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Stay Out? Not Me! – Commentary

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Can Firefighting Be a Risk-Free Activity?

Someone from the USFA is pushing the end of interior firefighting. We all know there are winds blowing that way but it is a little bracing to see it stated so bluntly. You can sneer at the fact that he was talking to the Volunteer Chief Officers Section of the IAFC but that is really not the point. There is a battle for the soul of the fire service being fought between those who think any LODD is one too many and those who think that, in general, firefighters must die for the fire service to do what it should. Specifically, protecting lives and property.

I happen to be among the latter. I don't want to die, I don't want anyone on my crew or in my department to die, and I don't want any firefighter to die. And I will do everything I can to prepare and be very good at my job in the interest of preventing a LODD. But I know that property and lives are important and protecting those properly will require firefighters to do things that have a likelihood of causing so many injuries per thousand fires and so many fatalities per thousand fires. There is just no way around that.

The USFA official's statement that buildings are disposable is correct in the abstract but irrelevant in the specific. If you work in an affluent suburb then perhaps the buildings are more disposable than you might at first think. Insurance, savings, and tight social networks cushion any blows suffered by homeowners and residents. But in other areas the people have no safety net, no insurance, no savings, and live paycheck to paycheck. Losing houses and business in some areas is nothing short of catastrophic. It is both disrespectful and incorrect to say that those buildings and the property in them are disposable. The lives in them (which cannot be saved by exterior firefighting) are certainly not disposable.

So I say, stand up for property and for interior firefighting and saving lives, property, and livelihoods. If we decide these things are disposable then why do we exist?

………. Patrick Mahoney

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Posted by on November 15, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, FireHat • Tagged: ,

Take A Number ….. (Commentary)

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….. And Wait For Your Number To Be Called.

You may have seen this article about how neighborhood fire stations are to become health clinics in one California county. I guess a fire department in my county is a trendsetter then because they opened a new station last year with clinic space in it, but for a slightly different reason. It's a place the affluent of the community can come have their vitals checked in comfort by a friendly fireman. That department only makes five or six calls a day, protects one of the busiest stretches of interstate in the country, a couple of major petrochemical research labs, a hospital, and about half a dozen highrises. It's true that they don't have many fires, being an affluent bedroom community, but I guess that means they don't need to train on any of that other stuff or even be too terribly ready to respond.

Scott County Public Health Service

As usual, this is part of a trend that attempts to maintain relevance by broadening services. I think the real way to maintain relevance is not to broaden services, but to deepen them. We need to be better at the things we legitimately do and quit pretending like no one goes to fires anymore. We have plenty of emergency functions that most departments didn't have 30 years ago and we have plenty of action in the totality of them to warrant maintaining focus on emergency response. There is nothing we should be doing that should ever take precedence over emergency response. Except for emergency response, nothing should take priority over preparedness.

Too many people in the fire service act like every town was the South Bronx once upon a time and that now the firefighters are just barely holding down the wool over the eyes of the citizenry. Stop saying we just don't go to fires anymore! We do still go to fires, in many places we go to a lot more, and besides that, we go to rescues, hazmat calls, and major medical emergencies. The fire service seems to wallow in self-defeating rhetoric that the public will misperceive and absorb when making decisions about supporting their local fire departments. If you say things that downplay the importance of emergency response then you should not be surprised when your officers, city bureaucrats, and public opinion leaders favor things that have nothing to do with emergency response and your funding and strategic vision shift accordingly.

………. Patrick Mahoney

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Posted by on October 18, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, FireHat • Tagged:

Save Money – Play Football (Commentary)

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Keeping Millionaires Happy

The Minneapolis Fire Department has a manpower/revenue problem that is resulting in gimmickry and layoffs. Will the taxpayers be on the hook for a brand-new $600+ million football stadium? That is the question before the citizens of Minnesota. There is some pushback but it looks like some pols will give it their best shot.

One recent proposal  (AP)

Is there any good reason this is not a civil rights issue? I'd like to see this sort of reverse Robin Hood-ing generate as many comments on as many websites and blogs as some guy not wearing an air pack on a car fire does.

