If you ever have flown over the United States on one of those red-eye specials you might have found yourself looking out the window. If you were lucky and had a clear night, you might have marveled at the millions of shiny lights flickering up to you. But have you ever gone to the next level and contemplated that in the midst of all of those white lights there are a series of little red lights that are assigned to the front doors of fire stations? The tradition of putting a red light on the front of a fire station reportedly goes all the way back to the late 1800s as a way to identify the local fire station. There is something refreshing about those early fire stations.

They were all neighborhood fire stations and most were not created by government but rather by community. As time has gone on, the governance of many fire departments has shifted from the good will of a group of individuals in a neighborhood, to a governmental function at the city and district level. Yet, we haven't dropped the idea that fire stations are neighborhood assets.

A few years ago, President George H.W. Bush used “a thousand points of light” in a speech. He meant that if one person with a lighted candle gathered with a large number of individuals with candles, it would shine a lot of light on a problem. We might say that same thing about the fire service.

The fire service probably has in the neighborhood of 100,000 points of light. But frankly, I don't know if that number is accurate. There are an estimated 33,000 fire departments in the United States. Some only have one fire station. Some have an army of assets. But fire stations all have one thing in common — they are distributed equally across the landscape in accordance with the needs of their communities. In other words, fire stations are about the most readily accessible, public-service facility in the entire country. Starbucks and McDonald's might be the only service-based entities that occupy a greater number per square mile than fire stations.

The significance of this is that the fire service is probably closer to being a national emergency service provider than is any other single form of government. Granted, law enforcement patrols the streets at night but they all go back to one or two police stations when their shift is over. We live in the same neighborhood as those we protect.

Fire departments are the pulse of America's emergency services. Yet, in many of the venues regarding homeland security, we have not received proper recognition for that phenomenon.

The purpose here is to not start an outright criticism of the fact that we don't get enough respect (I will leave that to Aretha Franklin and Rodney Dangerfield). Rather, we should consider that if a fire station is properly positioned; it could very well be the most substantial strength in any community's response to a major disaster. This is not about the day-to-day fire or EMS call. In many cases, the day-to-day incident is not much of an issue. We are expected merely to do that. This is about a catastrophic event brings the entire community to its knees.

Consider what some events are capable of doing. Floods cause wide-area inundation. Wind and tornados cause destruction of electrical power infrastructure and roofs. Earthquakes cause major infrastructure damage. Catastrophic hazmat events cause evacuations. Wildland-urban interface fires cause evacuation and a major loss of housing stock.

Most fire departments place a fire station within five minutes of travel time from just about every part of their community. That is the premise of the Standard of Cover concept that has grown so much over the last 20 years. It also is true that most residents live within about a 1H-mile radius, or walking distance, to their local fire station. When any catastrophic event occurs in a community and there is wide-spread destruction, mayhem and chaos, it seems logical that a fire station would be a place where the community should be able to turn.

Over the last 10 or 15 years, I have observed that almost all of the press conferences on major events tend to be in fire station apparatus rooms. Maybe this also is the reason that a lot of politicians want to be seen in fire stations or on fire trucks during election times.

For this reason, every independent fire station should be considered as a point of light. If planned correctly, each fire station could remain totally independent of the infrastructure of the community and could remain in service at the time of catastrophic events. A fire station could be an anchor in a community if it is properly equipped and its staff properly prepared for the events. It's true, a station can be damaged or devastated by any event that hits the population. When that happens, the fire department becomes just as much a victim as anything else. But it also could still be a resource. That is what has happened in many area-wide events such as Hurricane Katrina and the recent tornadoes.

In traveling around the country observing fire stations, I have seen a wide variance in the degree of independence that fire stations have. A fire station may or may not have the ability to perform its job for more than 24 hours if the community's electrical power or its overall infrastructure begins to fail. That is because many fire stations are built as if they are public facilities, but without concern for the level of activity over 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

What would make a fire station totally independent? Consider the following checklist of things to evaluate a fire station's ability to be that beacon of light.

• Does the fire station have a secure perimeter?
• Does it have its own emergency power?
• Does it have its own on-site fuel source?
• Does it have a stored water supply that would allow the firefighters to operate for a minimum of 72 hours if the water system went off line?
• Is there readily available information that can be distributed to the public in the event of a predictable catastrophic event such as wind events for hurricane areas and water events for flood areas?
• Is there a cache of rations and/or survival materials available for distribution to the public in the immediate neighborhood?
• Does the department have an SOP for operating the station as a disaster center if it is the only facility still functioning?
• Does the department have an SOP for its own firefighters so that they have a plan in effect for their families to be sustained whenever an event occurs?
• Is there a secondary communication system in place so that the department can sustain interface with the emergency operations center in the event that the phone system goes down?

There are many other items to add to that list that would harden a fire station as a delivery system. Many people will turn to the fire service in times of need and when we are able to do so we increase our level of credibility with the community.

I know in my personal experience I have been responsible for locating sand bags during flooding events and assisting with the deployment of immunizations during flu events.

There are some very simple types of technologies that we could be adding to fire stations to make them even more of an asset to the community under these conditions. For example, what about installing a weather station at the fire station to collect information that could be fed back to the local, county or even state emergency operations centers? What about installing a local emergency broadcast radio station that could put out up to date information to the local area in the aftermath of a major event?

The fire service always has been seen as the first to arrive at most emergencies and also is regarded as being among the last to leave. Making ourselves even more valuable to the neighborhoods we serve cannot help but increase the bond we already have with those who call on us the most often.

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With more than 40 years in the fire service, Ronny J. Coleman has served as fire chief in Fullerton and San Clemente, Calif., and was the fire marshal of the State of California from 1992 to 1999. He is a certified fire chief and a master instructor in the California Fire Service Training and Education System. A Fellow of the Institution of Fire Engineers, he has an associate's degree in fire science, a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in vocational education.