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.”

By Jordan D. Pollack

Last year, FIRE CHIEF published two articles on fire-prevention programs in Great Britain and Scandinavia. Both articles portrayed well the emphasis in those countries on fire prevention versus suppression. We, as a community of fire chiefs, must take that information and seriously reassess our priorities. Because the U.S. fire service is community- and jurisdiction-based and not nationalized, it is up to each of us to drive this campaign.

I still remember vividly growing up in the 1960s in New Haven, Conn., and watching as Engine 8’s crew went door to door doing home fire inspections and passing out fire-safety information. I remember the men standing on the tailboard, poised in their tan slacks and light-blue uniform shirts, ready to spread the gospel of fire and life-safety like neighborhood missionaries.

Some 40 years later in my third job as a chief, I sit at my desk putting together yet another community fire-prevention program. I look at our fire service — the glamour, lights, excitement and heroics — and am amazed by how much we chiefs are so focused on crisis management and not prevention. It comes as no great surprise that the general public is caught up in the same thinking. The average American citizen focuses little on fire safety unless one of three things happens: their child brings home information from school, they have an unfortunate encounter with fire, or the fire services bring them information directly.

We are long overdue to start thinking outside of the box. Most fire departments today, whether volunteer or career, have some sort of fire-prevention program in place. The most common is to have a prevention division of sorts, which in any career department is largely focused on code enforcement and plan review — it is often a forgotten child to the suppression wing, which receives the glory and funding. Most larger city departments include company-level fire inspections where firefighters do walk-through inspections of businesses to promote fire safety. This is an excellent tool on numerous levels promoting not only fire safety and education but also public relations and familiarity with occupancies for firefighter safety and effectiveness during an incident. This is an excellent step in the right direction, but it needs to be expanded to homes, apartment complexes and all occupancies.

During a trip to the National Fire Academy as a peer grant reviewer, I listened as then–Acting Administrator of the U.S. Fire Administration Charlie Dickenson spoke about fire prevention in the fire service. He commended the 100 or so folks in the auditorium for assisting with the prevention grant program. Then he went on to discuss how the fire service is still expending more energy on new equipment and vehicles than on prevention. Some 2,900 applications were received in 2007 for the Fire Prevention Grant Program. Concurrently, 21,000 applications were received for fire equipment and vehicle requests through the Assistance to Firefighter Grant Program. That statistic is staggering. How is it that we, a community-oriented network of caring professionals, are not putting more energy into fire- and life-safety prevention?

I met with Charlie later that week to discuss the current state of affairs in fire prevention. He said that there is no real movement afoot within the fire service. We are still focused on response, and that responsibility is becoming more elaborate with each decade. We are still obsessed with the toys that continue to expand in their complexity and cost, newer and fancier gadgetry commanding our attention. Many of us know that four well-trained firefighters with an older, working engine can outperform a crew with newer, fancier equipment and lesser training. As I reviewed numerous grants at the National Fire Academy that week, I read time after time “…after wages, vehicle maintenance, equipment … there is little funding left for fire prevention education, thus we are requesting federal funding for … .” As fire chiefs, we are still not prioritizing fire- and life-safety education in our budget justifications to our governing bodies.

How many chiefs have programs in place that involve going door to door to do home fire inspections and outreach? How many of us are giving priority to our prevention officers who are tirelessly educating and enforcing? Are there more than a few of us standing strong behind a goal of every occupancy in the jurisdiction having a minimum of one working smoke alarm? How many of us are doing aggressive campaigns with our elders on home fire and accident prevention? I would guess that a number of volunteer based departments in our country are succeeding at this. But I can’t help but wonder if the fire community could also do similar in our cities’ low income housing areas as well. How difficult would it be to refocus our energies and get our engine companies to begin door-to-door campaigns in our cities as well as our smaller towns and villages? Look at wiring, smoke detectors, heaters, candles and other potential fire hazards, bringing our focus into the homes of our constituents before it’s too late. How many of us are truly getting into our residents’ homes – either literally or through written and visual information? Even a simple home fire safety brochure under the door can have a huge impact. Checkout the Toronto Fire Service home fire safety brochure; it is an excellent model of a simple and effective brochure. The London Fire Brigade goes door to door educating its residents about fire and life safety. They have figured out a proactive approach: get out and meet and educate.

