RON KANTERMAN's Blog (29)

Most of you who know me know that I write about either a training concept or things that inspire me. This month I’m inspired. It comes right in time for Fire Prevention month. Sorry to scare off some of you with the FP words but keep reading anyway. 

On January 19, 2000, an arson fire took the lives of three college freshman and injured 58 others at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J. I was a Chief in New Jersey at the time and colleagues of mine had been to the fire. It was…

By Ron Kanterman-July 2014

Some of you have heard that for some reason when you get to the third time of anything, it’s a charm. It’s true. As a boss, I’ve been blessed throughout the years with being around good and great firefighters. Being the Chief at Merck in New Jersey and then for the Mohegan Tribal FD in South East Connecticut were wonderful experiences. They were wonderful because of the officer cadre and the folks on the line as well.…

Well, FDIC 2014 has come and gone and sure enough, no one was disappointed. We had more folks there than ever, there was electricity in the air and learning was nearly off the scale. There’s no other place like it. For me and many others, it’s an annual family reunion. There are a host of men and women I only see once a year and it’s in Indianapolis. For those of you who couldn’t get there, here’s a bit of it from where I…

Chief Ron Kanterman -- April 2014

In 2004, Chief Ron Siarnicki, Executive Director of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) invited 200 fire service professionals (250 showed up) to Tampa, Florida to discuss line of duty deaths and injuries and asked us to come up with a national action plan to curb the trends and shrink the numbers. The Sixteen (16) Life Safety Initiatives (LSI’s) were developed as well as the Everyone Goes Home program and Courage to be…

My close friends, family and colleagues know that I just completed a 5 year assignment as a Chief Officer in SE Connecticut. I’ve never written about my command because approvals for publishing and using their name was prohibitive. However, now that I’m done, I was Chief of the Mohegan Tribal Fire Department, a Mohegan Tribal Government agency located on a Native American reservation located in Uncasville, CT. The members of the Department are highly trained, highly aggressive, and a very…

Chief Ron Kanterman

I have a re-visiting guest blogger this month. My good friend and associate Captain Rob Beattie of the North Plainfield (NJ) Fire Department has returned, infiltrated my Journal and penned an amusing analogy of team work and the firehouse coffee pot. Show this to your probies/rookies/new guys and where applicable, your old guys. Thanks Rob for your insight. I enjoyed this one! Ronnie K …

Chief Ron Kanterman-October 2013

That’s what Chief John McGrath (Raleigh, NC) the Memorial Weekend Incident Commander said as we convened in Emmitsburg, MD on Wednesday, October 2, 2013. The planning for the National Memorial Weekend ceremonies started in March. We had completed 7 months of planning with the last meeting being the week before the event. When we showed up that day, we knew we were already locked out of the NETC/National Fire…

Risk Management as we use it today refers to programs that help us evaluate what we do and how we do it. We put in to place certain control measures in order for us to operate within particular safety parameters. These parameters help to insure that we injure and kill less people while working. We use controls, the first of which is  “administrative” controls, which consists of standard operating guidelines or procedures, training requirements, safe practices, rules regulations, fire code…

By Ron Kanterman

I got a feeling that you opened this because we just got home from FDIC. In fact it was a killer show. It was my 23^rd FDIC and it simply gets better each year. For me, it’s a family reunion and for one week, it’s the center of our universe. Great training, great expo and great times. Start saving now for next year. It rolls around quick.

“Killer Show” is actually the title of a book (John Barylick, University Press of New England) that was…