Twin brothers were stuck in the house on a rainy Saturday. Bored after breakfast and a couple of hours of watching TV, the younger twin tossed a wad of paper at his older brother. As predicted, the older twin tossed the wad of paper back. This led to a wrestling match, which resulted in their mother coming into the room, angry at the chaos.

She reminded them that they were brothers and how that special bond should never result in a fight, how they should always be united and stand up for each other, and how they could beat any challenge in their lives so long as they stood together as brothers should. She then sent them to separate rooms to think about what she had said.

That very wise mother spoke of “brotherhood.” What does that mean? Brothers, or sisters for that matter, are there for each other in good times and bad. They are a steadying force when needed. They are a team who help each other by using one's strengths to compensate for the other's weaknesses. True brothers and sisters don't sacrifice the other for a personal agenda. While brothers and sisters don't always agree on everything, they agree to disagree with no hard feelings and an understanding that they will strive for consensus as much as possible for the overall good of the family.

This bond isn't exclusive to bloodlines. Firefighters are an excellent example. There's a natural bond as a result of the work. We know how much we depend on each other. We hold each other's lives in our hands at every call. We need to work as a team to survive. We need to know each other's strengths and weaknesses to protect each other and get the job done safely. If this isn't family, nothing is.

Now for the reality check. Do firefighters always agree with each other? No, but do they allow these feelings to destroy the strong bonds of the fire service family? Sometimes it may seem that way, but when a serious situation like Sept. 11 comes about, the firefighter family puts its differences aside like any other family. It's times like this when the true family of the fire service shows through. These special bonds are inherently stronger than any disagreement over whether your brother or sister firefighter is volunteer or career. So why then are there such hostile feelings between some career or union firefighters and volunteer firefighters? It's essential to understand why each side feels the way it does to begin to make sense of it.

Let's discuss what makes union members part of an extended family. Unions were established out of necessity; working conditions were deplorable and child labor was rampant. A united labor force was an effective labor force. It took courage in the beginning to stand up for one's union. It was soon realized that for labor to flourish, each and every laborer would have to be willing to make sacrifices for the greater good, even if that sacrifice meant a strike and a temporary loss of pay to accomplish that goal. However, anyone who thinks that union members never argue better think again. Families don't always agree. An important element that makes a union a family is that its members remain united behind difficult decisions that help the family despite these disagreements.

One of the main goals of a union is job protection; families defend and protect their members. Union members view volunteers, who receive little or no compensation for doing the job that another dues-paying union member does for a living, as taking food from the mouth of one of their family members. Knowing all of this, we can see why the union firefighter, as the younger brother in the fire service, might be the first to toss a wad a paper at the older brother, the volunteer firefighter.

But what makes the older-brother volunteer firefighter toss that wad of paper back at the younger-brother union firefighter? The American fire service originated as a volunteer service. All career firefighters have their origins in the volunteer fire service. Volunteer firefighters can't understand why their younger brother and sister career firefighters don't remember where they came from. Have they forgotten their roots? Why did they stray from the family?

Volunteer fire departments provide a level of protection that their communities couldn't afford otherwise. It's a fact that many communities could not economically function in today's world if they had to pay a fire department. Even after consolidation or regionalization, many communities still would not be able to afford a paid fire department. While jobs are essential to keep a nation's economy going, citizens can be taxed only so much, and essential services must be maintained for a community to be safe.

Career firefighters and their families live in many of these communities, so diminishing the ranks of the volunteer firefighters in these communities puts those career or union firefighters at risk. Prohibiting career firefighters to share their skills in their own communities is counter productive. Career firefighters are well-respected in volunteer fire departments and many of them rise to high ranks. Again, it's counter-productive for the career departments to prohibit their members from training on their own time and from gaining experience in administrative and command positions as officers in a volunteer department. This can translate into better customer service in the community that employs them. Firefighters have a sworn duty to save lives and property, and the more experience they have doing it, the better they can perform that duty. It doesn't matter if that experience comes from the volunteer or career fire service.

Volunteer firefighters also feel discriminated against by the union because while they are criticized for taking away union firefighters' jobs, career firefighters aren't similarly criticized for taking jobs away from others in affiliate AFL-CIO unions, the career firefighters' mother union. Off-duty career firefighters take jobs as plumbers, electricians, painters and contractors for lower, non-union wages, often claiming that they do so to give people who couldn't otherwise afford these services better prices and a chance to enhance their standards of living. These same firefighters can't volunteer their services to help protect the communities in which they and their families reside.

Volunteers feel that they, too, enable people in their community to better their standards of living by keeping taxes down. Card-carrying union members who are volunteer firefighters are victims of career firefighters who do union jobs for non-union wages. These volunteer firefighters aren't being hired because they are being easily out bid for jobs. This becomes confusing to the volunteer firefighter who wonders why the firefighters union doesn't mention this situation to their members, but only insists that union members shouldn't donate their services as volunteer firefighters. Most of all they feel a great deal of resentment as a result, making it easy to see why the older volunteer firefighter brother will then toss the wad of paper back at the younger career firefighter brother, causing chaos in the American fire service family.

This “two-hatter” issue and its effects certainly have caused the American fire service to become a dysfunctional family. This issue has violated the sanctity of the family and damaged all family members. It has brought disrespect to and bred conflict within our family. None of this is good for any family, especially a family whose members depend on each other for survival. It has affected important issues such as funding in a critical time for our service. Families disagree, and the fire service is no different, but functional families get past those disagreements: They get mad, get over it and get better.

It's a shame that sometimes it takes horrible tragedies to make people realize what they have. It's an even deeper shame when these people let personal agendas be re-established after the tragedy has had time to mask its scars. The fire service family must use the energy that it's wasting arguing with each other and channel it toward constructive, mutually beneficial projects like firefighter safety and health and wellness, which would save the lives of our brothers and sisters. We must not let this issue blind us to the fact that the world has changed dramatically since Sept. 11. Our role has gone from being solely suppression and prevention specialists to America's first defenders. We need every soldier on the line at home; we should not be trying to pull them off the line, and volunteer and career firefighters should not be creating family chaos over this issue.

All firefighters, volunteer and career, are one sea of blue with one uniform. The bottom line is that we are all brothers and sisters, and we must never forget that. Maybe we should take a time-out and remember what that mother said to her sons: Brothers should always be united and stand up for each other, and as long as they do so they can conquer any challenge they face.

Firefighters, go to your rooms and think about what you're doing to the American fire service family.

Chief Mike Chiaramonte is a 35-year member of the Lynbrook (N.Y.) Fire Department and a past chief of the department. He's currently the chief fire inspector, where he is responsible for code enforcement and prevention education. Chiaramonte was a past-chairman and board member of the IAFC Volunteer and Combination Officers Section Board and New York State Director to the IAFC Eastern Division. He's also a National Fire Academy Instructor and an advisor to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. Chiaramonte is a state EMT-CC and an instructor at the Nassau County EMS Academy. He has as a bachelor's degree from the University of Houston and a master's degree from Hofstra University, both in communications education.