal of emphasis on safety for many years now; witness most recently the now-annual Stand Down for Safety, Dr. Burt Clark’s campaigns for firefighter mayday procedures and the National Fire Service Seat Belt Pledge. But how many of us think about safety away from the job?