Last week I finally got a moment to myself and picked up my old, well worn copy of Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," a collection of stories about a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. An excerpt reads:

American soldiers in Vietnam during the war carry many things, most of them from home … The men in his platoon carry objects that revealed their personalities. Henry Dobbins is a big man who liked to eat, so he carries extra food. Ted Lavender was scared, so he carried tranquilizers, which he took until he was shot and killed. Dave Jensen is worried about disease, so he carries soap and a toothbrush …"

I sent my gear out for cleaning recently. As I went through my pockets beforehand, I was struck by how little there was to be found. There were four door chocks and a screwdriver with a double head for resetting alarm panels. On calls, I have my gloves and my hood. Of course I have a radio so I can give updates and call for help, and a light, even though in most fires it can’t see through all that smoke until the venting is done and by then I don’t need it anymore.

It used to be that I also carried a knife for cutting, a 40' section of 8mm rope with two carabiners for jumping out of windows, a set of vise grips for cylinder locks and a pair of lineman's pliers for other stuff that needed cutting. In my pants pockets were gidgets, gadgets and widgets for other possibilities that never materialized. On my SCBA harness I would strap a 7' piece of webbing that I bought online; it came with a carrying case included in the price.

Sometimes depending on what I had read in a magazine, I would wear one of those neat "gut belts" or "Boston Truckman" belt, even though I worked on engines mostly. I have been known to carry a wide assortment of pry bars, axes, a titanium haligan bar (not cheap) and I even once made my own hook. Oh, and I almost forgot, eye protection, hearing protection, a pair of gloves for extrication, and a pair of gloves for racking hose.

After comparing this with how little I carry now, I sat down and wondered what the difference was between me with full pockets and me with nearly empty pockets, not counting the 15 lbs in weight. One thing I did realize was I didn't give it all up because it was too heavy.

Avoiding trouble
I realized that I am older now and more interested in avoiding trouble than in preparing for it. Or perhaps avoidance is my preparation. I have learned not to get in front of the line on the floor above, thereby lessening the need for my bail-out rope. I have learned that I can survive a fire before it flashes and after it flashes but I can’t survive the transition — no need then for that $2/foot high temperature 8mm rope. Common sense says I can use the same cheap gloves for overhaul as I use for racking hose.

I found that I moved faster without a Truckman belt, without the axe getting hung up on every chair leg and every corner. And I admit that at my age travelling lighter makes more sense. Learning to move in a three-dimensional space has lessened the chance that I will come into contact with dangling wires. But even if I did, I wonder if I would be so freaked out that I would drop both the knife and the pliers and never see them again.

All the hundreds of dollars I spent over the years were predicated on my carrying enough stuff to manage whatever trouble I got into. The implication was that I could reasonably predict what kind of trouble lay ahead – and accordingly have the right stuff for it. Looking back, I know now that this wasn't possible. I did not carry bottle jacks in my coat pocket but surely there is a situation where a bottle jack would be a useful tool should I become trapped in a burning room. The problem is that I could not then nor could I now predict how I was going to get in trouble. And the "how" of that certainly should have driven the "what" of what was in my pockets.

Fires are knowable in that they follow the rules of chemistry and physics and are thereby limited to those rules. A given fire in a given circumstance will behave in predictable ways. However, once I realized that I was never in a situation where I could fully predict what was going to happen next, something changed. My focus on future orientation turned from predicting what bad thing would happen to me and having a tool for it to realizing that my ability to predict the future was severely limited. This realization meant that I had to move more slowly, with more purpose, and with a keen awareness that conditions could change in the blink of an eye.

The crux of this transformation was the movement away from a sort of monolithic, heavy hitting, "prepared for everything" operational paradigm. My new paradigm is to take the things you know you need: four door chocks (one for the front door, one for the stairway door, one for the other stairway door and one for the apartment door), a screw driver with a double head, hood and gloves, with the addition of a new-found respect for fire and the need to develop and maintain more advanced situational awareness. I am still trying to be prepared for anything, but I keep my hands on the hose so I don't need a tagline anymore. I keep my radio in my radio pocket so I don't get caught up on the strap anymore, and I keep a healthy dose of skepticism mixed with a keen sense of my limitations in a pretty safe place right under my helmet.

I don't wish to imply that carrying stuff in your pockets is a bad thing. I just want to emphasize that concentrating on the basics of stretching lines and back up lines, working behind the line, never operating above and uncontrolled fire, coordination of attack and ventilation, knowledge, real knowledge of fire behavior, working in teams of at least two, and good risk benefit analysis that are constantly updated, means that I can travel much lighter and still be safe.

Four door chocks, and a screwdriver with a double head, a pair of gloves and a hood. The rest is all under the helmet.