Fire chiefs don't have too many opportunities to perform heroic and courageous acts on the fireground. They are too busy fighting for money, personnel, apparatus, equipment, supplies, buildings and programs. Then there are the nagging issues that come with the five bugles: contract negotiations, fund-raising, discipline cases, volunteer recruitment campaigns, elections, politics, harassment cases, out-of-service vehicles, citizen complaints, volunteer/career conflicts, among others. But one simple act by the fire chief can have heroic consequences.

“Are we wearing our seatbelts?” Chief J. William Martin asks his firefighters in the Monday morning meeting at the Hebron Fire Protection District, Boone County, Ky. How would our seatbelt problem change if all 32,000 fire chiefs in the country asked that same question at staff meetings?

But who has the time to ask such a simple question? After all, it is a department rule and state law. Every riding position has a seatbelt of some type. Firefighters are smart enough to be able to buckle their seatbelt. The drivers and officers are responsible for enforcing the seatbelt policy. So why should you waste one minute of time on such a small issue?

The answer is simple. Your firefighters aren't wearing their seatbelts, and you, the fire chief, know it. But if you don't ask the question, you have plausible deniability. If one of your firefighters is injured or killed because he or she wasn't wearing a seatbelt, you can say you assumed the firefighter was because seatbelts are the rule.

It will take courage to fix the seatbelt problem. Fire chiefs have to put their personal and professional leadership on the line to fix the technical, behavioral and cultural issues that underlie the lack of seatbelt use. This problem can be fixed immediately if the fire chief wants it fixed and is willing to take the lead. This will require holding yourself and other officers accountable.

Truth or consequence

Holding yourself and others accountable isn't easy. One Saturday I saw my daughter Hope driving past my house. My two grandchildren and another child were sitting on the lowered tailgate of the moving SUV. I called Hope on the phone to find out what was going on, and she said they were out collecting canned food for charity. I explained to her that she couldn't allow the children ride like that; they need to be in their seats and wearing seatbelts. To drive the point home, I relayed the details of a Tennessee firefighter who had died under similar circumstances, according to the incident's NIOSH report.

On May 18, 2003, the 28-year-old volunteer training/safety officer fell from the lowered tailgate of a moving pickup truck. He had completed a three-day training course and at the time of the incident was being transported within the training grounds. He suffered severe head trauma and was treated at the scene. The firefighter was transported by medical helicopter to a local trauma center, where he died from his injuries on the following day.

I told my daughter that if she were one of my captains I would make her buckle her passengers. At a conference last year, my instructors tried to sit on the back of a pickup truck tailgate to ride to the other side of the training ground, but I made them ride in the cab and wear their seatbelts. My instructors followed my orders; I don't know if my daughter did.

Are your firefighters following your orders? Do they get to pick which orders they follow and which ones they ignore? Do you enforce some orders and not others? How many times can a firefighter be late for work before being fired? How many times can a firefighter not wear a seatbelt without consequence?

Have you and your firefighters taken the National Seatbelt Pledge (available at www.trainingdivision.com/seatbeltpledge.asp)? The program objective is to have one million firefighters promise to wear seatbelts by the end of 2007 to eliminate all seatbelt-related line-of-duty deaths. No firefighters would die because they weren't wearing their seatbelts. This is possible if fire chiefs want it to be.

“Are we wearing our seatbelts?” Do you have the courage to ask the question at your next meeting and make the answer yes?

Burton A. Clark, Ed.D., EFO, CFO, chairs the management science program at the National Fire Academy. His doctorate is in adult education from Nova Southeastern University. He is assistant fire chief at the Laurel Volunteer Fire Department in Prince George's County, Md., a Maryland Fire Rescue Institute instructor, adjunct professor of research at Grand Canyon University and dissertation adviser at Nova Southeastern University. His research interests are in fire service professional development and research. He is a National Pro Boardcertified Fire Officer IV.