Do What Is Necessary To Ensure That Everyone Always Goes Home

By Robert J. Colameta Jr.
If you could save a firefighter from a line-of-duty death, wouldn’t you? If you could stop a fire crew from an intersection accident, wouldn’t you? If you knew your closest firefighter friend was going to have a heart attack performing fire attack, search and rescue, or while performing overhaul, would you let it happen? Of course you wouldn’t. The next question to contemplate then is this: Why do we continue to lose more firefighters to heart attack and vehicle accidents each year?

Heart attacks and vehicle accidents remain the leading and second leading causes of preventable line-of-duty deaths. The best way to slow, stop, and reverse this trend is to bring the Courage to Be Safe campaign and the Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives into your life. The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation would like to reduce preventable line-of-duty deaths by 50% within the next three years. To accomplish this goal, it needs your help. Everyone Goes Home is the NFFF’s mantra and Courage to Be Safe is its program, which is built upon the life safety initiatives. It harnesses ingredients that, when combined, blended and nurtured, can produce a smarter, safer and more intelligently adaptive fire crew.

Related: 16 Life-Safety Initiatives

As a fire chief, you hold the power to shepherd every member of your organization toward a modern culture of safety. With all that you have invested to become a fire chief, how do you hope to be remembered? What kind of legacy will be associated with your name? Will it be to bring your organization to a better place? Could it include improving the quality of your firefighters’ working environment? Will your legacy encompass being viewed as a person who emulates greatness? Or could you be remembered as the chief who headed up a department that was accidently successful more often than not? You can control the outcome from this moment on. You can move a good department to greatness and make sure that everyone goes home safely after each tour. A favorite motivational book and video is 212 Degrees by Sam Parker. The essence of this book is based on finding the motivation necessary to produce one extra degree of effort and realizing the benefit that each extra degree can create. At 211° water is hot, but at 212°, it turns to steam so powerful it can move a locomotive. 

Harry S. Truman once stated: “Men make history, and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.” Bringing the Courage to Be Safe program into your organization means that you intend to bring your organization to a place it never has been. In order to get to a place you never have been, you must do what you never have done.

With this target in mind, it’s time to embrace Everyone Goes Home and advocate for the Courage to Be Safe program, which is designed to light a fire within your members and harness one extra degree of effort. It is a program that motivates firefighters to find their strengths, shore up weaknesses, and utilize the life safety initiatives as opportunities to live a longer, healthier life in an occupation that comes with great risk. The extra degree of effort can improve health and wellness, and it can result in safer emergency vehicle responses by achieving seatbelt compliance. These goals are designed to reduce injuries and fatalities among firefighters across the nation.

Some might think that we have more important things to do. But what is more important than keeping firefighters from becoming a middle aged, line-of-duty death? When that happens we lose so many years of experience, and we lose mentors to younger, less experienced members. The community loses and the family loss is forever. What we can teach you through the Courage to Be Safe program can help you prevent a line-of-duty death. Why not learn how defining the need for a cultural change at all levels of leadership can alter your path from accidently successful to intellectually aware; and how teaching the skill of empowerment can reduce risk, especially when others bring information to you that can alter a risky decision you may be about to make?

If we can improve communication and alter consequences, we can reduce needless injuries and fatalities. This is about learning how to connect the dots between safety, health, situational awareness and risk management. This is about improving crew integrity through education, technology and public education. It’s about teaching our drivers, officers and crew members to strap in to stay in. It’s about recognizing that vehicle operators are responsible for the safety of their crews and that seatbelt use is a mandate that can be made right now. 

As program manager for Courage to be Safe, I have had the good fortune to meet some of the most intelligent, progressive people in the fire service; people who are change agents. I have met firefighters from all ranks and all types of departments who work day to day, year after year, hoping some traditions will change. I have talked with firefighters who desperately want to conform to more appropriate levels of safety, such as seatbelt use, only to be ridiculed or pressured not to rock the boat. When firefighters get a new fire officer or chief you can hear them say, “We hope this will be the one who makes a difference.” I have met fire officers who say that when they become a chief, things will change. They state this with such conviction that we can only hope that it will come true. Did you think the same way? I often wonder how anyone could change an organization if they are not able to get companies to want to be seatbelt compliant. 

What are your hopes for your career? What are your hopes for the legacy you now know is waiting to be launched? Our hope is you join the Courage to Be Safe campaign as did the Fire Department of New York, which utilizes the life-safety initiatives in its accident-reduction program, and Chicago Fire Department, which was featured in a recently released film produced by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation that discussed the need for cultural change. Also noteworthy is that the state of Ohio and the Michigan Fire Training Council both now require that all firefighters participate in the Courage to Be Safe program to obtain Firefighter I/II certification. Meanwhile, the state of Texas now mandates that all of its firefighters successfully complete the program by 2015. 

More and more organizations, small and large, are finding that the program offers a fascinating perspective on accident prevention. It does not matter whether you are full-time, part-time, or volunteer. A human being who accepts the service and is willing to put his or her life on the line is a professional who can become a line-of-duty death. With one extra degree of effort we can prevent this from happening. We must put the politics of our situations aside and recognize the bipartisan power we can harness to succeed and reduce preventable line-of-duty deaths by 50% by the end of 2014.

We recognize that even when everything is done correctly and to the highest standards, an extraordinary event can happen and a firefighter will lose his or her life. Hal Bruno, the NFFF’s chairman emeritus, reminds us that when firefighters die in the line of duty, we must honor them and their memory. We must learn from the loss and act on what we learn by making sure it never happens again. Charlie Dickinson, the retired U.S. Deputy Fire Administrator reminds us that sometimes we think fires are routine or that sometimes we think like the public, which is that it will never happen to us. He adds that we all share responsibility for creating a more modern safety culture and that if we risk a life it should be to save a life. Finally, we must ask ourselves, “Did we do all that we could have?”

If you have yet to adopt the Everyone Goes Home mantra and if you have not brought the Courage to Be Safe program into your life, you must ask yourself whether you are doing all that you can to reduce preventable line-of-duty deaths in your organization.

— Robert J. Colameta Jr., is the owner of Public Safety Education Network. Since 2005, he has been program manager for the NFFF’s Courage to be Safe program.