Much like walking in a cow pasture, we really need to watch our step these days. Unfortunately there have been a few missteps of late.
One very important factor we have in our favor is that the public generally likes us. I’m constantly reminded of this by the small amount of television I watch.
Firefighters sell everything imaginable in commercials — antacids, coffee, food of every type and so on. I saw an ad the other night with an animated fire truck and animated firefighters fighting a fire in an animated person’s stomach.
Any time a cross section of people or workers is shown in an advertisement, a firefighter is always shown without fail. Why is that?
I believe it’s because the public believes in us and trusts us. We are the go-to people in the community. Therefore, we really need to be vigilant with that trust.
Turtle adoption service
Late one afternoon a week or two ago the station doorbell rang. We came out to greet a middle-aged, nicely dressed woman clutching of all things a large green box turtle.
She explained she found this turtle in the park and didn’t know what to do with it. I guess leaving it alone was out of the question.
She went on to explain that she knew we would know what to do with it. My first thought was turtle soup.
What prompts a person to think of the fire department when he is out of options and needs help? It’s because in the back of people’s minds they know the community go-to people are just a phone call away.
I always likened it to the Ghostbusters: Who you gonna call? Be it a water leak, fire, animal in distress or yes, a wayward turtle, they call us.
We’re not going to take it anymore
However, there have been a couple of missteps lately. The rank and file in Montreal ran amuck at city hall and trashed the place before a meeting in protest of benefit cuts — surprising behavior for our friendly and passive northern neighbors.
Now I’m not condemning the Montreal Fire Department. In fact, I feel their pain and anger. Trust me, I have been promised things by city governments that didn’t happen and have been the recipient of pension and benefit cut.
This has ended badly now; sadly six of Montreal’s bravest have been fired. That’s the last thing that needed to happen.
Meanwhile, a little farther south in a part of southern New Jersey that is near and dear to my heart, a local volunteer outfit hung a banner at the state fire convention encouraging women to display their mammalian organs.
Once again, these aren’t bad people. These are folks who donate their time to fight fires in the community. However, this probably wasn’t the best of ideas.
It’s worth remembering that people really don’t know the difference in who we are. By that I mean when people see something like this on the news or “interweb,” they just assume it is all firefighters. Unless they are in the business or have relatives in the business, most people don’t know who we are and what we do.
I worked briefly for a chief who had a saying that when something went wrong, “it’s like a paint brush; it paints all of us.”
Well-stacked deck
Speaking of New Jersey, did you notice what our friend Gov. Chris Christi (the man who would be president) is up to now? He has organized a pension and benefit committee to review public employees benefits with orders not to be influenced by sacred cows: firefighters, police officers and teachers.
The good governor then appointed a panel led by two top executives who have co-written position papers for Harvard on how to drastically cut public employees benefits.
Wow, I wonder what their findings will be. That’s like posing the question, “Is it healthy to eat fried chicken every day?” and putting Colonel Sanders in charge of the discussion.
Another panel member is a philanthropist. Yes, a philanthropist. The word philanthropy comes from an old Russian phrase which, loosely translated says I have so much money that I have run out of things to spend it on and now I just give it away. It has now become my full-time job.
I’m sure the philanthropist is a nice person and has done a lot of good for people, but do you think a philanthropist is worried about cost of living raises or an HMO deductible?
Always end on a happy note. For those of you scoring at home, I volunteered to take the turtle home and release him/her (not sure how you tell the difference) in a reservoir near the house. So the turtle got to spend the night in the fire station and was treated to two alarms.
Later that day while sitting on a log sunning with some other turtles, I can only imagine the conversation.
“So where did you come from?”
“Man I don’t know. I was hanging in the park and I ended up at this place with these big red trucks. Then in the middle of the night, lights come on and there is a terrible ruckus. It was crazy.”
Let me hear from you.