In some cases, this may become a union question, but at some level this is simply a management issue. Former Phoenix Fire Chief Alan Brunacini set a precedent by showing that union issues can be dealt with most effectively by inviting staff and management to sit together to develop the goals and objectives of the fire department. I would hope that our nation’s career personnel would jump at the opportunity to heighten public awareness of fire safety in their customers’ homes and businesses. With the mission of maintaining the health and wellness of our communities being paramount, this would seem to make some sense.

Should not the International Association of Fire Chiefs and International Association of Fire Fighters be working hand in hand, alongside the U.S. Fire Administration and the National Fire Protection Association to promote fire safety education? Of course this happens, to a degree, but it is high time that we all begin aggressively working together to attack the problem. Getting our nation’s firefighters (volunteer and career) on the streets and sidewalks is paramount in the campaign. If chiefs don’t take advantage of this valuable and massive resource, we are missing the boat, and more importantly, under-serving our community. It is our responsibility and mission to change the culture of the fire service, maintaining our readiness to respond, while focusing on the primary mission of fire, injury, and illness prevention

There is a wealth of support out there to develop and maintain an effective, ongoing campaign focused on fire safety and preventative healthcare for your constituents. If you are not doing so already, make it happen; chiefs hold the trump card on this one.

Jordan D. Pollack is chief of the Breitenbush (Ore) Fire Department.

Neil Narine stood outside the burn building, peeled off his fire helmet and face mask, and wiped the sweat from his face. A staff assistant to Illinois Rep. Judy Biggert, Narine was one of 10 congressional staffers to participate in the Fourth Annual Illinois Fire Service Home Day today.

“It was a great experience knowing how the fire department actually works and being in the burn building. I just don’t know how they do it,” Narine said as he pulled off his gloves.

This year’s Illinois Fire Service Home Day gave congressional staffers a chance to use turnout gear, breathing apparatus and thermal imagers; find their way through different levels of a burn structure; and experience a flashover. Not only was the exercise designed to let staffers see the apparatus and equipment purchased through FIRE Grants, but to better understand the changing role of the fire service.

“The thermal-imaging cameras were incredible. We did it without the cameras and then with the thermal imagers,” Narine said. “I don’t know how the firefighters could be in there without the cameras.”

The program also included a demonstration of automobile extrication and a side-by-side live-burn demonstration in rooms with residential sprinklers and without sprinklers.

The Carol Stream (Ill.) Fire Department and Chief Mike Kanzia organized and hosted the event. Guest speakers included Illinois Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS) President Jay Reardon and FEMA Region 5 Acting Director Don Mobley. The event was a joint effort sponsored by the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association of Illinois, the Fire Apparatus Manufacturers Association, and the Fire and Emergency Manufacturers and Services Association.

In addition to the Congressional staffers, almost 100 fire chiefs, officers and firefighters attended the event, as did Illinois members of FAMA and FEMSA.

“The turnout was absolutely incredible and I think the firefighter experience was really important and added a lot to the event,” said Paul Darley, president of W.S. Darley and co-chair of the event.

Another congressional staffer who suited up was Dan Shrigley, scheduler/staff assistant for Rep. Melissa Bean.

“It’s surreal, that room of smoke,” he said. “I knew that I wouldn’t see, but you really get to appreciate what people do in those situations. The cameras are amazing. I didn’t know the thermal imagers could also take the temperatures of a room.”

Several FEMSA members also suited up to participate in the live-fire exercise including Pete Sremac of C.E. Niehoff, Teri Haidl of Eagle Engraving and Jhan Dolphin of RealWheels. As Dolphin came out of the burn building he commented, “It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how these guys years ago could do this job without this equipment. Everyone warns you about the dangers of smoke in a fire and having smoke alarms. Anyone who ever does this realizes it and the reality is that you can’t be found in a smoky building. It’s amazing.”

