October 2014 Blog Posts (48)

As I write this, I am deeply saddened and disappointed at the fact that what follows even needs to be written. 

We are firemen.  We are human.  Humans make mistakes, and firemen probably make more than the average human.  With that understanding, I want to address a problem that afflicts society as a whole, but has really affected my department and several other local departments significantly over the years. 

Drunk driving.

I loathe drunk…

One of the most challenging skills in extrication is the displacement of the various objects that may be "trapping" our patients. If we practice moving these objects (steering wheel in this example) in various directions, it greatly improves our "options" when the entrapment is not typical. Here we are moving a steering wheel/column towards the…

"We all thought that since nothing serious had happened before, nothing was going to happen this time out,"

AH-6 "Little Bird" heading out on October 3, 1993 mission. (Department of Defense photo)

"I can just remember Sgt. Eversman telling me, you know, “Moore, find…

Leadership Anosmia

When I read, almost daily, about failed leadership in the Fire Service I have to wonder how the troubled leaders came to be and how they expected to be successful with no apparent understanding of principled leadership. How do the failed leaders who make the headlines exist with such an obvious lack of leadership instinct, leadership senses, positive leadership abilities, planning skills, some…

It's hard to breath. Sweat stings my eyes until they blur and a bald head does nothing to stem the steady flow. I chose to be here. I live for this moment. My body begs to slow, to rest, to just quit. My heart says no. The family that surrounds me shares in my suffering. Their lungs burn too. Their muscles struggle to obey the message traveling down from the brain. Pain endured begets more pain but there is nowhere else we'd rather be.

"ONE MINUTE!" Moments later my mind computes the…

I come from a rural area as you all know and often times we don’t quite have the staffing for an attack and a RIT team until the next due arrives which can be anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes, it just varies.

However I can recall fires where a RIT team deployed and helped the interior teams with their problems.

Many years ago there was a fire at a Limestone mine and the fire is in an underground basement of sorts it…

I couldn't resist a little pre-Halloween fun. Beware of the unexpected - especially during the bewitching month of October.





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Service Leadership

In the world of constant bad news and the incredulous suffering at the hands of bureaucracy I witnessed a moment of hope yesterday. My friend Mike “Waldo” Reynolds (3^rd…