by Mike Toika
Recession. It's an ugly word, but tough economic times are a part of life. They vary in severity, but their impact and implications are always greatest for the emergency services. Budgets, planning, and direction issues become magnified. If economic decline is gradual and steady, then all public services--fire, police, EMS, public works, and so forth--can adjust gradually to the times and can prioritize based on their needs, the needs of their people, and the needs of the community. But what happens when that decline is not steady or gradual?
Emergency services can become overwhelmed with budget deficits. Prioritizing the needs of the organization vs. the needs of the community can take on a whole new meaning. This is the most challenging time to be the head of a department--fighting for every penny, protecting the department. Hard economic times hit everyone equally hard. Everyone starts to look for ways to cut overhead and to limit spending, but the emergency services must be able to protect the communities they serve. They need to be there when the call comes in and be ready to handle any type of emergency. The fire service has many duties when it comes to protecting the community- at-large, as well as its own membership.
When people evaluate the fire industry, different communities put a lot of stock in the number of personnel and vehicles, the response times, and the number of hours each member gets in training. These are all legitimate parameters, but are they really accurate? Line-of-duty death (LODD) statistics show that, overall, the same range (number) of firefighters die each year, yet call volumes have decreased. Many issues play into these deaths: medical (heart attacks; vehicular accidents; and, yes, dying while fighting the fire.
Why are we dying fighting fires? This is explained away by saying we don't have enough people on the vehicles to do the job. In today's fire service, the amount of training that occurs is burdened with mandatory safety training ranging from self-contained breathing apparatus, to saving your own, to driver training, but firefighters still die fighting the fire. We have better tools, more advanced safety equipment, and more discipline on the fireground, so why is this still the case? The fire service has been striving for decades to reduce LODDs. How do we then explain the lack of progress?
A lack of aggressive fire prevention programs and public education programs designed to address the need for better standards in each community could be part of the problem. Better fire protection systems and features have proven to increase firefighter safety. Take it one step farther, and consider the civilians who make up our communities. We have sworn an oath and are charged with protecting the lives and property of our community. Do we take that oath seriously? Of course we do! Do we do whatever we can to protect the civilians, whose hard-earned tax dollars support us? Of course we do. We provide personnel, apparatus, equipment, and the latest technologies to our community. Is that all we can do? I don't think so.
Rough economic times bring out the worst in people. One could say that bad decisions will cause the fire industry to become busier, requiring the need for more personnel. Where does that money come from, and at what cost? Isn't it time to focus on letting the community protect itself, vs. having to rely on dozens of personnel who, once they arrive on-scene, are still at such a great risk? We support our commercial and industrial populations, and we allow them to build bigger, better, higher buildings because of the trade-offs allowed by the National Building Codes. These trade-offs consist of fire protection features like sprinkler systems, hose stations. and protected stairwells. Why is it so hard for the political powers in charge to look outside the box and see the potential to save our communities' tax dollars? Why is it so hard to provide tax incentives to communities that provide requirements for residential sprinklers and other safety features for all buildings and single-family homes? Potential trade-offs might be in the form of street widths, fire hydrant placement, and cul-de-sacs with limited turn-around potential.
Fire Team USA, a group stationed in Kentucky, is very proactive in bringing to light the need to allow communities, especially new/growing communities, to better protect themselves without relying on long-term, high-tax resources. Some of the communities they help to protect have taken everything to a different level, requiring residential sprinklers in every home and sprinkler protection for all their commercial and industrial properties, regardless of size. This has helped maintain a lower tax rate for these areas. Seeing that much of these regions may be protected by volunteer or paid on-call fire departments, this need, this political mandate, allows for larger homes and buildings and does not create the need for an oversized fire department.
I am not saying there is no need for properly staffed fire departments. In suburban America, where growth has been prevalent for many decades, fire departments have grown. More equipment, more training, and more personnel are priorities, but advances in these areas occurred in very rich times. What about the lean times? Can the fire department budget support what has become the status quo? Fire chiefs and chief administrators will have to make some very tough decisions. Where are cuts to be made? What resources will be lost in budgetary red tape? If we cut services like public education and fire prevention, are we losing even more ground in protecting the people we have sworn to serve? At a time when the economic climate of the world is changing, fire chiefs and trustees around the country should become better fire prevention politicians. It is time to put fire prevention and public education at the forefront of activities for our communities. Fighting for changes by way of local amendments to national building and fire codes such as sprinkler systems with zero square footage in every new building in the community should start now. If the economic crisis continues for longer than what the experts predict, many buildings in our communities will become rundown and used by vagrants.
When the economy finally turns around and new growth starts to overtake America, fire chiefs can once again be the true leaders of their community. By becoming fire prevention politicians and advocating for better fire protection and public education, these fire chiefs will take the fight to the people and make the necessary changes needed to keep the peoples' tax dollars as low as possible while still providing the services the people need.
Changing the climate of the fire service is extremely difficult. Changing the climate of public safety, while having elected officials make tough and very controversial decisions, is far worse. The political uproar from certain factions that don't have to abide by budgets, rules, or honest conversation can be overwhelming. The fire service needs to bring the message to the people of America, but even more so to young America. We are not referring to grade schools, but to the high schools and colleges of America. These are our future clients and our future citizens. This is the reason we took the oath to serve the public.
It's no longer acceptable to accept high LODD numbers. Why do we t accept a grandma and her three grandkids dying in a house fire? The systems are available to help prevent these tragedies. We need to get the rest of America to stand up and scream, "We aren't going to take it anymore!" We can do that only if the fire chiefs and administrators recognize the potential of the fire prevention/public education bureaus they command.
When the rebuilding of America and its communities finally occurs, it is possible that we may see President Truman's request made many years ago for a fire-safe country with minimal loss of life, dollars, and resources from fires. This will happen only if the message from the fire service to the politicians, as well as to the public, is loud, clear, concise, and stronger than other voices in America. The reports "America's Burning" and "America's Burning Revisited" illustrate that there has not been much progress in solving this problem. Do we want the next publication to be titled "America's Still Burning, and No One Cares"?
Subjects: Fire prevention and protection, fire commentary