Featured Blog Posts – August 2015 Archive (8)

Sometimes a little pride has to be swallowed to get the job done!





Click link below to see more of Paul's work or to buy prints:

http://www.artstudioseven.com/page-LE_Prints.htm…

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This week’s Fire Engineering Google Hang out brought together a wealth of information that firefighters and officers can do today to reduce their risk to cancer. On behalf of Chief Bobby Halton we hosted Tim Elliott and Keith Tyson from the Firefighter Cancer Support Network (FCSN).

We had a very lively and spirited discussion surrounding a taboo topic in many firehouses. Every firefighter needs to clearly understand that firefighter cancer is a looming personal catastrophe for each…

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       We hear the words situational awareness quite a bit in the fire service. We talk about how we need to maintain a wide lens and not tunnel vision in on the un-important things. We can’t lose focus on what the task is at hand, right? I think tunnel vision is human nature. It happens in our everyday lives. It happens at home, driving down the road, and so on. It happens at work too. This is where we run into a problem, especially if the Group Supervisors and/or the Incident Commander are…

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The topic of short staffed operations is often overlooked, despite it being an issue that many municipalities deal with across the country. Understaffed fireground operations, specifically understaffed rapid intervention team (RIT) operations, is an important topic to address for any fire department. Short staffed operations change the way we operate on the fireground. Understaffed RIT operations directly affect our safety on the fireground. Not being able to rescue a downed firefighter…

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               This may be the most important blog I have ever posted. In order to make the greatest impact possible I have decided to also keep it short.

               When I was younger my parents never let me quit a sport once the season began. Their philosophy was "Finish what you started. If you quit when things get hard you'll quit anytime you encounter adversity in life." I will forever be grateful for that…

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EVALUATE, DIAGNOSE, AND PRESCRIBE.

The Fire Service is similar to the patient waiting room at the local doctor’s office. Both are filled with all kinds of people from different places with assorted backgrounds, personalities, exposures, symptoms, complaints and outlooks. The one common denominator is that each person has come seeking a reason and an explanation for why they are feeling whatever it is that they are…

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As an Officer, I expected the companies to know their buildings and implement adaptive tactics based on the building variables, compartment and fire dynamics and company composition capabilities.



First and foremost you need to know your buildings, their predicable performance, inherent anatomy and the manner in which fire will affect the building, the company and the occupants.



If you don't understand the building- how do you expect to be an effective fire suppression… Continue

The RIT/RIC dilemma raised its ugly head again last week when my friend Doug Mitchell (25 to Survive) posted a chart of FDNY’s RIT statistics from 1989 to 2008.  The stats that really grabbed my attention were 1. The elapsed time from the working fire declaration (10-75) until the Mayday, 19 minutes, and 2. Who found the Mayday firefighter.  First alarm units, excluding the F.A.S.T. or RIT team, found the Mayday firefighter 76.47% of the…

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