"Stats, what do we do with them?"

"When the Spanish-American philosopher wrote this in his book, 'The Life of Reason, Volume I', he certainly was not referring to the fire service. Yet, it is deadly accurate for our profession and has applications for our everyday operations. As members of the fire service, we are provided with detailed, concise, and sobering documents each year that detail the events of fireground incidents that lead to line-of-duty deaths (LODDs). These reports are printed, emailed, and posted for firefighters and officers in firehouses around the world. Unfortunately, many use them to start a finger-pointing barrage at that particular department or adopt a Monday-morning quarterback position. How many times have we heard, “Oh, that will never happen here”? (Introduction PgXI).

We will take the next 25 Sundays to give you a snippet from each chapter in our book. We start today with the introduction. Why not with chapter 1? Well, we need to take a look at the 'WHY" behind it's inception. 

The stats tell a story. "These grim statistics reinforce the need for all firefighters,from the probationary firefighter to the chief officer, to have a thorough knowledge of these structures and how fire will travel through the residential building. Additionally, all personnel need to know sound strategies and tactics and how to employ them in order to fight these fires successfully. Firefighting is a team effort; every member of your team must be prepared mentally, physically, and operationally in order to best attain the goal of saving lives and property. We must continually analyze, develop, implement, train, and refine our strategies and tactics for fighting fires in the residential structure. 

We remember our past . . . and will not be condemned to repeat it."

We took some of the common missteps and miscues on the fireground and have given you solutions, tips, drills to END THE TREND with the residential statistics that we repeatedly see in these reports. The reports are for us to decipher and make change...

Today is the first day of the rest of your career. Get INTO the job. 

(stats courtesy of USFA)