If you asked your firefighters what they know about the Everyone Goes Home campaign, what would they say to you? Have they heard of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation's 16 Life-Safety Initiatives? Are they part of your department safety program?
In the past three years, the NFFF has invested almost $3 million of FIRE Grants into the program, They have distributed more than 30,000 Firefighter Life Safety-Response Training Kit DVDs and CD-ROMs with six modules on firefighter line-of-duty deaths and injuries.
Where did those training kits end up? How many fire departments actually have opened the kits and used the information?
NFFF Executive Director Ron Sarnicki is constantly asking how the foundation and its programs can be more effective in preventing LODDs. Are the Everyone Goes Home and Courage to be Safe campaigns actually reaching the frontline responders? This week, that question was put to six emergency services practitioners from various parts of the country, and the answer wasn't good.
A California fire captain hadn't even heard of the safety training kit, let alone received one. “[It's] probably stuck in someone‘s office,” he said.
Several fire service leaders were asked to bring someone from the frontline to discuss the NFFF‘s efforts and how to better reach these practitioners.
New firefighters come out of the fire academy trained in the correct way to do their jobs. Proper procedures and techniques are drilled into each new firefighter. But when they hit the fire station and attempt to fit in, proper procedures and firefighting basics are challenged and eventually disregarded.
“There‘s a cancer called the senior-man syndrome in fire stations," said former FDNY firefighter Vince Brennan, a consultant to NFFF. "Some are good, some are not.” Brennan said captains who, after reading new directives from headquarters, frequently will shrug and say, “This too shall pass.”
Phoenix firefighter Tim Kreis offered insight to reach the new generation of firefighters. “There‘s too much information out there today, but it‘s not relevant," he said. "Things that I care about are the things that I pay attention to. If these areas of focus are included into the hiring practices and college courses, people will study them.”
Kreis suggested a format similar to the Stall Street Journal, a newspaper-style information sheet that is posted in student bathrooms on college campuses. “I put one of the USFA‘s Coffee Breaks on the door of the [bathroom] stalls and people were asking me about the lessons in some of the articles,” he said.
Another officer asked, “If the union stewards told union members, ‘we need to get you to wear seatbelts‘ what difference would that make? People want to be involved with their unions.”
Another firefighter said he felt challenged by the system. “Am I required or given credit for being fast? The system is timing us to go fast. When I put my turnout gear on going to the fire, I‘m putting my stuff on and making sure it fits right and is properly buckled. If I got dressed in the station before getting on the rig, I‘d feel like I‘d be rushing and wasting time while something was burning.”
Are fire service culture and training pulling responders in two different directions? Are the concepts of the six-minute response time and stopping at intersections contradictory?
“Sometimes riding on the truck is the scariest part of the fire,” said another firefighter from New York. LODD statistics indicate his comment is more right than wrong.
