July 2015 Blog Posts (58)

Officer development is far more than just attending classes.

To truly develop you must  combine a servant leadership attitude with training, education and professional experiences accompanied by sound leadership and mentoring to get a quality…

Every morning since I have been working at my Internship I have become a creature of habit. In the fire service habits can be a bad thing, right? However, not in this case as my life depends on it. When I get down to the bay floor I always check my SCBA first thing. Yeah, so what everyone says, but do you check it like it's your lifeline. I thoroughly check my SCBA every morning such as the mask for cracks , does my regulator flow, and the RIT bag for  every morning…

The Overhaul    

     Cultural Change for a Safer Fire Service…it starts with ATTITUDE and TRAINING!  The first step is looking at what is already in place in your department.  If someone has developed something and it is seems to be working, then maybe all it needs is a little tweak. But remember there is always room for improvement. If…

The supreme quality of leadership is unquestionably integrity. - Dwight Eisenhower

Question is are you a leader who leads by example, with strong ethics and morals?'.

                        Photo courtesy of The First Twenty

If you think a personal change in your level of health and fitness does not have an impact, I’d like you to meet…

We can trace core values back to several places. We get them from our upbringings with parents or other family members, from our church, and several others. They are the guiding principles on how and why we make decisions in our lives and in our work. The core values we have in our personal life may not always mirror the same ones we have in our organizations. Often times they are still good values and even carried into our personal lives may still have application and meaning.

Most…

Scenario: I am a firefighter candidate. During the oral interview, one of the panel members asked me for my user name and password for my social media sites. Can the employer as for that information and for what purpose?

Discussion: With the liberal use of social media sites by millions of users, are social media sites fair game for your employer to search your social media sites for insight into your activities to determine…

Stop Being Mean to Mommy

“So that’s what it sounds like when your heart breaks”

She measures barely 40 inches tall, and I have yet to take the training wheels off her bike, but today she made me feel like the child.  My oldest daughter, three years of wisdom to her beautiful name, directed some tough words at me this…

WHAT’S THE TAKEAWAY?

I encourage young people to read and study the writings and speeches of Captain Tom Brennan, FDNY, including Brunacini/Brennan Unplugged FDIC 2003 and everything else that you can find.  I did not know Tom Brennan, I wish I had, but I surely liked his style.

Captain Tom Brennan was one who always left the audience with some important take away from his…

T-Shirt Management (A Hump Day SOS Classic from the Files)

I am always amazed at how many critically important issues there are to manage in the fire department. With any high risk occupation the day is filled with decisions that have long lasting effects. Yet it seems that we never have time to do things right but we always…

New information regarding both fire behavior and making fire behave (AKA firefighting) is coming out faster than it can be delivered to the end user: firefighters.  This is due to both the tremendous volume of data and interpretations thereof, as well as the limitations on the ability to effectively process, catalog, and communicate - that is, teach - the new concepts and approaches resulting from the research.  Sorting through the reams of findings already published on the subject of fire…

“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…

It’s 4AM and your company is dispatched to an MVC with entrapment. You arrive and find one vehicle against a large tree with the passenger heavily trapped by the dash. Due to the damage, the vehicle cannot be moved from the tree and passenger side access is limited. In turn, we need a full side-to-side dash…

Through the analysis of many line of duty death reports and close calls, the one stand-alone take away that I believe has been fully embraced and is in my opinion become a standard in today’s size up is the 360 degree evaluation of the structure immediately after arrival. But; as with most of our tactics this procedure has been honed on one particular type of dwelling, the residential structure. Doing a lap around an 80’ X 65’ can be done relatively quickly and in doing so can provide…

Firefighter Functional Training - Promoting Health and Wellness in Your Department

In North Carolina the Office of the State Fire Marshal is the certifying body for the fire service.  As in most locales I am sure, it has been quite some time since our firefighter certification program received a major makeover.  Our latest makeover took effect January 1, 2015 and included the addition of three modules to the certification…

Join me on Wednesday evening 7/22/15 at 7:30pm for the next edition  of Fire and Training on Fire Engineering  Talk Radio.  Joining me will be colleagues Chris Naum and Joe Pronesti as we explore Training and Operations for Today's Main Street fires.  The discussions will include building construction, renovations or lack thereof, structural stability, re-appropriated use,…

    A training program that is not comprehensive, effective and / or efficient must be changed!  When you consider how events have impacted our operations in recent years, we as the fire service have taken on EMS, Hazardous Materials, Technical Rescue, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Terrorism  just to name a…

“Why We Train”

I was asked, during a conversation with an older firefighter, one night, “Why it was “so necessary to train so much?” My best answer to that question, goes something like this.

Along with many others, I attended a "Fire Dynamics" set of classes recently, at my local county fire academy, here in my part of Pennsylvania. These classes were based on the science that N.I.S.T. is bringing to the table of America's Fire Service. N.I.S.T. has countless…