All Blog Posts (3,147)

 Change, yup I said the dreaded C word.  This simple word with a simple meaning is one of the hardest things to do in life. If you are in the fire service it is even harder. Change in the fire service is one of those taboo processes that just cannot happen, but as a matter of fact the only thing in the fire service that happens more often than a medical run, is change. 

 When we speak of change the fire service ears perk up and we become a little defensive,…

You have spent the last 30 years in uniform, serving your country and your community as a firefighter. Today you retire; hopefully in good health and financially stable.  Now what?  You do not have to get up in the morning to report to your station; you have to make a decision as to what to wear for the day as you do not have to wear a uniform; you do not have to drink bad coffee and hear horrible jokes with your crew. You do not respond to calls yet your ears…

WHAT ARE WE REALLY GOOD AT?

I’m not big on meetings. I especially dislike meetings that accomplish nothing.

Maybe, just maybe, somewhere along the way I got hung up on the belief that the Fire Service was a problem solving organization made up of talented and trustworthy crews instead of a new initiative testing ground.…

WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

Sometimes officer behavior leads me to ask “What were you thinking?”

Someone recently replayed to a friend from another department the story about a “group motivational retreat” that I held in the rear yard after a fire. I prefer to call it moonlight post incident…

Here is a simulation of a MAYDAY occurring in a Type III "Main Street" building, we do so much to try and avoid a MAYDAY and rightfully so, but how much does a command chief work on as far as preparation? I cringe when I hear fellow command level officers state that they are prepared to face a MAYDAY, no one is totally prepared no matter how experienced and confident one may be.

There are so many scenarios that could occur such as collapse, disorientation, flashover, etc. and an easy…

Once again we are seeing a push by some to devalue fire service “experience” while inflating presumptions from the recent UL interior attack study. They would prefer we dismiss years of fire ground learning for data we do not yet have on limited experiments. Is this really a worthwhile debate or a preemptive attempt to further separate and stigmatize factions within…

Everything we do revolves around this fairly new concept for the fire service. Even keeping the fire in the room of origin is risk reduction. The National Fire Academy developed an entire curriculum and delivers it across the board from a two day state weekend program to the Managing Officer program to the Executive Fire Officer program. There must be something to it if they are pushing it out at all levels.

I recently attended the Connecticut Fire Officer’s Weekend at the…

Hitting the books is as important as wearing the suits. Something that's easy to forget at times for us HazMat techs, and something I was embarrassingly reminded of during a recent department training. Who says I don't slap my own hand with these cartoons?!

Study. Train. Know.

STAY FIRED UP!





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The Sunday Preach



What's in your basket?



Happy Easter to all our friends and followers. I can imagine that today many of you witnessed a similar scenario such as seen in the picture, of the 'overflowing basket of eggs.' 



As firefighters and fire officers we must avoid the tendency to become over reliant in the status quo and finding ourselves overly comfortable in operations that are routinely…

While attending a recent training seminar the presenter, a well respected, seasoned veteran of the fire service made a statement that I seem to hear a lot lately, “the fire service sure has changed from when I first started thirty years go! Where has all the brotherhood and pride gone”.  Now, many are quick to blame the “newer generations” of firefighter’s, but talk with any retired firefighter and they’ll tell you that “these new generation of firefighters” have been “ruining” the fire…

A quick search of "ground ladders" on YouTube will pull up dozens of videos showing how to deploy a ladder using any number of methods. Some videos look like they came right out of the academy textbook, some are a bit more non-conventional, and others still show a single firefighter throwing a ladder with so little effort, the ladder might as well have been a paper…

Here is a video of a recent FREE webinar about five common mistakes that new fire officers tend make. These are by no means exclusive, but from my experience are committed by many new officers.

-Don't try to change the world

-Don't have an authority complex

-Don't micromanage

-Don't be a quitter

-Don't avoid discipline

I would welcome others that you might think of or have seen frequently.…

Think Before You Type

            I love technology. I have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and I post photos to Instagram. I enjoy reading fire service articles, exchanging tweets with firefighters from across the nation, and like many of you, I look at tons of fire scene photos and video clips. Sometimes I see things that make me cringe, sometimes I see things that make…

We can't all fight the volume of fires that some of the larger cities do, and if you don't, please don't act like you do! Some of the best instructors I've ever had the pleasure of meeting are volunteer/part-paid or work full-time in smaller departments - and they teach excellent classes despite not having a structure fire every shift. The one thing they all have in common…

This week our local fire community has a very heavy heart.   Sunday, March 20, 2016, the Conway Fire Department suffered an LODD.  Firefighter Christopher Gene Ray was killed in an apparatus related incident.  This took place in the early stages of a structure fire in the Conway fire district.

Even after 27 years of Fire and EMS I cannot imagine how Chris’s family feels this morning.  I understand the void that the…

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves ~Lao Tzu

Recently, a close friend and fire service brother posted an old picture of me on social media.  I was a young assistant chief acting as the operations officer on a residential structure fire.  When I saw the picture, I thought, “Where in the world did he come up with that…

The chirp (or beep, honk, etc) indicating a low battery charge on your portable radio is annoying enough when we're not operating on a call. Add an incident where you need your portable radio to relay important information, and it becomes a disconcerting reminder that you have a finite amount of transmitting and receiving before it becomes dead weight.

You can minimize the…

You walk into a department store and pick up that brightly colored shirt you've been looking for all over town. However, on the rack you notice a sign that reads Caution: Clothing Contains Known Carcinogens. Would you still buy the shirt? Would you wear it proudly and post a selfie posing rebelliously by the warning sign? My guess (and hope) is that…