………. Patrick Mahoney

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Note:  Thursday night the Minneapolis City Council addresses (once again) a plan to shrink the fire department.  KSTP-TV reports on tonight's scheduled hearing:

 

Recent Firegeezer reports on Minneapolis smoke and mirrors HERE and HERE.

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Posted by on October 6, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, FireHat, Videos • Tagged: , , ,

Is Your Mission Statement Any Good?

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Does Anybody Bother to Read the Thing?

Admiral Jonathan Greenert recently took over as chief of naval operations on September 23rd. Immediately thereafter he released his "sailing directions" for the Navy. I encourage you to go read this document (it's short). It's kind of like a mission statement, vision statement, or whatever other kind of touchy-feely management tool that people like to spend time writing so it can be put in a frame and ignored forevermore. The difference is that this one is plainly written, says something meaningful, and is formatted so as to actually be useful.

Have you ever seen one of these management tools that is actionable? And, if so, one that is actually used? I would venture to say they're almost always a pro forma attempt at management guidance that really has no bearing on the troops in the field. We could use a different kind of statement, one that is written in plain language (as opposed to management jargon du jour), is actionable, means something, and is actually used in decision making. Admiral Greenert has offered what looks like something that fits that bill for his organization.

I think this would be useful in a fire department. The chief can use it to let people know what his expectations are, the organization can use it as guidance in setting short-term priorities, and individual members can use it for modeling purposes. The document can be an opportunity to set or reset norms for our whole organization. If you were the chief, what would you write? Under guiding principles, is emergency response your primary mission or is prevention or even something else? Does your list mean anything to the guys in the field? Can it be understood at every level? This is a good daydreaming exercise for those who wonder what they'd do if they were chief.

………. Patrick Mahoney

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Posted by on October 4, 2011 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, commentary, FireHat • Tagged: , ,

Department of Race – A Commentary

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When The Aborigines Aren't

Alabama State Legislature image

Scott Beason, Alabama’s powerful state senator and chairman of their rules committee, has issued a mea culpa over his remarks concerning Blacks which were picked up on an FBI surveillance tape as part of the ubiquitous corruption cases that seem to plague any place where gambling is permissible. Beason was working for the FBI so he presumably knew he was being taped. Press reports indicate that the tape was played during a trial and Senator Beason has been confronted with his inflammatory remarks. Here they are:

"That's y'all's Indians," one Republican said.

"They're aborigines, but they're not Indians," Beason replied. (NYT)

His use of the term "aborigines" as an apparent stand-in for African-Americans is resulting in calls for him to step down from his leadership position, at least. The press has also called the term "racially charged."

Perhaps Scott Beason was assuming that all aborigines are black, since some are, including in Australia. Of course, aboriginal people are defined as the earliest known populations of a region, thus they may be of many other races, as they are in Canada and elsewhere.

Ironically, Native Americans (as in: "That's y'all's Indians") are American aborigines. Blacks are not only not originally from America, but were brought here forcefully and in bondage. They are the least aboriginal of peoples. Could they have gotten it more wrong?

A further irony is that in popular culture, aboriginal people, both Native Americans and Australians, are venerated for their wisdom and unique cultural folkways as in the Australian "walkabout." Thus, if the term was employed in a negative connotation, it backfired.

epress.anu.edu.au

It is true that racism properly turns on intent, but if this qualifies, it’s only by the skin of its (aboriginal) teeth. This is far more a case of ignorance run riot. Were he to be stripped of his leadership position it should be for the far more compelling reason of a desperately low IQ. (Though admittedly, if a low IQ becomes a bar to elective office, many chairs will be empty.)

In the end, the concern with the "head on a platter" approach to all charges of racism is that we will inevitably lose our sense of moral outrage at those acts of racial hatred that are truly borne of malice and premeditation.

That would be a tragedy.

