I think that unfortunately the fire service is in the process of having to reinvent ourselves because of the economy. In some cases, it’s being done for us, like it or not. For us to think that city managers and mayors aren’t already in the process of thinking how they can save even more money, and doing it without asking us, is very naive. A close friend of mine recently said that the “reset” button on what a FD looks like now — and what it will look like in the near future — is about to be pushed. And not by us.
With all the budget cuts and brownouts going on, one of my biggest worries is that many city managers and mayors will make their cuts and think that communities haven’t actually suffered very much. Kind of a “Well, things seem to be fine — even with the cuts we made.” What shortsighted thinking on their part.
But it’s kind of like making the decision to cut back on your insurance for your home or car. You’re saving money and it’s great until something goes wrong and you have to try to make a claim. Cheap insurance is great until you actually need something from it. You feel good until you suddenly, and out of nowhere, feel bad. In some cases, really bad.
The same applies to the fire service. Sure, you can cut back on companies, staffing, whatever you like — it’s fine until the moment comes where you actually need the service and the results can be one hell of a lot worse than some insurance claim. Another part of the issue this year is that in many towns, the public has not really been screaming about the cuts, because they have their own worries going on.
The attitude “the fire trucks will come” seems to provide a sense of security — and in many cases, a false sense. And then add empty promises of service being just fine, no loss of service, etc., and it’s a perfect storm.
Be that as it may, with the cuts that have been happening, we as firefighters have to understand that while we will do whatever we can to take care of people when they are in harm’s way, if a department makes cuts it absolutely will have an impact on the level of service we can provide.
If your department has had staffing cuts, you can’t act like there hasn’t been any. You cannot possibly do the job of 25 people with only 10 for instance. Unfortunately, there’s not a more dedicated profession than firefighting because even when things are bad, we will try and do exactly what has always been expected, even when a department is being slit at the throat.
While we will always do whatever we can to save a life — that’s what we do and no one else can — when there is a measurable reduction in service, there is a measurable increase in risk to us when we try and keep doing business the way we used to when the funding and related resources have been cut.
Simply put, emotions aside, we cannot do the job of 25 firefighters on a fire when we only have 10 to work with. When budgets are threatened, and they will be, we must make it honestly and numerically clear how those cuts will impact the taxpayers. And when those cuts are final, chiefs need to go back and rewrite their operating policies to reflect what is realistic for those engines, trucks and rescue companies to do — and what is simply no longer realistic. The public has images in kids’ books and movies of what they think their FD is and what their FD can do — and in so many cases, it’s just a storybook fantasy.
Looking back on the past year, (related to firefighter survival), we have seen the behavioral changes that have begun in the fire service continuing. If you look back 10 years ago, we weren’t even thinking about seat belts, for example, like we do today. We have also raised awareness related to staffing, basic company operations, healthy eating, physicals, medical and cancer screenings and even understanding the importance of size-ups are much more prominent nowadays. And so many more fire departments have a better understanding of the importance of training.
This drive for more training is coming not just from the leadership, but also firefighters themselves, and the biggest thing that’s really helped this is the Internet.
“Back in the day,” if you wanted to train yourself you’d have to go out and buy a book. Or go to the library. Or wait for the fire magazines to show up. Now you can go to the Internet and find most of what you need to understand nearly any fireground-related task.
It’s certainly not going to replace hands-on training of course, and there are so many cool opportunities out there with seminars and conferences everywhere as well. But the one thing that has really catapulted valuable information and communication to firefighters, officers and chiefs is the Internet.
Looking back at the past decade, we’ve also seen more and more fire service organizations taking lead roles in firefighter safety, health and survival. The IAFF was really one of the original organizations that had been focused on firefighter safety for so many years (and continue to lead), along with the NFPA and of course NFPA standards continue to be the foundation upon so much of this is built.
But in the past 10 years, we’ve seen things like the Safety, Health and Survival Section (of the IAFC) and their numerous programs and support services emerge, the NVFC’s Heart Healthy program and the NFFF’s Everyone Goes Home program, all taking a big piece of this pie along with many other organizations jointly focused on helping us not get unnecessarily hurt or worse. Sites such as FireFighterCloseCalls.com, run by Gordon Graham and I, along with our partnering site, FirefighterNearMiss, allows firefighters to share info and data, so we can figure out what we may be able to do better — or different. There are so many positive resources available at no cost for any firefighter or officer to learn from.
These are some rough times in our business and some say we’ll never return to what we knew back then — and that’s tough. The leadership of our FDs, our members, our Unions and our Associations are greatly challenged these days — unlike most of us have seen. But I guess the most important thing is to not take our eye off the ball — no matter who cuts what or does what. The fact is that there will be fires and we must respond. People only call us when they have “their” bad day. The balance between what we respond with, the leadership and training of who responds, the timing of us responding vs. the cuts that have been made is really the bottom line.
When people have “their” day, we have one chance to even try and bail them out. The more reductions in service and delays in arriving with task-required staffing, the more that bad day gets worse. And when you look at what local government was really formed for, when we fail to be able to get there quick enough to hit that fire, grab that person or resuscitate that grandpa, what else really matters in relation to local governments mission or their even needing to exist?