FIRE CHIEF Associate Publisher Greg Toritto also geared up and ate some smoke. “It was a lot of fun, very interesting,” Toritto said. “You couldn’t do it without the thermal imager. It felt weird the first few minutes. If they wanted to play a trick on you and leave the room, you’d freak out,” said Toritto.

Each staffer that came out of that smoking building this morning, views the fire service a little different now and that’s a step in the right direction to educate our Congressional leaders about America’s firefighters. What are you doing to educate your congressional leaders?

The first decade of the 21st century has seen no meaningful changes to the fire service culture’s tolerance of fire deaths, injuries and property loss. Yes, I said “tolerance.”

American has known it’s had a fire problem since at least 1948, when President Harry S. Truman received the Report of the Continuing Committee of the President’s Conference on Fire Prevention and Education. Our 33rd president responded to the report by stating:

“The serious losses in life and property resulting annually from fires cause me deep concern. I am sure that such unnecessary waste can be reduced. The substantial progress made in the science of fire prevention and fire protection in this country during the past forty years convinces me that the means are available for limiting this unnecessary destruction.”

The authors of that report, along with the participants at the five Wingspread symposiums since — Wingspread Conference on Fire Service Administration, Education and Research (1966), Wingspread II (1976), III (1986), IV (1996), and V (2003) — have all said the same thing when it comes to addressing the fire problem in America:

“Fire prevention and accident prevention employ same technique. – Over the years, the approaches to the accident problem have been popularly designated as the Three E’s of Safety – Engineering, Enforcement, and Education. These ‘Three E’s’ are equally applicable to fire prevention and protection.”

So, where are we today? According to the U.S. Fire Administration, an average of 3,695 people suffered fire-related deaths in the United States between 1998 and 2007. (Those numbers do not include those who lost their lives on 9/11.) In a decade we lost the population of a small city —36,950. And thousands more suffer fire-related injuries and the property losses reach into the billions of dollars.

If we’re serious in our profession about ridding the United States of this “epidemic of fire,” I propose the following manifesto for every community in the United States.

Engineering:

• Require residential sprinklers in all newly constructed one-and two-family homes. Period.
  
• Change building codes so that all building materials must pass fire resistance performance standards, not just “gravity-defiance” standards.
  
• Change building codes in the wildland-urban interface to prohibit the use of combustible building materials. Mandate the use of block, concrete, stucco and other non-combustible materials.
  
• Mandate fire-safe cigarettes.
  

Education:

• Require that all residential property in a locality — rental and occupant-owned — has a copy of the locality’s fire-prevention code do’s and don’ts, written in plain English and other applicable languages for the community.
  
• Require fire departments and school systems to jointly deliver a standard fire prevention curriculum in elementary, middle, and high schools every two years.
  
• Require completion of fire prevention course of study as prerequisite for obtaining a residential lease or buying a home.
  
• Require insurance companies to inspect rental and occupant-owned residential properties before insuring the property. Require policy-holders to submit an affidavit to their insurance company stating that they comply with the fire prevention provisions of their policy and their locality every year as a condition to renew their coverage.
  

Enforcement:

• Investigate all fires and issue a court summons to the building occupant if a fire is determined to have been caused by their negligence. (Just like a traffic accident: if you’re at fault, you pay the price.)
  
• Bill the occupant for the cost of fire suppression services when a fire is determined to have been the result of occupant negligence.
  
• Fine builders and contractors when a fire investigation reveals that improper building materials or building practices (a) started the fire or (b) contributed to the spread of the fire.
  
• Fine rental-property owners who do not maintain their rental properties and whose properties are not in compliance with the locality’s fire prevention code.
  
• Incorporate a locality’s level of fire protection and history of fire loss into the financial processes that financial institutions use to determine a locality’s bond rating.
  

Sound rather harsh? Sound unrealistic? Consider for a moment what has happened since 9/11 to fight the “war on terror” — creation of DHS and TSA, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, laws adopted and changed, new training, new equipment, new ways to do our jobs. With all that and more, we’ve not suffered a single terrorist-related death or injury on United States soil since that day. We have, however, lost a “city” of 29,560 people in that same period. What are we waiting for?