………. Eric Lamar

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Posted by on September 29, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Eric Lamar

Campaign 2012 – A Commentary

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Religiosity

To this day, people continue to find Jackie Kennedy Onassis an irresistible icon with her refined bearing and regal features. It’s no surprise then that the recent release of hours of interviews she conducted in 1964 with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., are creating such a stir. She was just 34 at the time so her opinions were hardly leavened with the wisdom of years but they are never-the-less interesting and sometimes telling. My favorite is her admission that President Kennedy went to Catholic Mass without fail, not because he was especially devoted but rather because as she said, "he wasn’t quite sure, but if it was that way, he wanted to have that on his side." She chalked it up to JFK’s being superstitious. When in doubt, be devout.

John Kennedy was in good company where a certain amount of religious ambivalence is concerned. George Washington much preferred to stay at home on Mount Vernon Sundays. He was also known for his characterization of God as "Divine Providence", the belief that God was more likely to be simply directing things from above as opposed to being overly interested in our earthly expressions of piety. Washington, like Thomas Jefferson, was famously tolerant of other faiths and religions, believed in religious liberty and avoided discussing his religious views in public.

"Lincoln" by Alexander Gardner

Jefferson, when writing about Washington’s ability to avoid revealing his religious views, referred to him as "The Old Fox" and "cunning." It’s hard not to conclude that Jefferson was writing admiringly. Washington’s religious slipperiness was a conscious act, a sort of 18th century Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell. Abraham Lincoln was similarly circumspect about public expressions of devotion. Lincoln’s law partner and friend, William Herndon, said that his beliefs were grounded in universal law and evolution. Lincoln had apparently concluded that the acceptance of evolution was not a bar to a belief in a supreme being.

As a Republican, Lincoln wouldn’t make the cut today. These days’ leaders of all stripes feel compelled to associate themselves with Christian symbolism and the more fundamental, the better. Presidents and presidential candidates yammer on about God, prayer, faith and church as if the failure to do so makes them less qualified to lead. More than one Republican candidate for the presidency is quite comfortable with the repudiation of evolution as the explanation for earthly and human development.

At least two issues are worrying. The first is, of course, the apparent need to inject one’s religion into government. The other is the inclination for some candidates to disregard widely respected scientific conclusions in deference to the literal interpretation of religious texts. I’m all for faith, but logic has a place, too. Do we really want national leaders who actually believe that the world was created over the course of 6 days a couple of thousand years ago?

If Abraham Lincoln, who rose to the presidency after the equivalent of one year of formal education, could intellectually reconcile evolution with the existence of God, what are we to think of the current presidential aspirants and their bloated resumes?

Not much.

………. Eric Lamar

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Posted by on September 27, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Eric Lamar • Tagged:

We’re So Naughty

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Sex and Firefighting

 

 

My colleague Firegeezer ran a story HERE yesterday about two LAFD engine crews purportedly assisting in the filming of sexually explicit media by leaving their rig unattended so that "stars" could use them as a prop. The NBC affiliate played a portion of the film where a woman exposed herself to strangers as LAFD crew members seemed to watch, innocently enough, with the engine in the background.

The news story is being pitched as another example of the "firefighters act unprofessionally" genre, (yawn), complete with an on-camera interview with an outraged LAFD fire official. Much more interesting is the choice of material and set, as well as the overall subject of sexual desire and firefighting.

Just what makes a fire engine sexual, anyway?

Well, let’s go beyond the propriety of having the rig do "double duty" as a porn prop and dwell on the fascinating "why" of it. Some thoughts come to mind.

- First, fire is implicitly sexual. After all, an especially lusty sexual object or act is "hot", as in, "you’re HOT." In fact, some arsonists derive sexual pleasure from fire-setting and many are those who suggest that the line between starting them and putting them out is thinner than we would like to think.

- More practically, it was a cheap way for firefighters to ogle some female flesh (though the eventual cost may be exorbitant.) And, perhaps they stored those images up for later use…or not so later. (Is that against the rules, too?)

- It obviously provided a visual backdrop, a fire engine, that people associate with excitement, danger, risk, and thrills—things, that coincidentally and at least in the abstract, makes sex better.

