Over the last few years, especially since the advent of various Web sites devoted to the fire service and the growth of Internet news services, many fire services stories that aren't so good for our reputation have made it into the wider world. Many things happen in firehouses that we would prefer not to see in the headlines because they contradict the longtime image of the fire service. I am talking, of course, about those incidents that occur in a fire station or within a fire department that result in criticism of either the individuals involved or the organization as a whole. They're usually the result of someone getting into trouble.

If none of these incidents has happened to you or your department, congratulations! If one has affected you, I hope you were able to deal with it effectively and that you learned some valuable lessons from the experience. If you think one never will happen to you, I hope that you shake off the denial in the very near future and prepare to address such an event.

Every fire chief in this country is just one shift away from an incident that can impair a career or deal a blow to the department's credibility. Every fire station is only a few minutes away from an incident that could explode into front-page headlines. If you take the issue seriously, I hope you plan to conduct an assessment and pursue some initiatives to prevent negative firehouse events from occurring in the future.

But where should you start? A controversy often tarnishes both the guilty and the innocent when they wear the same uniform. We can't ignore that there is a culture in the firehouse that can be either a positive or negative influence. There is a culture in every firehouse that can be encouraging or discouraging to the individual firefighters who are placed there. There is a culture in every firehouse that can create or destroy the reputation of an organization in a matter of moments. Which environment exists in your fire station?

After collecting about 200 news articles about flare-ups in firehouses, I observed that in almost all cases the behavior that's criticized isn't something that just appears out of specific circumstances; it has built up over a period of being sanctioned in some form or another by the organization. Some call it the “culture of the firehouse.” Others have characterized it as the culture of the fire department, a more general concept. And on the largest scale possible, it has been referred to as the culture of the fire service. Which one is it? Could it be all three?

“Culture” is a 15th-century word derived from the Latin cultura, which described the tilling of land. Used as a noun culture generally means the following: the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties, especially by education; expert care and training; enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training; integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior that depends on the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations; or the customary beliefs, social forms and material traits of racial, religious or social groups. Culture also is described as the characteristic features of everyday existence shared by people in a place or time — the set of attitudes, values, conventions or social practices associated with a particular field, activity or social characteristic.