Jim Anderson is a friend of mine who owns a strange little bar in Tucson, Ariz. Jim is a man in his 60s who’s spent his adult life creating a cult of personality around his personality. One of the most important things to Jim is being seen and recognized. His bar is, for all practical purposes, a shrine to him. The walls are plastered with photographs and paintings of Jim, he wears jewelry made into his image, he has a tattoo of his face on his arm, and all of his employees and many of his customers wear shirts with — you guessed it — a picture of Jim.

Jim’s is not one of those faces that blends into the crowd. His bronze, round head is shaved clean save for the long, white mustache, which he waxes and curls.

Jim once told me his goal was to make people stop thinking about themselves, even if for only a few seconds, and think about him.

Despite that it seems his sole reason to live is self-promotion, no person is one-dimensional. I’ve known Jim for more than 10 years and spend as much time with him as possible when I’m in Tucson. The other side to Jim is that he never calls attention to his good deeds. He never brings up how he hires homeless guys to clean his parking lot, or throws money on the ground in public places, or buyout the flower vendor’s supply of roses to hand out to ladies at his bar. He does these things and more whether his business is doing well or doing poorly and never seeks acknowledgment, credit or praise.

I thought about Jim late last month as I ran in a five-mile race here in Chicago. The weather in Chicago can be foul. And it always seems to be foul for the annual Shamrock Shuffle through the city’s downtown area. This year it was exceptionally foul with driving winds, snow and a good inch of slushy water on the roadways. It was a much better day to stay home than to run five miles.

But I had something to prove to myself. I had to prove that I could do it in those conditions in my turnout gear (pants, coat, gloves and helmet). I’m reasonably fit for my age and others, such as the chief from Georgia who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and the firefighter from Illinois who ran the Chicago Marathon both in full turnout gear with SCBA, have achieved more. Five miles seemed doable.

I learned a few things along the way.

The first thing I learned is that running in that gear is hard. In fact, I have an easier time running twice the distance in regular exercise clothes.

More importantly, I learned that when people see you at an event like that in something as recognizable as turnouts, they stop thinking about themselves and think about you — even if it is for a few seconds. During the run, countless runners and spectators shouted encouragements, praise and thanks to me. The praise and “thanks for what you do” comments left me uncomfortable because they are unearned. As a probationary volunteer firefighter, I’ve not yet been cleared to do anything other than training and go on standby during a call. OK, I did once save a headless baby doll during search-and-rescue training.

I also learned that by wearing that gear I represented something larger than just a 45-year-old guy out for a run, and because of that, I couldn’t quit. Failure was not an option.

That much attention also made me think of a dilemma fire chiefs face. A positive public opinion of firefighting is crucial to the success of fire departments. It plays directly into tangibles such as funding levels and fire code adoption. And a key component to positive public opinion is firefighter humility. Being highly visible in the community and being humble can be at odds with one another. Several chiefs have told me they sometimes wish we could return to a time prior to Sept. 11, a time when firefighters were less glorified and more humble.

We can’t go back to when the Twin Towers still stood and Rescue Me was unscripted. But fire chiefs can manage public opinion by setting the tone in their departments to strike the right balance between visibility and humility.

Last April, one of my neighboring departments lost two firefighters when the kitchen floor collapsed as they were operating in a residential structure. Several separate items crossed my desk recently that emphasized how frequent such events happen and how without intervention they will continue to happen, especially in residential structure fires.

In 2008, we in the fire service believed we were successful in our quest for residential fire sprinklers when an amendment was passed to the proposed ICC Residential Building Code. The change would universally require sprinklers in all newly built dwellings. Soon after the vote, it became apparent that opposition, primarily homebuilders, were going to mount another effort to obtain a second vote on the amendment, claiming that residential sprinklers were an undue expense in the current economic climate that would drive up the cost of homes.

Several issues demonstrate the importance for us to bolster our efforts and once and for all demonstrate the need for universal sprinklers.

The Georgia Pacific Co. recently unveiled a new twist to the wooden I-beam construction approved for residential housing. My son, Todd, a career firefighter and volunteer fire officer in Indiana, brought this product to my attention. I-beams — which when I started in the fire service were made only of steel — span the length of the house to provide the primary support for floor joists. Current wooden I-beams are little more than lengths of pressed board sandwiched between 2×4s or 4×6s to provide that support. Floor joists that used to be solid 2×8s have been reduced to wooden trusses that result in quicker failures of residential flooring.

