William Knight's Page

“Brotherhood is dead.”

I’ve witnessed that same sentence uttered or typed several times in the last few weeks.  It’s out and out poppycock.  Balderdash.  Claptrap.  Malarkey. 

If service and selflessness are the foundation of this profession, then brotherhood is the mortar that holds all the other pieces of our house together.  Without brotherhood, we fall apart.  There are those in the fire service that truly do not appreciate that fact, nor do they care about…

At times, it can be overwhelming.  That desire to do great things, crushed hopelessly underfoot, trodden into the mud beneath an army of detractors marching against you.  Seemingly insurmountable odds and an enemy that looms over you and hurls taunts and discouragements. 

Bear with me, heathens, for we are about to delve into an Old Testament tale of victory in the face of overwhelming opposition from all sides.  It is a tale thousands of years old, but it has direct parallels…

“But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing.”

                              -2 Thessalonians 3:13

Don’t get tired of doing the right thing.  That’s what the verse above means, taken at its face.  But to gain a more complete understanding of how it applies to today’s fire service, let’s dig deeper into it, and other verses penned long ago.

First, a little background knowledge.  First and Second Thessalonians were epistles, or letters, written in…

RIT, RIT, RIT.  We read a lot of the same information about it, and we’ve been reading it for a long time.  Specifically, “proactive RIT” has been pushed for over a decade now.  RIT is a good thing; having a team on standby to dive into the fray and rescue one of our own is absolutely one of the many priorities at most fires.  But let’s dig a little deeper into this dominating theme in RIT training.

Proactive RIT means having a RIT crew that doesn’t just stand in one spot like…