Here it is, the end of the month already.  I don’t know about you, but for me this month has just sailed by.  I don’t know why.

Something else that has just sailed by is the transition from “sneaked it in” to “acceptable” for tiny video cameras clipped onto firefighters.  Only a few months ago, fire/ambulance departments were sending out orders prohibiting members from operating personal videos at emergency incidents.  They were usually framed with the standard worries about increasing liabilities from exposing actions that weren’t quite according to rule.  But I suspect they were more worried about making the fire chief look foolish if his crews blundered their way through an incident.  One tiny town in Maine even shut down their entire fire dept. temporarily over an innocent video (HERE).

Well, it’s come full circle now.  A Boise fire lieutenant had a miniature camera clipped onto his helmet at that brush fire that burned 19 houses last week (HERE) and the fire department has released that video to the press where several tv stations have even been running it.  Channel 2 was one of them and you can view it HERE.

That’s right, helmet cams have gone from disciplinary action to official press release literally overnight.  Amazing.

But still we need to check this equipment out every morning.  So get started on it while I go make another pot of coffee.  Then we’ll polish off that big Sunday breakfast.

This week’s photo art is definitely looking ahead:

[photopress:open_road.jpg,full,centered]

You know, I think that one of the largest hindrances to having a successful conclusion for many of our emergency events is what I would call our “comfort zone.”  Every day tens of thousands of fire and EMS calls are attended to with unremarkable yet satisfactory conclusions.  We go out, assess the situation, take the usual measures to handle it and come back home to get ready for the next one.  It’s all done within the parameters of our usual standards that have been developed over time to be effective for that particular emergency.  It was within the comfort zone of our operations.

Sometimes there is a unique or magnified problem that escalates the problem beyond the comfort level and we rely on the officers to adjust and respond to the challenge and force a good conclusion.  They can do this because their comfort zone is a little larger due to their experience and more advanced training.  If you have officers who have never learned from their past experiences or haven’t put the effort into learning more advanced methods, then you don’t have this expanded comfort zone to flow into.  And that can lead to disaster.

This expansion of capability can be taken step by step right up the chain of command.  And yet, there are still many, many departments that are content to never get prepared for this need to expand resources to fit the incident.  There are too many places that either refuse to implement an incident command system, for example, or if they do, they have never practiced it enough to operate properly and they get their disaster.

This can be as simple as wearing seat belts on the trucks and ambulances.  Or it can be as magnified as rolling up on a truck on fire carrying a hazardous cargo and nobody bringing a placard reference book with them.  They’ve been to so many truck fires before without needing the reference book that it became too comfortable.  And they always got there without rolling the fire engine along the way, so who needs seat belts?

The really big disasters are often found, during the post-incident investigations, to have become worse due to a lack of preparation and failure to follow recommended procedures on the part of the FD’s.  What I’m leading up to is to emphasize the need for constant training with mutual aid departments so that we can adapt to large and changing situations safely and successfully.

[photopress:disasterdrill_a.jpg,full,centered]

On Thursday we carried a story (HERE) on the 20th anniversary of the Ramstein Air Base disaster that killed or injured more than 500 people.  The extensive investigation into the causes and then the mitigations of the tragedy disclosed the following actions by the emergency crews that compounded the unhappy results:

• The American air base did not allow the German civil ambulances to enter the base until much later.
• The military’s rescue coordination center in the nearby town did not even know the extent of the disaster until more than an hour after it happened even though German civil helicopters had already arrived and left the scene with dozens of victims.
• The American ambulances and helicopters had large capacities for mass transportation, but they didn’t know where to take the victims after they loaded them up.
• More than two hours after the crash, a legion of German paramedics arrived at the air base hospital and found scores of severely burned patients that had not yet even been attended to.
• An American military bus carrying dozens of burn victims who hadn’t been treated or tended to in any way took three hours to arrive at a burn center because the driver couldn’t speak German and was unfamiliar with the area.

There were more, but you get the idea.  In the twenty years since, the American military has taken the lessons learned and been steadily upgrading the base fire and rescue services everywhere.  One of the major changes was to staff most of the military bases with civilian career firefighters instead of soldiers who are primarily trained for other things.  And now you also see a lot more involvement of the military FD’s in mutual aid programs.

How about your department?  Do you actually get out there and drill regularly with your mutual aid departments?  Do you actually follow those guidelines that have been painstakingly created to help you get through that once-in-a-lifetime disaster?  Or are you just taking it easy in your own comfort zone?

It all starts right here where we check the equipment.  Pay attention to what you’re doing and make sure you’re ready for something more than the usual.  I’ll go get the coffee going.

Today starts the long Labor Day weekend.  Prior to 1882 there were no workman’s holidays in the U. S., although some places allowed the celebration of Christmas Day.  But the well-organized labor movement in New York City pressed for a recognized day off for the laborer to celebrate the achievements of the working class and to provide for a day of rest.  In 1894 the U. S. Congress made the first Monday in September an official federal holiday.  Additionally, all 50 states have recognized Labor Day.

Many traditions have become established for this end-of-summer landmark, such as parades and picnics.  Knoxville, Tennessee, goes all out for a massive fireworks display called Boomsday.

Another event that is becoming a Labor Day fixture is the firefighters’ Fill The Boot campaign to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.  This effort is organized and carried out by the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) in partnership with the Jerry Lewis Telethon for the MDA’s benefit.

As MDA’s largest national sponsor, the IAFF has raised nearly $300 million since the partnership began in 1954. These funds have fueled MDA’s worldwide research program seeking treatments and cures for more than 40 forms of neuromuscular disease. In addition, IAFF fundraisers help make possible a nationwide network of specialized medical clinics, financial assistance with certain types of expensive assistive equipment, support groups, informative publications and, of course, accessible summer camp for kids.

And most of these funds are raised by the firefighters and paramedics going out on Labor Day weekend and standing on street corners, shopping center parking lots and anyplace where people travel by, holding out their boots and collecting spare change along with planned donations.  This collecting, along with the non-stop telethon that is broadcast nationally has become a tradition in itself.  The citizens know what it is and who is doing it.  And many of them look forward to seeking out a boot to drop their annual donation into.

While this has been primarily an IAFF activity carried out by Local union chapters, lately many volunteer fire departments have been pitching in and conducting Fill-The-Boot fund drives in their villages also.  It has become as big a tradition as the annual speechifying by the politicians, with a lot better results.

For those of you who will be working the intersections this weekend, we will add our admonishment to watch out for the distracted driver who will invariably come tooling along and not see you.  You know what I mean.  Good luck to all of you.

Now let’s get the equipment checked out.  We want to be looking good while we’re out there.  I’ll make sure there’s enough coffee.

[photopress:boot_1.jpg,full,alignleft]