The new twist to wooden I-beams is a product that now is also made of truss construction. The Georgia Pacific Web site shows a photo of the new I-beam and its construction material. The beam itself has become a truss or series of triangles with the tagline, “Find your ductwork’s happy space.” The Web page also indicates “Customers can take pride in reduced timber consumption, usage and the ecologically friendly nature of engineered wood.”

Obviously with less solid wood, we can expect not only quicker floor failures but also more frequent and major I beam failures in these newly constructed houses. Both mean that we need to take some new steps to enhance firefighter safety.

There are sobering statistics in the new NIOSH alert, “Preventing Deaths and Injuries of Fire Fighters When Fighting Fires in Unoccupied Structures.” This 12-page bulletin is geared to make us pause during size-up at residential structure fires and conduct a risk-versus-benefit analysis. It reminds us as incident commanders that it is OK to use defensive tactics that do not place firefighters at risk to save just the building. A similar theme is echoed in an article in latest NFPA Journal, “Truss Issues,” written by longtime friends Ben Klaene and Russ Sanders.

So what else can we do? Right now, homebuilders are going green, using alternate energy-saving devices such as solar panels and geothermal heat pumps that won’t recoup their initial costs for many years to come. They are also using cheaper construction methods under the guise that they are more ecofriendly. Residential fire sprinklers are not only beneficial to saving the lives of residents and firefighters, they are also green. They save one of our most precious natural resources, water.

Instead of having to use thousands of gallons at 250 to 1,000 gpm to overcome a well involved structure, a single sprinkler head at 25 gpm in a fire’s incipient stage may extinguish or hold the fire in check for firefighters to extinguish no matter what the construction of the residence. How could our ecologically friendly homebuilders disagree?

In going “green” with sprinklers, one of our logical partners should be the federal government. We should take the opportunity to stress this point with our Congressional Representatives at the upcoming Congressional Fire Service Institute’s visitation and dinner in Washington DC. For example, using the stimulus package to financial institutions, Congress should dictate that no homes will be built with federally guaranteed funds that aren’t both energy efficient and “green”. The residential sprinkler system should be at the forefront of these “green” initiatives. There should be no other choice to save all of our resources, water, citizens and firefighters…because enough is enough.

Some fire departments take customer service to new and amazing levels and provide interesting stories in the process.

Take, for example, the Glendale (Ariz.) Fire Department. Its Crisis Response Program program is made up of dedicated volunteers with backgrounds in EMS, behavioral health and crisis intervention. In addition to assisting firefighters, the team provides immediate crisis intervention, referrals and resources to victims, families and witnesses after a traumatic event.

The newest member of the team is a 2-year-old yellow Labrador named Topaz. Topaz was adopted from Paws with a Cause, an organization that trains various service animals for people with disabilities. The organization originally trained Topaz as a seizure-response dog. He then was familiarized with typical fire service sites (turn outs, sirens, air packs, etc.) before being placed in service.

According to his handler and Human Services Division Manager Lynette Jelinek, Topaz can actually sense when people are frightened or grieving. “The dog helps build a therapeutic bridge between the customer and the crisis interventionist,” she said. “Topaz can lighten the mood and bring a calming effect to a situation that may seem out of control.”

Topaz made headlines after a school bus transporting 40 middle-school students collided with two vehicles. Only one student required hospital transport; the rest were taken to the school on a different bus. The students found Topaz and the rest of the CRT waiting at the school, and they quickly shifted their focus from the accident to dog.

“Topaz can be a distraction for people to help divert their attention to good things and get back to critical thinking,” Jelinek said.

Topaz has comforted elderly and children after a sudden death and brings smiles to firefighters’ faces.

“He was going to be a good tool, but we had no idea how much he would contribute,” Jelinek said. “What Topaz can do in a few seconds or minutes that would us much longer. The police have had crisis-response dogs and used pet therapy, but it was out of the box for a fire department.”

