Last week I wrote about the chief and his engineer who couldn't properly pump a line. Knowing the chief as well as I do, I'm sure he counseled his engineer as necessary. However, we often let stupid, unsafe or even near-fatal mistakes slide just because no one got hurt.

For whatever reason, some of us never speak up to the people who make these errors. We've all heard such excuses, including (but not limited to) the following: "We've done it that way for years—why change now?"; "Come on—no one got hurt, and even if they did, they didn't get hurt bad."; and my personal favorite from someone I'll call Firefighter X: "That's the way I do it. If you don't like it, find someone else to do it," to which I reply, "Very well." I then send Firefighter X off to rehab until I can trust him with his own life and the lives of his fellow firefighters, and call up someone who can perform the task safely.

The bottomline: We cannot let mistakes, lack of concern and unsafe operations slide. When we see someone do something unsafe or stupid and let it slide, we are essentially approving that action, whether we intended to or not.

As chief officers, company officers and peers, we must demand safety accountability from everyone around us—and ourselves. It is not acceptable that the only accountability we have is in the unfortunate event one—or more—of us does not go home at the end of the day.

FireRescue Technical Editor Scott Cook welcomes reader feedback, and invites you to contribute your notes to his column on firefighter ingenuity and street wisdom. You can reach Scott by e-mail at scott.cook1@sbcglobal.net