- Finally, it was OUTDOORS, another curious enhancer of sexual desire what with the chance of getting caught with your pants down, literally. For many, sexual activity is all about the specter of getting caught—it heightens the experience. Since risk is essential to firefighting, images of firefighting could elevate sexual tension by implying risk visually.

The firefighters failed the creativity test, though, at least in the footage I saw, by failing to have the "star" dress up in turnout gear, which is of course, a huge turn-on. Who, after all, doesn’t like a good costume as part of the fun? (And what firefighter hasn’t been asked (at least once) to dress up for bedtime?)

Of course, costumes pave the way for a little "role play" where participants are allowed, encouraged even, to exchange their everyday personas for their alter egos where they can cast-off or take-on power as part of the fulfillment of sexual desire in a fantasy environment. Many assume that sex is about power but equally so it is apparently about the giving up of it as in the recent NYT story of a police officer who "put on adult diapers, women’s dresses or ladies tights and masturbated while he forced his wife to watch." (Watching should be strictly voluntary.)

Perhaps the real problem with the LAFD scenario is the selfish choice of female stars offering up their forbidden treasure in our profession where women are constantly harassed and more as they just try to do their jobs. I wonder if the crew from E-263 thought about having some hunky, ripped dude with 6-pack abs get up there and show off the package?

Examiner.com

 Like I said, watching would be strictly voluntary. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) 

………. Eric Lamar

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Posted by on September 23, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Eric Lamar

The Other Anniversary – A Commentary

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10/07/11

Bakhat Kahn, a local carpenter in the Lower Dir District of Pakistan, was killed in a motor vehicle accident a little over a week ago. One official described him as "an ordinary soul", even so, there were some 200 people attending his funeral a few days later. During the service a bearded man ran out of a nearby field, into the crowd of mourners and detonated explosives strapped to his body. In the midst of remembering one man’s life and death, at least 26 died and fifty more were injured.

Bombing aftermath  (New York Times / Reuters)

Newspaper reports indicate that the Lower Dir is a refuge for pro-Taliban forces from Afghanistan. Kahn, a member of the anti-Taliban Mashwani Tribe which spreads across both Pakistan and Afghanistan, seems to have simply been a target of opportunity to wreak additional havoc and to further destabilize a war-torn environment.

We have long since learned that the Afghan/Pakistan border is a demarcation without distinction. Friend and foe alike cross and re-cross at will and with impunity. This is a place where the term "lawless" utterly fails to describe reality: a setting where funeral mourners are targets for terrorists.

October 7, 2011, will mark the 10th anniversary of the start of the war in Afghanistan. We went there with the stated aims of destroying Al Qaeda, removing the Taliban and to "create a viable democratic state."

Today, there are over 130,000 coalition troops serving there. Since the war began some 1750 have been killed and another 10,000 injured. Thousands more bear the invisible scars of battle that will be felt everyday for a lifetime. Suicides are an all too common occurrence among returning troops.

Ten years is a good, if long time to pause and re-evaluate any human endeavor. It seems that military operations combined with covert activities, including the extensive (and increasing) use of drones have both destabilized and then decimated Al Qaeda. Though drones are no panacea, they allow the opportunity to put into place a dual surveillance and strike capability that has thinned the ranks of their leadership. It has the added and immeasurable benefit of requiring fewer troops on the ground.

Our other war aims, destroying the Taliban and forging a democratic state, are proving absurd. Afghanistan is the home of a millennial culture of tribalism where the idea of pledging fidelity to a nation-state is beyond alien. Over time the Afghan tribes have shown their thorough disdain for countries that arrive within their borders with the notion of instituting their various ideologies. The British failed with colonialism, the USSR failed with communism and we are close behind with democracy. Afghans are more likely to cleverly "use the usurper" to further short term gains than to bend to the will of any regime or system of government.

After ten years of blood, toil and misery our attempt at democratic nation-building is best exemplified by the insanity of a place where it’s not even safe to mourn the dead.

It’s time to bring the troops home—we have done what we can do.

