Fire Chief

Next month, the American fire service will remember the nine Charleston, S.C., firefighters who were killed in the Sofa Super Store fire on June 18, 2007. The local media will carry reports and tributes. The fire service media, however, will be asking questions.

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.

With no particular allegiance to either the Patriots or the Giants, I watched Super Bowl XLII. I did so after a year of weekly updates on the Glendale (Ariz.) Fire Department’s four years of planning for the game from Asst. Chief Tom Shannon, who also wrote our January cover story.

When I recently purchased new living-room furniture, I glanced at the label and asked the salesperson if the material was flame-resistant? She said yes, but I knew better.

Recently I was asked at one of our area hospital’s quarterly employee meeting. The hospital’s CEO gave a “state of the hospital” briefing, and I followed with my presentation on fire and EMS response in the post-9/11 world.

I was in Charleston, S.C., on the three-month anniversary of the fire that killed nine firefighters. That day Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. gave his first report to the community. The report outlined the behavioral health and financial assistance to the fallen firefighters’ families and praised the Post-Incident Assessment and Enhancement Review Task Force that was brought in to assess the fire department and make recommendations to help bring the department into the current century.

While we all understand why there are separate federal agencies with known expertise that are planning within their own ESF, how do we avoid them planning in “silos” so they don’t exceed a combined realistic level of fire service response in these emergency service functions?

Increasingly, firefighters are responding to situations where the R-13 residential sprinkler system has done its job: early activation for quick extinguishment or substantial control of a fire in its incipient stage.

Earlier this month I was privileged to attend a meeting in Kansas City hosted by the International Association of Fire Chiefs as a member of the NRP ESF-4 sub-committee. That stands for the National Response Plan’s Emergency Service Function 4 (Firefighting), which translates into how fire service assets will be dispatched and deployed to major incidents across the country when there is a declared disaster.

Back in 2000 I had the good fortune to represent my department at FDIC in Indianapolis. It was my first time attending that fire service conference, and like thousands of others I was not disappointed. The vast array of educational presentations — not to mention the awesome number of vendor displays of the latest in emergency response technology — was overwhelming to say the least.