Starting this weekend and over the coming week, America's fire departments will gather around bronze statues, plaques and other memorials to pay tribute to their fallen comrades. Here in Illinois, numerous suburban fire departments will participate in a "silent parade" of fire trucks with flashing lights but no sirens. They will drive slowly through their communities to honor fallen firefighters. No matter how you choose to honor the fallen, it's poignant that fallen firefighters are memorialized and remembered during Fire Prevention Month.

This weekend at the National Fire Academy, 101 firefighters who died in 2004 and six firefighters from previous years will be remembered and added to the bronze plaques in the National Fallen Firefighters' Memorial. Surviving families and friends will gather to find some sense of peace in the candlelight ceremonies, speeches and other activities painstakingly planned and orchestrated by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and many others. The journey to this memorial must be long and heart-wrenching for all involved.

The U.S. Fire Administration recently released Firefighter Fatalities in the United States in 2004. The report details the deaths of career, volunteer and wildland firefighters, complete with the cause and nature of fatal injuries. In an attempt to be proactive, the report includes articles on healthy eating, safety practices and related risk management.

Appendix A of the report is a summary of 2004 incidents, detailing the firefighter, department and nature of the fatality. Pennsylvania had the highest number of firefighter deaths with 18, and Kentucky was second with eight. For fatalities from on-duty heart attacks in 2004, the median age was 52.9 years old. The youngest was 23 and the oldest was 78 years old.

We can be angry about preventable firefighter deaths and demand they stop. We can make rules to impose safety upon the thoughtless. We can show pictures in the magazine of unsafe practices and shame the foolish. We can plead for zero tolerance regarding alcohol use on response, only to hear that the San Francisco Fire Department has implemented a random testing policy that still allows for a .04 blood-alcohol level and discipline on a case-by-case basis. We can quote statistics and report weekly deaths from heart- and stress-related illnesses, but the adrenalin-rush of a sounding alarm is a stronger addiction.

And the firefighters who most need the warning, protest the loudest.

Perhaps it's time to focus on the 4,000 citizens who die every year as a result of fires in America. Maybe it's time to give up the title of highest number of civilian deaths in an industrialized nation. After all, we keep saying that the number of fires are down, but why are the civilian deaths still so high?

Maybe if the firefighters have nothing to respond to, we'll meet the goal of reducing firefighter deaths by 25% in five years.

Maybe Christmas will be early this year.