Research shows that Animal Assisted Crisis Intervention can increase interaction with crisis interventionists, emotional expression, trust, memory recall and a host of other benefits. A trained dog also can decrease heart and pulse rates, alleviate confusion and depression.

Jelinek said that when Topaz puts on his crisis response vest, he knows it is time to work. “Topaz has a schedule much like any city employee a 40-hour work week, and is on call for critical fire department calls.”

Dalmatians have long been associated with fire departments because back in the old days of steam engines, the dogs had a calming effect on the horses. “Now here we are using dogs to calm the community,” she said.

In the beginning, I just had one e-mail address. Then I needed a second for personal e-mails and then a third for junk e-mail. I joined Plaxo to keep track of e-mail addresses and soon followed that with the business-oriented LinkedIn. Facebook lets me know what my friends — and even my dogs — are doing, and instant messaging lets me communicate while I’m doing something else. And now I have Twitter [firechiefmag] for quick, short updates. People wonder why I don’t write letters any more — who has the time?

Last Wednesday morning, an airplane crashed near Amsterdam’s Schipol airport and broke into three pieces. According to CNN, Twitter published the first photos of the incident, beating out traditional news sources. Eyewitness accounts soon followed.

Twitter allows its users to send micro-blogs or messages up to 140 characters long. These “tweets” can be delivered to other users who have signed up on twitter.com. Started in October 2006, Twitter is the third-largest social network behind Facebook and MySpace.

And as anyone can post to sites like Twitter, eyewitnesses become instant reporters. It will be near impossible for fire departments to prevent these news reports from being sent. Communications with media could become fast and furious.

Twitter also can be used to the fire and emergency services’ benefit. According to David Sargent, director of the Office of Hazardous Materials Initiatives and Training for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Hazardous Materials Safety Assistance Team quickly picked up on Twitter.

“One of our objectives under President Obama and [Transportation Secretary Ray] LaHood is to make government operations more transparent,” Sargent said. “Our current plan is to [post] Twitter updates and list of daily outreach operations that are being presented by HMSAT members and other public information relevant to hazardous materials safety. The post will list the region conducting the event, a description, and it encourages people to attend if it is an open event such as a multi-modal training seminar.”

To read the HMSAT’s tweets, you need to create a user account on Twitter then search for HMSAT.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency started using Twitter last October. According to FEMA’s Web site, “We are looking to these new tools to give a voice to our constituents, provide greater access to our services and offer transparency into our organization. We are looking forward to making these and other new tools and technologies a part of how FEMA communicates.” Former FEMA Director David Paulison participated in an all-access social media press conference in January. FEMA’s Twitter account is Femainfocus.

The agency is looking at the use of social media tools, like Twitter and YouTube that have been used previously by emergency responders, civilians and mass media to gather information and disseminate emergency messages.

Sargent told me that in a recent meeting they discussed the younger generation and their skills with tech devices. “Some of these kids in their early 20s have never heard a busy signal on a telephone,” he said.

We live in an exciting time and as I’ve said before, we all need to keep up with the technology evolution. The same camera phones used to capture your fireground activities also can deliver messages about public safety and emergency information to your communities. Learn to use it. Just don’t abuse it.

I’ve been in the news business a relatively long time and spent a short period in public relations. Magazines and newspapers receive a lot of press releases. The press release is basically a faux news story sent by PR people to news outlets to gain favorable publicity for some company, product or cause. A good public-relations person will target the press release to the media outlet’s audience.

Did I mention that I get a lot of press releases? Well I do, especially now that they can be sent through e-mail without the associated paper and postage expenses. Some of these releases are very targeted and contain information important to fire chiefs. Some are far off the mark (but I admire the creative effort expended by some public-relations people trying to connect the dots back to the fire industry). And some are so far out that can only be the product of little green men from outer space. This is the tale of PR from space.

Civic groups have long held charity sales to raise money; schools have been doing this for at least 25 years. It seems you can hardly turn the corner without bumping into a pack of kids selling candy, doughnuts or wristbands for their church, band, team or school. Occasionally Baskin-Robbins will discount its ice cream and donate the sales to firefighter causes; they send out press releases about this sale.

