Really, is this how it's done?

Let's hope this is not common across the country.

Job Security & Future Trauma Victim

Being the best means taking risks, and applying nearly constant effort. You must have passion, dedication and a reckless enthusiasm. These qualities apply whether you are performing on a bike, at a cardiac arrest or on a fire.

Safety Culture vs. Extinguishment Culture – Smart Fire Departments Can Have BOTH!

Excerpt: "When you have a three-minute response time for 35 or 40 firefighters to a multistory, ordinary construction apartment building, there is a reasonable expectation that the structure won’t collapse on the firefighters in the first 15 minutes of the firefight, and that you’ll have enough manpower to accomplish all of the necessary fireground tasks in fairly short order. On the other hand, when you get 3 or 4 firefighters, an engine and a tanker, no hydrants, and a 15-minute response time to a lightweight construction, two-story house with truss floors and roof, putting firefighters inside is flipping a coin with their survival chances, no matter the reason or method of entry."

The paragraph above is an excerpt from Ben Waller's blog on Firefighter Nation. I thought he presented a thoughtful viewpoint on the controversy surrounding offensive v.s. defensive department styles. Check it out by clicking here!

Few Live to Tell This Tale

Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, at least that's how the saying goes. I am certain that who ever thought up that quote never considered firefighters or news crews. When we fail to properly size up our situation or we fail to continually update our situational analysis, bad things happen. That was almost the case with this disturbing YouTube Clip.

While the video clip represents what can happen when one or more news crews get to close to a situation without understanding the dangers they face, it can also happen to us. In fact the first example I ever saw of this was a similarly narrow escape by the Divide Colorado Fire Department during the 2002 Hayman Fire.

Remember as we approach wildfire season that those little silver tents will not protect you in a dimensional fire with fuels of this magnitude (assuming you had a shelter in the first place.) It is also important to keep in mind LCES, the standard fire orders and 18 watch out situations. Print out the following link and put it in your pack or gear and stay safe.

Wildfire Firefighters reference

Influenza A H1N1 Update: Colorado Cases

Swine Flu Update April 30, 2009 10:53 MST: Colorado Confirms Two Cases of H1N1
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has confirmed two cases of Swine Flu Influenza H1N1 in Colorado. These two cases are located in Arapahoe and Douglas counties, and while exposures are unknown, one patient is a baggage handler at DIA and the other had a history of travel to both Mexico and the San Diego areas.

You Might Be Wrong!

For a guy who spends a lot of time trying to be right, it is always disheartening when I find out I am wrong. Of course being human it is inevitable that this is going to happen from time to time, but I can't say that I like it when it happens.

Certainly in our profession, we don't have the option of being wrong very often. Emergencies demand that we are right more often than not, and if we are wrong, it has to be something insignificant, or we have the potential of getting ourselves or others hurt. Of course that is why training is essential. We train, train and then train again. If we are smart, we attempt to train in a way that simulates as accurately as possible what actual conditions might be like. When we stop training, or our training is degraded we find out the hard way how we were cheated.

While each of us understands the need for consistently high quality training, we often fail to recognize that there are many things we don't train on that make us vulnerable. Most of these items come up daily and have long term effects on our operations. We have to ask ourselves how do we make purchasing decisions? Did we get the information we needed or did we just go with our gut. Did that foam salesman really give us the true story about his product, or did we just purchase something that could get us killed? How do we know?

How often do we misread our coworkers only to find that we did not truly understand their motivations? Do we attempt to really listen, or do we simply jump to conclusions and develop impressions based solely on our gut without supporting facts to back up our conclusions?

It can be hard and time consuming getting the information needed to make good decisions, but for those things that may impact us greatly, like understanding your coworkers, the time is worth the effort.

Sofa Super Store Forensice Update

As most of you probably know, I have been working for many months on a forensic recreation of the Charleston Sofa Super Store fire. The latest part of this ongoing project is the development of captioning for the audio. In the last couple of weeks, I have completed the transcriptions of 16 pages of the document. I expect to be completing the transcription work in the near future, and I will try to present this for everyone to review shortly thereafter.

There is still considerable animation work to complete, thus it will continue for some time. Much of the modeling phase has been completed, and I am hopeful to complete a large section of the remaining work during the holidays. If things go well, I would like to present a class on this fire sometime in the spring of 2009.