Two historic events for the fire service occurred in Washington, D.C., this week during the Congressional Fire Services Institute Emergency Services Day. In a whirlwind 24 hours, fire and emergency service professionals from across the country descended upon the nation’s Capitol, lapping across its boulevards in seas of navy uniforms and gold badges.

The first historic moment: A group of fire service leaders was invited to attend a White House briefing at the Executive Offices. Here’s a three-minute highlight of what we heard.

Richard A. Falkenrath, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security, offered the following:

• “This is a ‘war president’ — a different kind of war, as he likes to say, but he views his job as one of fighting against an enemy that is trying to attack us at home. It’s changed everything about his conduct in office and the way his administration sets its priorities.”



•  “The character of the enemy has changed—this is not a great nation with a big army — this is individuals — operatives -- that invade with very fluid networks and are trying to penetrate our country and freedom and carry out devastating attacks against us.”



• On the National Incident Management System: “These are ideas which have been embraced by the president and completely without precedent. He said that we, as a nation, need a seamless way to respond, irregardless of their scale, so that everyone that shows up, knows how to respond and understands the basic command and control systems. Those ideas came from the fire community.”



• “The essential method of 9-11 was to take a system in our midst that had mass destruction potential and to exploit this complacency. I don’t think they’re going to pull that off again by hijacking an airplane, but there are other systems in our society that if hit, could set off catastrophic events — chemical plants, toxic chemicals, etc.”



• “From a terrorist point of view, we are a very target-rich environment.”
  
  

The next speaker was Sue Mencer, director of the Office for State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. Mencer had 20 years with FBI, but was most recently public safety director for the state of Colorado. Said Mencer:

• “How many of you believe that the first on the scene [on Sept. 11] were the firefighters?” [Half the audience raised their hand.] “How many of you think the first on the scene were the law enforcement?” [Another half raised their hands.] “You’re all wrong—the first on the scene were the volunteers in that building, sitting next to the people who were at the desks and helped them with first aid and out of the building.”



• “If I put on my hat as public safety officer in Colorado, you know that weapons of mass destruction overcome the capability of any one community to handle it because it is a weapon of mass destruction and because of that, you have to have mutual-aid agreements.”



• “What do you need in your community of 200,000 up to be at Tier One, to be ready? What do you need to be one step above that? What are the capabilities that exist?



• “Whatever you prepare for, whatever you train for, it will help you with every other event you do and that’s something we need to think about with Homeland Security. If you buy it for a terrorist event, we’re not going to park it in a garage and wait for a WMD event. Dual-use kind of equipment -- that’s very important.”



• “Everybody is under the misconception that if you have a Top-Secret clearance, you have access to everything. You don’t. They [the federal government] will give you what you need to know.”
• “We’re going to see a shift from equipment purchase to training and exercises.”



• “We don’t hire Type Bs as first responders; we’re all Type As, and with that comes a bit of territorialism. You know that you make a difference. You’re proud of that, and because of that you get a little possessive with what you do. We don’t want to share as much as we should. Local law enforcement has to work on it. State police have to work on it and federal government needs to work on it.”
  
  

U.S. Fire Administrator R. David Paulison wrapped up the briefing with the sternest message we’ve heard yet from him:

• “One of my main focuses is going to be line of duty deaths. What’s killing our firefighters are very simple things that we can fix.”



• “We have had firefighters lost in abandoned buildings when there’s nobody to save. Why in the world would we put firefighters at risk over empty buildings? It doesn’t make sense to me. We have to have a culture change in the fire service.”



• “Regular physical exams. Every firefighter should be mandated to have a physical every year.”



• “Civilian deaths – We’re still averaging over 3,000 civilian deaths a year, $10 billion in direct losses. We have a fire problem, folks.”



• On sensor systems: “When you pull up on a scene, you should be able to tell if it’s a chemical spill or a biological incident; we don’t have systems in place to tell us ahead of time.”
  
  

The second historic moment was the largest CFSI National Fire & Emergency Services dinner in the event’s 16-year history. More than 2,100 attendees heard Emcee Hal Bruno (his first public appearance after heart surgery) introduce Vice President Dick Cheney, Rep. Curt Weldon, Sen. John McCain and others.

While the Washington Hilton ballroom was fairly full, I think there was room for another 1,000 or so. Next year, I hope to see you there!