The other day I was thinking about the anomoly that firefighting tools and techniques have improved a thousand-fold in the past 100 years, and yet we are still having too many large-loss fires, too many fire engines crashing, and too many firefighters getting hurt and killed.
The advances in clothing and related wearable running gear alone is remarkable. But still they go down. Until about 60 years ago, fire engines didn’t have radios. In the larger cities after a fire company was finished up on a job, they would go to the nearest fire alarm box and use the telephone line to check in with dispatch. The smaller communities (and a lot of the bigger ones, too) had a policy of responding back to the fire station with lights and sirens engaged because that was the only place were they could receive a call.
Nowadays every vehicle in the department has an advanced radio system, a computer terminal feeding up all kinds of information ( some of which is actually useful) and there is a growing movement of equipping every single FF on the call with a personal transceiver. But still they go down.
Protective clothing has completely changed with advances in insulating design and the development of Nomex fabric along with the introduction of the balaclava. Helmet design and construction has been advanced beyond imagination. And don’t forget the SCBA. But still they’re going down.
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Newton Fire Museum
No longer are there FF’s standing on the running boards and tailboards of the trucks. They are strapped inside the truck, surrounded by a metal cab and kept constantly informed during the response. And still……
You can undoubtedly add some more things to the list. And many people are constantly trying to figure out why we are still failing to protect not only the firefighters, but the citizens and their properties as well.
One of the biggest barriers that is always confronting us is put up there by the politicians and legislators who control the activities of so many people. On one side of this barrier is the fire service with all this wonderfully advanced equipment. On the other side of this barrier of laws, codes, funding and hiring policies is the same old set of challenges.
What I’m getting at is the point that no matter how much we do to get better, our destinies and ability to perform are controlled, even limited, by people who don’t know the first thing about fire suppression. No better example of this has been given that what happened in South Carolina this week. On the very week that the people of that state took time to memorialize the nine (nine!) firefighters who perished in a fire one year previously, their governor vetoed a bill that would have provided incentives and greater ability for business to install sprinkler systems in commercial structures. What a dunderhead.
It’s time to get the equipment checked out now. I’ve got to get another pot started on the coffee maker.
