All Blog Posts (3,199)

So there I am with a fellow firefighter talking about an upcoming promotional testing process. He tells me how he wishes he could do the things I do physically, but he is just not as gifted.

Truth is, I'm not any more gifted than the next guy around the firehouse. I just want it more and am willing to endure more to achieve it. I have wanted whatever it is more than most other people since my early childhood years. That’s where my path to mental toughness began…years ago. At a young…

Training on the basics is vital to our fire ground operations. The basics must be converted to muscle memory. Often we over the look the importance of the not so basic skills. These are skills we don’t use on a daily basis, most likely on a monthly basis. Think about the operations we don’t perform often like:

Drafting

METRO incidents

Rope rescue (horizontal and vertical)

Air bag and cribbing

Vent Enter Search

Bangor Ladder

Mass…

Professionalism is a very common adjective used in the sphere of the modern fire service.  It is a word that is taken in a myriad of contexts and used to describe (or sometimes denounce) much of what we do as firefighters.  As the emphasis of service shifts in importance to all aspects of our modern-day society, the fire service is no different.  Many fire departments and organizations,…

The greatest asset we deploy on the fireground is our people. Perception of passing time can be distorted by stressors and friction points on the fireground. How many times have you felt this?

Have you ever felt pressured by command to rush through tasks and give reports that are not fully investigated/completed. As though they have a checklist that they just want to have all the boxes ticked and the fire will go out and we can go home! We know that is not the case (at least we hope…

The year 1933 has a significant meaning to me as that was the year my mother was born, this year also was the commencement of the winds of war as Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor in Germany, the world was changing rapidly and our greatest generation was just starting to make their mark on our history. So how you may ask does all this relate to us in the fire service? On March 10^th of that year a 6.4 magnitude earthquake measuring 6.4 hit the Los Angeles area, damage measured…

One thing we are not always taught – identifying conflict in its early stages and taking proactive steps to resolve that conflict early and quickly. The results of our not doing so are low morale, loss of productivity, high absenteeism on the part of those involved in conflict, and, ultimately, a high turnover rate. Avoiding all of this requires that supervisors and…

As officers, how do you prepare your firefighters to become officers? Firefighter can move from FF III to Lt. by taking a test. As officers are you doing a disservice by not working with your people? Are you ensuring that the day they are promoted they have the tools to function? Many station officers are putting fighters who are on the promotional list in the officer’s position on the apparatus, while riding behind them to give guidance. This is a time old and great practice. When we think…

I thought it time to leave for awhile the references to tools in the Modern Fire Attack (MFA) arsenal and instead look at a few of the new tactical rules that should be guiding our actions.  First, though, a few words regarding the whole idea of attempting to create strict edicts for something as dynamic and variable as structural firefighting.  Since one of the things that characterizes a true MFA proponent is avoidance of the words “always” and “never”, pretty…

We’ve all been there, working in an organization that seems to be leaderless as you rarely see the Chief or members of his or her immediate staff and you respond to a series of Directives or Policies that make you scratch your head.

I have worked for Chief’s that bury themselves in seemingly meaningless activates, sitting in their offices emerging only when there is a major crisis or attending a Board or Council meeting and are seriously out of touch with their…

“You can do everything right on this job and still get killed.”

~Captain Paddy Brown, FDNY

He’s right.

But would you ever stop learning, studying, training…being a student of our craft, because you can still get killed no matter what you do?  I certainly hope not.

So if asked you: Is it ok to avoid maintaining your health and wellness because you may suffer a tragic health event anyway?…

Ron Kanterman, February 2017

That’s exactly what I said to the urologist on the day after Christmas, when he told me that my tests came back positive and I have prostate cancer. Actually, he said I had a “little cancer” to which I asked, “is that like being a little pregnant?” After we both had a chuckle, he started to drone on about the test results, what they mean and possible treatments. For the first 30…

If “more tools in the toolbox” is a good metaphor for new tactics, then our favorite attack hoseline setups might serve as a more specific comparison to our standard fire suppression approaches.  With multiple available combinations of nozzle types and hose diameters, lengths, and folds for structural firefighting, each fire department typically carries one or more arrangements that best suit its needs.  Selecting the ideal configuration requires consideration of staffing and hazard…

            When firefighters begin their careers, formal training starts with either a trip to the Academy or a Firefighter One/Two class.  It is these institutions which provide basic knowledge and where the groundwork is set.   After the foundation is poured, it is up to the individual firefighter to go back to their department and decide what standard of career they will…

The hardest thing to do in the fire service is administrative work. Let’s face it, we would all like to be running calls. The reality is paper work fills up our days. Of all the admin work we do the hardest is discipline. We have had employees that are not performing at a level that is the standard. As an officer you can’t tell your chief that FF Doe can’t do the job. There must be paper work documenting their sub-par performance. Their IPPA (annual evaluation) must reflect poor performance.…

Do you ever wonder how morale issues exist in the fire service?  We all remember walking into the fire station the first time and hearing how it’s the best job in the world.  Then, somewhere down the line, the dark cloud of poor crew morale appeared.   Low morale can sneak up on even the most positive crews.   It presents itself in different forms; checked out shift members, beanery table gossip sessions, or lack of quality training.



Low morale occurs more often in slower…

  In the course of over a decade of continuous war, America’s soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen have served in nearly every climate and conflict type imaginable, from the burning sands to the frozen peaks of mountains. By now, most Americans are aware of the concept of PTSD, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Once known as “shell shock” or “battle fatigue”, PTSD is now recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in the DSM-5 as a…

Firefighter CPR-A Different Perspective

Giving full credit to Leland FD for first showing us an option for Firefighter CPR.  As with anything we see online, on FB or in a video, we study it, try it out and see how it fits into our department, staffing and circumstances.  That being said, three things stood out to us as we trained on Firefighter CPR.  The compression guy was always in the way, We may not have 3 people available initially and perhaps most important is that we…

Today’s fire service is called upon to more and more. The term “All Hazards service” is thrown around in the fire service. This means we as Firefighters are tasked to handle any and all emergencies from a sore toe to an active shooter situation and everything in between.  I want to dig down to the company level. Our fire apparatus is being set up to do multiple tasks. The names of the fire service apparatus are changing to fit the growing responsibilities:

Engine Tanker

Rescue…

A Learning Experience. Lauran Welling