All Blog Posts (3,145)

For as long as I can remember I have heard people say, as a person in a leadership position you are not supposed to play favorites. That by doing this it causes distrust and damages your credibility. Not only that, it is an unfair way to lead. I will agree to an extent. I think there is a fine line we have to walk when it comes to playing favorites with the firefighters in our stations.

So, do I play favorites? I sure do! My favorites are the ones that…

We were doing truck checks this past Tuesday like we always do. This is the day that we do the bay floors, check our saws, tune everything up, run all fans, extrication tools, and all that good stuff. I was on Engine 1 for the tour and we had already ran all of our equipment and before I went over to ask the Heavy Rescue or Ladder dudes what they had left to run I checked my nozzles. It’s not uncommon for me to walk around each shift and check the nozzles and hose loads from previous shifts…

Do you have the capability to listen to the police on your radios? You can glean crucial information from the police. Have you ever been dispatched on a call for a sick person that ended up to be a person that is having a mental crisis and ultimately required police intervention?  There are times we are dispatched to assist the police, but you are giving very limited information. By monitoring the police channel you can get the missing information. There are call that may require the fire…

You Can Make a Dent

Joseph Kitchen, Bath Twp. Fire Department (Lima, Ohio)

            Have you ever felt as if your department was so broken that its problems could not be fixed? Or, have you ever felt like there were so many issues with the fire service in general, that nothing you…

I want to talk about…. what is brotherhood?  Plain and simple. Brotherhood is treating others like family. In a family, sometimes you're there to prepare people and make them better. Sometimes you've got to be hard on them. Sometimes you just need to be there for them. I think a lot of that gets lost. Sometimes people think it's not their job. We're just co-workers and I think that's the wrong attitude because not everyone grows up the same.

Some of you…

The dispatch speakers in the fire house have a volume control. All the speakers in the fire house should be set at a level that they can be heard at all times. Giving the excuse, “if they need us they will dispatch us” is a lazy excuse. Situational awareness applies to all and it is important to know what is going on in the county at all times. Major incidents that you are not due on may impact the next call you are due on. Aggressive companies will know if they are next up if a fire…

Firefighters represent a lot of things in the public imagination.  Words like “courage,” “selflessness,” “integrity” and “reliability” spring to mind.  But there is a darker side to fire culture as well - a system of thought that can sometimes shatter families and lead promising firefighters to an early grave. 

 …

As 2016 winds down, it is time to think forward to 2017. Most make resolutions that they never follow through with. To my fire service brothers/sisters I want to challenge you, make a resolution that will strengthen you, your shifts and the fire service in general. Keep your fire service resolutions for the entire year. Don’t give up 2 months in. Remember complacency kills. Below are some ideas, but please feel free to come up with your own:

• Train every…

This year has certainly been interesting related to the legal issues facing the fire service. We continue to see the fire departments in the news for many high profile fires, rescues, service calls and the other good things we do on a daily basis.

Interestingly enough, in spite of the fact there has been a plethora of information from your favorite fire service attorneys (Murphy, Varone, Comstock and Pinsky) in…

Not to be overly dramatic, but to me, fire attack is combat.  Not much different than any other type of fight.  My intention is to present an overwhelming force that ends the fight quickly and in my favor.  This isn’t to be confused with fighting sports.  In the sporting environment, it’s often my turn, your turn, then my turn, and so on.  As my favorite defensive instructor says, “In a real fight, it’s my turn, my turn and my turn.”  The enemy never gets a chance beyond the ambush!  Also,…

I’m going to try something different, instead of sitting at the kitchen table in the fire house let’s pull up the chair that sits vacant most nights but is where your presence is most requested…our dining room tables.

There are few professions…

If you are unsure of who Lt. General Hal Moore is I would encourage you to research one of the most decorated war time heroes in modern history.  In fact, General Norman Schwarzkopf, who was a student of Lt. General Hal Moore at West Point, calls him one of his “heroes.” General Moore was born in Bardstown, Kentucky; a small town of 11,700 people, per the 2010 census records. How does a small-town gentleman rise to be one of the most decorated military figures in history? I believe he lived…

Yes, we still have crews who work in collapse zones. Yes, we still have crews going in with uncharged lines. Yes, we still have people on the fireground who don’t speak up when they see something wrong, or don’t listen when people do speak up. And yes, it’s a damn shame when it feels like we lost good brothers for no good reason. 

But I…

Imagine you are dispatched to a motor vehicle collision and when you arrive you see a driver unconscious with trauma to the neck and upper extremities bleeding profusely.  Without quick action he is sure to die.  But there are power lines on the car.  What comes first?  Deal with the power lines or go for the victim?

Many of us around the country are arriving…

Many times, we see fire trucks rolling down the road with lights flashing and sirens blaring, you can see the firemen in the back getting ready. Do you ever think about what you’re really watching? It’s a lot more than just a fire truck driving fast, making a lot of noise! It’s an everyday person that either left their family or left their job, someone that may have been off work and dropped what they were doing because someone is having the worst day of their life.

Have you ever…

As a firefighter, we face death in a million forms every day.  It could be the crash of a falling roof beam, entrapment in a quick-moving blaze, or the slow poison of the toxins we’ve accumulated in our lungs.  But there’s one that seems to make some people especially uncomfortable: suicide. 

For those of us who have never felt the urge, it can be incomprehensible that anybody would want to…

Lets talk succession training. It always seems to be a hot topic when a bunch of firefighters get together. There is either a lack thereof or something that they always want to see happen within their departments.

I see as there's two types of succession training. There's formal and informal. Formal is going to be at department programs, maybe some larger agencies might be common. Even smaller ones are starting to get it.  You got to go through this program. It's 40…

      Our ultimate success during any incident is a direct result of the effort applied by available resources.  Incidents for which we have adequate resources (personnel, equipment, training) will usually have the most successful outcome possible given the circumstances.  How we choose to apply the resources at hand to mitigate an incident is generally the factor of which we have the greatest control once an incident begins.  Company officers and chiefs who direct operations from…

Blog Note: I wrote this piece for the friends in my hometown. No fires, no fire trucks, no HOT topics and no politics. Just some childhood memories that, if you take the time to read, it may lift your spirits and unlock your mind to reveal similar memories of your own. It may give you a moment of pause to remember a simpler, innocent time in your life when you didn’t carry the weight of the…