By Scott Ziegler
Log into Youtube or Facebook right now and it won’t take you long to find a video or photo of a fire. Now, read the comments. Irritated?
Here, I will give you an example. Let’s say there’s some photos of a fire in say, I don’t know, Camden, N.J. Single family dwelling, heavy fire showing, lots of smoke, lots of flame, looks really scary. The photos show the fire department arriving and making an aggressive attack. You know, the kind where you stretch your attack lines and start fighting the fire from the inside. Maybe even a quick knock down before heading in. But, ultimately, they go inside. Sounds great, right? To me it does. If it does to you, too, we would probably get along.
Now I promise you that if what I’m describing is found on the internet (it is), it will most certainly be followed by 50-plus opinions on how dumb those firefighters are. Things like they could have been killed, or that was reckless, or accusations of a hero complex — just trying to look cool for the cameras. This is followed by links to training videos or articles about how things burn much faster that “prove” how they attacked that fire wrong. And then the long-winded example of what they should have done. Then peppered throughout those comments will be a handful here and there of the typical, “Nice job guys,” or “That’s what I like to see.” Disgraceful, right?
I think it’s 85 percent of firefighters in the U.S. that are volunteer/paid on-call. That is one factor. The rest of us can be categorized into big city or suburb. That is another factor. Then you have the cultural make up of our response area, and the types of emergencies we respond to. And then there‘s the age of our response area and the way things are built. A couple more factors: The amount of actual working fires we respond to. How many members are responding with us to said fires. What apparatus we have. The conditions of our fire department‘s equipment. The list goes on.
With all of these different factors come different point of views. Different ways of doing things. Different perspectives.
What I am seeing is that guys are forgetting that. And it is pissing everyone off. It is a trend. Every time I look at a firefighter-based page, I see a bunch of guys pissed off at each other’s way of doing things or thinking about things, not realizing that where they work, the job might be completely different.
Take the original example. Camden is an old city. For the most part, the houses where built around 65 years ago. The firefighters there go to fires (I think they call them jobs over there) all the time. It’s a regular thing for them. The bosses know the building construction well, and the deckies should also. They have a general idea of how long they have before it‘s too late for an interior attack. Because they see it on a regular basis. Makes it hard to forget. So if you work somewhere that does not see a lot of fires — which, let’s face it, is true for most of the fire service — and you work in an area with newer construction, seeing this type of attack on that much fire is probably going to look crazy to you. Because you have a different perspective.
I think collectively, we should all try to see things from other perspectives. It’s OK if you still don’t agree with the other party’s point of view, but realize that they aren‘t going to change the way they do things because of your opinion. Don’t get your feelings hurt when a guy from a fire department that sees thousands of fires a year puts you in your place after reading your view on how dumb his fire department is. Your perspective might never line up with someone else’s.
Stay safe out there.
