Fire
| 04/26/2010

Industry news for Spring 2010

PRE-HOSPITAL MEDICINE
Amy Cappiello | 07/25/2010

Forsyth Medical Center and First Responders Work Hand in Hand to Develop Highly Successful Treatment Protocols

Broken bones, car accidents, allergic reactions, chest pains.  Each day, thousands of front-line responders across the country answer the call to care for those seeking immediate medical attention.  Sometimes the calls are minor, sometimes life-threatening.  But while the average lay person may think that all these emergency medical personnel do is pick up patients from the scene of injury and illness and transport them to area hospitals, that perception couldn’t be farther from the truth.

FITNESS TRAINING
Tim Deppen | 07/25/2010

I’m pretty much like every firefighter believing in the ideology of, “we should train like we’re in it.” Everything we do should be mimicking the incidents we respond to.

As firefighters we must be equipped, trained and physically able to do this great job of ours. I’m not saying that we need to be marathon runners, or have the body of mister universe to do our jobs, but rather maintain a high level of fitness; ready physically to respond to our community’s call for help. I read somewhere that firefighters use as much energy in a major incident as football players do in a game. That’s quite a bit.

For the most part we lead sedentary lives at the station with little or no exercise. One minute feet kicked up in the chair and two minutes later, on scene at a two story residential structure with heavy smoke showing. And now with the added stress of doing a search with confirmed occupants still inside. Are we physically ready?

Rescue
DAVID GREENE | 04/26/2010

Despite all of the other things with which we are tasked, fire is still our middle name. We spend the bulk of our time doing down time stuff — check and clean trucks, train, and prepare for calls — more than we spend time actually operating on calls. Take nothing away from this. Our monotonous tasks that are labeled as routine and boring are very important.

Imagine your favorite football team playing your biggest rival without ever practicing plays or checking to see if their helmets and pads fit properly. Such an occurrence may result in an outcome similar to the football game in 1916 during which the Cumberland, Tennessee Bulldogs were beaten unmercifully by the then called “Engineers” from Georgia Tech. The final score of that game was 222 to zero. That is not a typo. 

Fire
DOUG ROSS | 10/18/2009

Unlike a burglary or homicide scene, the preservation of the potential arson scene is a more difficult task for the 1st Responder. If you think about it, often arson scenes aren’t confirmed as actual crime scenes until hours, days or weeks after the fire is suppressed! For this reason alone all fire scenes must be considered potential crime scenes from the outset. 

Fire
S. JOSEPH WOODALL | 01/11/2010

Is it just me or is excellent customer service getting harder and harder to find? It appears that our national culture is suffering from a lack of commitment in completely and thoroughly assisting a customer to a positive outcome. The root-causes are many: personnel shortages, a stressful workplace, increasing financial and family challenges, low pay, off-shoring, low morale, automation and on and on. In many of my encounters ‘good’seems to be the benchmark but ‘good’ is somewhere in the middle of the customer service continuum; probably better than average but well below outstanding and excellent.

Fire
DAVE MURPHY | 01/11/2010

Our essential mission and number one priority is to deliver the best possible service to our customers —or is it?

Do we only show up when someone calls 911? If this is the case, I maintain you are not providing the best possible service to your customer, the citizens that pay your salary, or provide the necessary resources for you to operate.

KEEPING YOU SAFE
STEPHEN MARKS | 01/11/2010

Regardless of our background in the emergency services, we are charged with the responsibility of serving our community. Most of us realized this when we began our careers, although it may not have been the only reason we chose to follow such a path. It doesn’ t matter whether we are paid or volunteer. It doesn’ t matter if we dispatch the calls, respond to them, or clean up after them. We’ re all in this together —serving our community.

EDUCATING TOMORROW’S OFFICERS
Christopher M. Haley | 07/25/2010

In today’s fire service, leadership and management have become just as big of buzzwords as incident command, and homeland security. Fire service leadership has grown from something that leader’s “just knew how to do” into a studied and instructed science. Some departments feel that just by sending someone to an officer class, they are ready to lead and grow the future firefighters that they will command.

Fire
MICHAEL P. DALLESSANDRO | 04/26/2010

Congratulations, you have been elected Chief of your volunteer fire department. Here is your white helmet and in many parts of our country here are the keys to your new chief’s rig. To take this scenario one step further, there are also many departments who issue department vehicles to other members with chief rank designations such as Deputy Chief or Assistant Chief. Unfortunately, when writing an article about chief’s vehicles in a national publication such as this, I also must acknowledge that there are many departments who do not issue vehicles at all.