January 2017 Blog Posts (27)

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. 

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