Some physicists believe there is such a thing as an alternate universe. Others disagree. Those who support the theory say that our molecules are vibrating in tune with this universe. And, they speculate, there is another universe, parallel yet a quarter of a wavelength away from ours, that we in this universe can't see or hear. This sounds like the stuff of science fiction to me.

One of those subscribing to the idea of multiple, vibrating universes could be a fire officer friend of mine who sent me a brief note after reading my column (“Today's Grunts may be Tomorrow's Chief”) in the June issue of FIRE CHIEF about looking for young fire chiefs in the faces of rookie firefighters. He challenged me by asking, “What happens if your next fire chief has never been a firefighter?” Well, that is a really good question. That may seem as different and far from what we believe as is an alternate universe.

It could happen; in fact, it already has. I recall many years ago hearing a discussion about city managers who didn't want any more fire chiefs to come from the ranks, that they were hoping to get candidates with more management experience. I am not sure what happened with that movement because it does not appear that a whole lot of fire departments have been turned over to general business managers.

But as a flight of fancy, let's consider the notion of business managers serving as fire chiefs. Are there signs in this universe that contact with another may be on the way? There are some potential warps in the continuum.

The first thing to recognize is that it is becoming less expected that the fire chief be a fireground commander. Granted, in many small organizations that is almost a given. There, you have to have a white hat on the fireground or the fire will never go out. On the other hand, some chiefs never steps outside of their offices even in the case of major events because they have a large contingency of highly qualified command officers to take care of that.

In some ways this reminded me of the president of the United States and his joint chiefs of staff. When the country uses military force, the president sets major international policy, but it is the military that carries out the action.

What skill sets are city administrators expecting of fire chief candidates these days? I have gone through hundreds of fire chief job descriptions in the process of looking at things such as the Chief Fire Officer Designation and working on the California Fire Chiefs Certification Process. One of the most interesting things I found was that the ranking of skill sets by fire chiefs was totally different than the ranking of skill sets by those who appoint them.

For example, ask a fire chief to rank four skill sets: fireground command, budgets, human resources and interdepartmental coordination. Fire chiefs are most likely to pick fireground operations as number one. Unfortunately, that was picked last by the city administrators. They were looking for a person who had expertise in interdepartmental coordination first — funding was second, human resources was third and fireground command was fourth.

There are likely to be cries of protest over that finding. I almost can hear the murmur from here. Someone is going to say, “City managers don't seem to know what the heck they are talking about.” But compare the number and types of problems the modern chief officer must address. Think about the workload of a fire chief today. How much of that workload has to do with those top-three priorities as listed by city managers and how little of it is associated with the fourth priority? Divorce yourself for a few seconds from the idea of fireground accountability and think about the ability to get the resources to put on that firefight. That's often a bigger problem than is an incident. If you had a fire chief who was the best fireground commander in the world but could not articulate a position to get adequate staffing, which one of the two skill sets would you pick? If you had a fire chief who was capable of handling almost any kind of emergency that you could think up, but who was totally incapable of soliciting support from other departments to achieve fire department objectives, and in fact was mired in conflict with those departments, which of the skill sets would you pick?

As fire department budgets have skyrocketed into the millions and maybe someday billions of dollars, there is an even greater expectation that fire chiefs be effective financial managers. And, if you consider that some of those zeros on that budget's bottom line are devoted to human resources, then it becomes even more obvious how critical it is to have managerial skills. If you consider, too, that interdepartmental operations today are very much a part of homeland security and the idea of better leveraging our total community resources, then fireground command skill set fades even further into the priority background.

This is not to suggest we abandon fireground skills and advancing through the ranks as a condition for hiring chiefs. Rather, consider whether or not we are adequately preparing a new generation to make that leap into management. If not, is it possible that at some point a fire department will only be a collection firefighters under a non-sworn administrator? In that scenario, someone else will set the budget, determine the policies and provide the direction to the organization.

These problems are somewhat hypothetical. Yet, I draw some of my concern from watching many fire departments be turned over to police chiefs during interim periods. This may seem a little bit ironic because many of the departments ultimately are given back to the fire chief. But why was the police chief given the opportunity to begin with?

Most political bodies are not ready to attack the position of the fire chief. Historically, fire chiefs have stood on a platform that elevates them in the eyes of the public, and it is difficult for others to discredit that image. There is a reason we have earned that spotlight. But that spotlight dims in direct proportion to the distance from the last catastrophe.

What is going to be more insidious and equally difficult to ascertain is how administrators place a fire department in the organizational structure of government. Inserting somebody between the fire chief and the chief executive of the city creates the possibility that there is some degree of conscious intent to build a buffer zone. As a matter of fact, I have seen this go on in law enforcement. This is where government starts dividing and conquering the public safety agencies. Whenever a deputy administrator or a commission is place between the fire executive and the chief executive there is a remote possibility that some of our professional power has eroded.

In the article my chief friend reacted to, I suggested that you go to the recruit academies and look around at the kids who are graduating and see if you can pick out a future fire chief. My buddy suggested that the next time I go to a League of Cities meeting I should look around the room to see who your new best friend might be who isn't wearing a badge.

When it comes to job expectations surrounding fire chiefs, it may seem as if fire chiefs and administrators live in parallel universes. They appear to be operating on a completely different wavelength. Yet unlike the theoretical stuff of alternate universes, administrator and fire chief job expectations do intersect and influence change in one another. It can be seen and heard by those paying attention.

In the fire service, change does not happen overnight. But don't say it can't happen because it already has. My final response to my fire officer friend is simply this: It could happen, and when it does, shame on us.

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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.