………. Eric Lamar

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Posted by on September 22, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Eric Lamar • Tagged:

Calgary City Council Sells Out Its Own Citizens

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Homebuilders Association "Pleased"

DESPITE EXTENSIVE EDUCATION AND LOBBYING by the Calgary, Alberta, Fire Chief Bruce Burrell and others, the Calgary city council's special committee decided to drop the proposed legislation that would mandate sprinklers in new, single-family homes.

Calgary City Council  (CBC)

The Calgary Herald reports:

The decision was made following meetings between the housebuilding industry and a city council committee.

Carol Oxtoby, president of the Canadian Home Builders' Association-Calgary Region, was pleased with the decision. The industry supports customer choice and encourages its builders to offer sprinklers as an option," she says. "It also believes the new Alberta Building Code has increased protection against the spread of fire and it would be premature to layer another set of fire protection measures – in this case, in the form of sprinklers – while we are still evaluating the additional protection offered by these changes over the past two years.

"But if a homeowner is not comfortable, they have the choice to improve that by installing sprinkler systems."

The meek city council then announced that their recommendation is to continue to educate homeowners on the benefits of fire sprinklers while allowing them to make a choice.  Whereupon Firegeezer exclaimed,  "They don't HAVE a choice, you dunderheads.  Who buys their house before it is built?"

Read the announcement in the Calgary Herald HERE.

Thanks to Mark D.

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Posted by on September 19, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, current events, Fire Rescue Topics, health & safety, News • Tagged: , , ,

9/11 Commemoration … Firegeezer is Looking In From the Outside.

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Fairfax County firefighters lower the flag over the Pentagon
as soldiers salute.  (Washington Post photo)

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There's something significant about 10-year anniversaries, but I'm not sure what it is. Anyway, everybody seems to be in agreement that it's enough to lead to this being the major milestone for the recognition of the tragic events of the horrible day of September 11 ten years ago when our country was attacked by a hijacked air force and two of the three bombers found their targets.

The terrible, gruesome results at the World Trade Center in New York City are beyond description. As the first firefighters on the scene were met with not just "smoke showing," but also a steady rain of falling bodies. When the nightmare was over, we had lost 343 firefighters, 60 police officers, 15 EMT's, and one bomb-sniffing dog. The magnitude of that loss was recognized immediately by firefighters everywhere because we could transfer those numbers to our own departments. Relatively few FD's even have as many as 343 firefighters total, and of the few large departments, only a handful have that many on duty each day. Yes, we could feel it because those were some of US that "bought the ranch" that day.

Of the nearly 3,000 other victims, all of them left behind families and friends without a moment's notice and the collective grief was nationwide. But many people wonder why the fire and police seem to generate so much more sympathy than the innocent office workers who also perished. It's because the average citizen doesn't comprehend the cohesiveness that firefighters and police officers have worldwide. We don't call each other Brothers and Sisters for nothing…. we are FAMILY. And while most of the other victims left perhaps a dozen total of their family members behind, each one of the police and firefighters left more than half a million of their family behind.

That's why it was so outrageous when New York's insane Mayor Bloomberg packed the seating assignments for today's Ground Zero commemoration (without once mentioning the word of God) with political appointees and selected representatives of this and that. Yes, there were some relatives of the WTC victims there, but the mayor said that unfortunately there would be no room for any firefighters or police officers. No room. Sorry. Maybe later.

Some have pointed out that ten years ago there was plenty of room for 418 first-reponders, and they weren't invited back then, either. On that one day when all the Federal goverment agencies who are supposed to protect us failed, (FBI, CIA, INS), the only agencies that worked were the local fire and police departments. But the mayor can't find enough room for them today. Plenty of room for the Federal bigwigs, though.

A couple of weeks after "the day" when the story of flight 93 came into the public, the rallying cry for the entire country emulated the brave passengers and Todd Beamer whose last words were, "Let's Roll!" Military units mobilized and a grateful populace echoed the slogan. Let's Roll! But in the New York City Hall, the slogan has become, "Let's Roll Over!" For shame.

