Fire Chief

In a recent issue of the Building Safety Journal International Code Council CEO Richard Weiland talks about the fire service’s increased participation in the building-code process. I think it’s important to note that ICC recognizes this shift and its importance to the code industry.

I have been thinking that we need to approach fire investigation and reporting more holistically, much like the National Transportation Safety Board treats a transportation wreck and like many jurisdictions reconstruct vehicle collisions. We need to address the root causes that allow deaths to occur rather than just focusing an origin and cause determination.

My previous comments come from the energy of having groups of people nationally networked in an e-mail group called ePARADE. The ePARADE group is a simple Yahoo group composed of more than 400 fire marshals and fire and life-safety professionals who originally got together and identified a communication gap among fire marshals.

A recent outbreak caused approximately 198 deaths in four months. The medical examiner found pulmonary edema and damage to the trachea, bronchi and alveoli in the upper areas of the lungs. Most of the victims were children, who have been particularly vulnerable to this menace.

After witnessing a code hearing for the first time, I found it an intense but understandable process with which fire chiefs need to be actively involved. To get to a national requirement for residential sprinklers, we need to be involved in this code process.

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.

The U.S. Fire Administration has “advocacy” as one of the key words in its description. A search for the word “advocacy” on the USFA Web site yields 82 hits, indicating that advocacy is a core principle within the USFA’s mission.

Fire protection professionals have been working for nearly 30 years to promote the installation of residential fire sprinklers in U.S. homes. It is the one way to reduce home fire risk, short of actually preventing fires from starting. Teamed with smoke alarms, residential sprinklers nearly eliminate fire deaths in homes. Only those who are intimate with the fire are at risk.

Why is the Department of Justice being a Scrooge by withholding the benefits rightfully earned by survivors of fallen firefighters? How can we expect to recruit the best and brightest to a profession where at least 100 colleagues die each year?

What an honor it is to begin a regular electronic stream of thought about the fire service, fire and life safety, planning, performance management, leadership, and — well, you get the message. There is not much in the fire service that doesn’t interest me, so I have high expectations that we here at Mutual Aid will be able to tweak people’s interest.