How did it get to be like this?

I left a certain waterborne 'military' service's operational ranks because they 'risk-managed' everything to death. A call would come in for rescue, something of a time-critical nature, and we'd have to spend the victim's precious moments by having a 'touchy-feely risk management assessment session' down on the dock before even heading out to attempt the rescue. The State Police's Marine unit inevitably got there first and did OUR job for us. No way to run an emergency service! Back in "my day", when we got the call, we ran for the boat and headed out in the general direction immediately. We did our risk assessment on the way, planned on the way, and got on scene quickly. I saved a number of boats that would have sunk or capsized if not for a rapid response. That means the people on board would have been in the water- usually without life jackets- until we got there... how many of you can swim with all your clothes on, much less with gas, oil and lots of other crap covering the surface of the water? Trust me, it really sucks getting a mouthful of gas and oil covered water when you're trying to breathe!

The discussion over on Backstep Firefighter brought this up, because it worries me that the fire service is headed that direction. If we allow the 'risk managers' and legal worries to drive our decisions, we're going to end up just like that waterborne organization: ineffective and untimely, fighting fires from the outside when we could have made a rescue with minimal risk. This profession is inherently dangerous. Face it, that's what drew a lot of us to it. We are mostly all adrenaline junkies in one form or another. The answer to our LODD problems is not the blanket refusal to enter a burning structure just because it's vacant, nor is it to fight all fire from the outside. Our real problem is education and experience. We need a lot of both, and it seems they are in short supply these days.

For experience, we're simply not getting the number of fires our elders did. Sprinklers, detection systems, public awareness, no-smoking laws, inspections and proactive fire departments have all served to diminish the likelihood of fire. Consumer protection laws have advanced enough that many products don't burn as readily as they did years ago. We are just not going to fires like we did "back in the day". This means experience in real-world conditions is scarce among the younger generation of firefighters, so they must rely on their education and training to get them through.

And that brings me to the other point; education. Budgets are slim at best, training money is a dried-up trickle in most departments, and shortages in manpower means its' difficult to get time off to attend training- even if you're paying for it out-of-pocket. In house training is good, but it's dependent on the motivation of the officers and crew, their level of experience and expertise, and the availability of 'stuff' to train with. Five guys who don't want to be there can make it pretty hard for a probie to get anything out of the company drills. Sure, there's all kinds of underlying issues in that one scenario- management, leadership, mentoring, personal motivation, dedication, professionalism. That's a post for another day... or many other days. I love doing training; it gets me out of the station, refreshes my memory, keeps me sharp, and makes the day go by. Plus, good training is excellent for camaraderie and esprit de corps. We always 'gel' better as a crew after a good day of training, similar to how a crew is after working a good job together. Education is an integral part of our job.

So, you're wondering, what does that rant have to do with the topic at hand? If we're not training, we're not gaining experience. The two together make up the base for how we operate on scene. If we've never been exposed to real fire conditions, real heat, and real life-or-death situations, we're not going to have a base to pull from when true emergencies come up. How's a young firefighter going to know what the smoke is telling them, if they've never experienced it before? Up to that point, it's all theory and conjecture. Do they know how to read the building? What kind of construction they're looking at, and how the fire's progression is affecting that building? How likely is the structure to collapse in the next five minutes? Ten minutes? Is there enough time to mount a rescue attempt, or conduct a primary search for victims? Are they going above the fire, and what do they know what that means in terms of risk?

The changes in the fire service can be positive, or negative. It's up to us to push them in the right direction, and to shape the future of our beloved profession. So get out there and train like it's the real thing! Teach your probies the right way, the safe way. Not the shortcuts, not the 'I just do this instead' methods. Their lives depend on it, and so does yours.

Stay safe, take care of each other, and take care of the job.
In that order.