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Posted by on September 11, 2011 • Filed under: commentary • Tagged:

Al Mullins Remembers 911 – Part 2

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Note:  This is the conclusion of a 2-part posting.  Read Part One HERE before continuing with this entry.

Remembering that day, September 11th…

No day in modern history holds as much pain for the American people as September 11th. Granted, December 7, 1941 is as FDR proclaimed a date that will live in infamy! But 9/11, well that is our Pearl Harbor and that is the day we will always remember and those of us who know what happened that day and are part of the fraternity of firefighters who charge up those stairwells will forever carry that scare. The FDNY is one of the best fire departments in the world and I was fortunate to know a couple of those guys who put on their gear that day for the last time. Terry Hatton for one was a real character; I met Terry when he was a firefighter at Rescue 2 in Brooklyn in 1988. His legacy and work in the FDNY was impressive and will live on……… Thank God for people like that…

Back to my recollections, I left off at the barbershop where my twins and I had just witnessed the first collapse and all I wanted to do was get home because I knew that I was going to work that day. I settled with the girls and guys who cut our hair that day and headed home, all the time keeping a wary eye on the sky. Got the boys home and my wife had gone and gotten my daughter so the entire family was at home… However, nothing, the recall never happened so I was stuck watching all the activity in New York and Arlington. I went to bed early because I felt that the next day might be interesting.

September 12th was a carbon copy of September 11th and I headed in to work early, earlier than my usual 0630 I think I actually got in to work at 0600 and relieved the B shifters. Looked up at our staffing and was thinking about what the day would be like. Working at Fire Station 23 in West Annandale I felt like we would be well out of the activity that day and really I was Ok with that, with the bulk of the fires taken care of I felt that any work at the Pentagon would be tough. If you have never found a burned up person I think you are lucky and I hope you never do because it is ugly, in many ways. Being a firefighter getting burned is that one thing you are always looking to avoid, yeah we get the occasional hands, face, ear and neck burns, but the really bad burns those are tough to behold and truly tough to get through and God Bless the brothers and sisters who have to go through that pain. Back to the story! Yes I would have been happy to answer local calls and other "minor" incidents that day but at 0645 I get a call from the battalion chief telling me that our engine was part of a task force going to Arlington to assist with the operations at the Pentagon.

Take another look at the crew, not a bad collection and one that would do a good job when we got there. Let the guys know what was going on got some extra stuff (gloves, hoods, etc) to ensure we had enough to last us through the day and headed to Fire Station 8 in Annandale to get placed into a task force for the Pentagon. As we were getting out of 8, the department’s behavioral specialist was there and he was letting us know we were heading to something that might be a little tough to see and to take and that he would be available when we got back. We mounted up and then proceeded out of the parking lot. The one thing I really remember is that we had a weird mix of units but when I looked at a lot of the drivers and officers, I saw people I had known for years and who were good firefighters and that really gave me a bit of comfort. So here, we are a procession of units responding in a solemn column down Columbia Pike to the Pentagon.

Cresting the hill and coming down to the Pentagon was surreal, movies are great and we have such a grasp on verbal communications today that I thought I would be ready for what I was about to see. As we got closer, the real magnitude of the scene unfolded before us and we knew that it was going to be a long day. The fires in the roof spaces had started up again and the smoke coming out of the building was impressive. As the units got to the staging area all of the officers were directed to report to the fire operations "command post" so I hooked up with the other OIC’s and we headed over there. The ICP was right in front of the collapsed section of the building and I could feel the pressure of the building. Not sure of the dynamics there, but I really felt a pressure being that close to the collapsed part of the building.

We get our marching orders and I am assigned to the roof division on side David of the fire to "stop" the roof fires. Evidently there was something important up there because we were told that we would stop the fire, I am good with that give me a task and set me to work… The task was further enhanced when we were placed under the leadership of Battalion Chief John Gleske. John Gleske and I went to recruit school together and had studied together with Mike Godbout, Jerry Roussillon, and Boots Elmore for almost every promotional exam since then. In addition, I have said and still feel that John Gleske is one of the most competent and schooled tactical fire officers I have ever worked with…. Yeah I did beat him in a couple of those promotional tests, but yeah he is better. Now I am good, I am working with a tough crew and I have an excellent fireground officer to watch over us, not too shabby.

