By Bruce Tenniswood
The fire service has a reputation of being “200 years of tradition unhampered by progress.” I, for one, happen to believe that we, as an industry, have shed that reputation and made some great strides in our quest for progress. But progress is a journey, and we haven’t arrived.
Let’s think about some realities of our profession. We have self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) available to us today that completely eliminates our inhalation of smoke and combustion byproducts. We have turnout gear that provides thermal protection that firefighters 20 years ago could only dream about. We have pumpers that almost operate themselves and pump ridiculous amounts of water every minute. Our hose advances through structures almost as if it has been greased, compared with the cotton-jacketed rubber hose of yesterday. We have nozzles that can do just about anything short of holding themselves. We have command and control systems, thermal imaging cameras, positive-pressure ventilation, accountability systems, and the list goes on.
I started my firefighting career 23 years ago, and none of these items were routinely used by my department or any other department in my area. The thought of calling for a canteen service at a fire was inconceivable. We were firefighters; we cracked open a bleeder and drank out of a cupped hand if we got thirsty enough, right? SCBA was a necessary evil, used only if the boss was looking, and then only when “actively fighting fire.” Why bother with it after that, because it was a pain to refill from a cascade system. Plus, my academy taught me that if you were doing your hydraulic ventilation and you stuck your face down by the fog stream, there was plenty of clean, cool air to breathe, so you could “conserve air.”
We have made some progress. In fact, we’ve made a lot of progress. We have made, and we will continue to make, progress. We’re good, and we’re getting better every year…or are we?
What really matters when it comes to making progress in the fire service? Are we really making that much difference in the property we save? If we burn a building to the ground or stop a fire with an aggressive interior attack and then leave the building to a demolition company to tear down, have we really made progress? Sure, we stopped the fire from spreading to the exposures, but we did that 20 years ago. I don’t see that part of our job as having progressed, but isn’t that really because buildings built in the past 20 years are disposable and not designed to withstand a fire and be repaired? It’s less costly to just tear them down and rebuild them, so that is not an indication of our progress.
The modern and prevalent philosophy in the fire service is that we are all about safety. We routinely assign a safety officer to our events; we write and enforce standard operating procedures on personal protective equipment, hot zones, incident command, and every other safety related topic we can think of. We train on safe procedures, we document that training, and then we make safety a part of our daily routine. And then we kill or injure ourselves at the same rate that we have for the past 30 years! Look at the bar chart below that has been provided for free for every firefighter in the entire world to view on FEMA’s Web site in the 2007 firefighter fatality report. With the tragic exception of the year 2001, it’s practically flat! Is that evidence of progress? Or is it more tradition?
Let’s really look at what this graph represents. Imagine each bar on this graph as being a stack of firefighters, because that is what it represents. It’s not a little blue line with a number on it. It’s 100-plus firefighters who have lost their lives to this profession that we claim is making “progress”!
So, where do we go from here? Do we just continue the tradition, polish up our skills on throwing a fabulous funeral, and keep doing what we are doing? Or can we make progress? I believe we can, and it takes some serious evaluation by every member of our industry. We have the tools to change this ridiculous trend. We have the procedures and the equipment, and we have identified the problem. There is an old saying that a problem identified is half solved. What about the other half? That is up to us as firefighters. How many of the issues identified as causative factors in the deaths of our firefighters in 2007 were new issues? How many of the events that happened were completely unpredictable or unavoidable? Some of them were, and we do not diminish the tragedy of them. But how would that list be diminished if we followed the procedures that we wrote for ourselves, listened to our own advice, and used the equipment that we demanded from our suppliers? How could that list be reduced simply by using the diagnostic tools that we all carry in the most basic first-aid bag?
Yes, we have made progress. We have come a long way in our quest to make a dangerous activity must more safe and efficient. However, we have a long way to go, and we must keep heading in the right direction. We have so many resources at our disposal. Let’s start “THINKING” our way out of tradition and into real progress!
Bruce Tenniswood is deputy chief of the Westland (MI) Fire Department. He has 23 years on the department and is in charge of the suppression division. He is a paramedic and Officer III, holds a BS in fire science, staff, and command from Eastern Michigan University, and is pursuing an MBA from Madonna University. Bruce can be reached at btenniswood@cityofwestland.com.