But those are all firmly grounded here on earth. We’re here to talk about space men in shiny flying orbs.

In late December I received a press release from a fireworks manufacturer urging civic groups to sell sparklers as a means of raising money and beating the broken economy. I’m guessing it was timed for New Year’s Eve, and that I’ll likely get another in late June.

The press release quotes one happy fund-raiser as saying, “Some of our past youth are actually salespeople now.” In other words, children selling fireworks is a great career opportunity.

No, gentle reader, those lights you see in the night sky are not comets.

The press release goes on to tell you that “You don’t have to convince anyone to buy fireworks … everyone wants to have a good time on New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July.”

What it doesn’t tell you is that sparklers, which reach temperatures of 2,000°F, are the third-leading cause of fireworks injuries and that 45% of the injuries occur to children 15 or younger. This sobering, terrestrial data comes from a 2005 U.S. Fire Administration report. The report shows that the number of annual fireworks injuries between 1991 and 2003 range from a low of 7,000 to a high of 11,000. The report goes on to say that in 2002 there were 23,200 fireworks-related fires that caused $35 million in property loss. The loss of property was relatively low because most of the fires occurred outside where fireworks are used. That, however, is cold comfort given the severity and number of recent wildland fires.

And it was fireworks that were to blame for a high-rise fire in Beijing earlier this month that killed one firefighter.

When the little fellow with the too-big eyes dropped the press release on my desk, I was outraged. After my profanity-laced tirade subsided and my office mates stopped looking at me cross-eyed, I though of Saturday Night Live. In the early days, Dan Akroyd played a character named Irwin Mainway, a shifty toy manufacturer who passionately defended his dangerous toys, such as bag of broken glass, as an ideal gift for children.

Fire chiefs have as much to worry about today as probably any time in their careers. But I ask that you keep an eye to the sky for this style of fund raising. Ask the firefighters on your department to do likewise. Ask your civic groups to choose safe fund-raising items. If these invaders land in your community, don’t believe the “we come in peace” offering, run them out of town or back to Area 51.

The absurdity of the SNL skit makes it funny. But the absurdity of positioning dangerous fireworks as great way to buy uniforms for a youth group, and asking the editor of Fire Chief to help promote this, is not funny. It is irresponsible and a danger to humans.

Live long and prosper.

A friend and a true mentor during my career was the late Don Manno, who I first met when I was a student in the Executive Fire Officer Program almost two decades ago. Don was a storyteller and his passion was fire prevention.

Don began a class during the first week at the academy by role playing as the fire chief of the Tokyo Fire Service. He explained how the Japanese instilled taking responsibility for fire’s use, from the time a child was old enough to walk to the time they became grandparents. He stressed the importance of fire prevention, as the majority of Tokyo is frame construction. A small kitchen fire in one residence could mean a conflagration affecting many families before firefighters could arrive through the narrow, congested streets and closely built housing. Today, Japan has the world’s second-largest economy, yet has far fewer fires and fire fatalities than the United States.

Don had started his career in the Baltimore County (Md.) Fire Department. At his first assignment, he was asked by one of the department’s public educators to assist with a fire-prevention program. After the visit, his station captain strolled over and warned him, “Watch it, son. Them’s not real firefighters. Them’s the bureau.”

This winter, U.S Fire Administrator Greg Cade and the fire chiefs from the District of Columbia, Baltimore and Philadelphia held a press conference to discuss the more than 200 fire deaths in the United States that have occurred since the holidays. They stressed just one thing — the importance of working smoke alarms to save lives. This national call needs to be echoed in every fire station and fire hall throughout the country. At a time when the economic downturn may mean slashing essential services, prevention and public education may be the first to go from fire department budgets.

A colleague suggested just the opposite. What would happen if we in the fire service really focused on prevention and education during these hard economic times? The preliminary work of the Vision 2020 Committee in part calls for a renewed emphasis on fire prevention as a way to reduce firefighter fatalities. Look at groups such as the Institution of Fire Engineers–U.S. Branch and the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation that have taken up this challenge as part of their mission to reduce firefighter deaths. Consider the possibilities if “we” became “them, the bureau.”