Really, there isn’t much to tell here, a lot of tough work. The area we worked on had a slate roof and we had to tear off the slate, pull up the wood (I think there were 1×6 inch boards supporting the slate) and get to the fire. Not easy but not impossible, but it is time and labor taxing and since I had already entered my 40’s I was working hard and feeling it. A couple of really weird things did happen while we were working on the roof. The first thing was that we were on the D-Ring, there are five rings at the Pentagon and the D ring is the second to last one before you get to the courtyard. I only had my crew at first so we were working pretty good while other crews were stretching a line to where we were at. As the crew and I were basically tearing off the roof a propane bottle below us blew up, that caused us a little excitement. I looked around at the other crews especially at the E Ring and saw Captain Tyrone Harrington (maybe a bit better that John Gleske, that speaks volumes) and he looked over at me waved and laughed. We went right back to work and with all the help we finally got we actually put the fire out, but it was tough work.

As the fire goes out and we are cleaning up and doing some overhaul work we are all sitting up on the roof and just thinking and talking about what happened and about what we knew was the loss of hundreds of firefighters in New York. Suddenly my portable radio went into the "Oh Shit" mode, the evacuation tone was going off. I looked at the other guys and really couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Then the message came in that an unidentified plane had been spotted and was coming towards the Pentagon. The Combat Air Patrol was 5 minutes away and the unknown plane was two minutes away. The radio message was to evacuate the building as quickly as possible. Ok, based on what had happened yesterday I am heading for the spot where we left our ladder truck. We jog over to that spot and to our amazement there is no ladder truck. The crew had a blown gasket and the ladder was actually set down next to the truck. Well the language was a little colorful and we all decided to just look and see if we could spot the plane, I actually had a halligan in my hands and was trying to decide if I could get the pilot before he got me, yeah I know sounds good but I am really a terrible shot so I know who would have won…..

Well that is about it, we really worked hard up there and yes when I was told that we were going that morning that really didn’t make my day. Would I change it? Not on my life. I have been a firefighter for over 30 years and pride myself on having done a good job. While my part may have been small that day I was proud to have been there and proud to have worked with my brothers as we fought the fires at the Pentagon!

………. Al Mullins

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Posted by on September 11, 2011 • Filed under: Al Mullins, commentary • Tagged:

Fireball Feels the 9/11 Spirit Across the Ocean

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Writing about 9/11 is never easy. I guess that everyone remembers where he or she was the 11th september 2001. How could we forget? Many numbers come on my mind when we talk about 9/11:

343 firefighters died that day.

8.48AM: American Airlines flight 11 crashed into north tower of world trade center

9.06AM: United flight 175 crashed into south tower of world trade center

9.43AM: American flight 77 crashed into Pentagon

10.10AM: United flight 93 crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

More than 3,000 thousand people died that day. But numbers are not just numbers. We must not forget that beyond each number there is a human being who died or tried to save another, it is important to put faces on names.

Personally, I can give some names: Battalion Chief J Pfeifer, James Hanlon (ladder 1; engine 7), Jules and Gedeon Naudet….those people are still alive but they help me to remember the fallen. But today is a day to remember and pray, so let us pray together and have a moment of silence for all the victims. May God with his blessing hand help us to be able to pray stronger and to believe in His everlasting Love. I will never forget what happened on 9/11/2001. For the families of the victims, life will never be the same. I also discovered on 9/11 that Evil exists but also that United the USA stands.

Today, Sunday the 11th September, 2011, ten years later we must not forget the firefighters/paramedics who got sick after working at ground zero.For them each day is a fight against different diseases and against complicated situations, such as the lack of money for their treatments ……

9/11 is related to the word "heroism,"the 343 fallen firefighters who were inside the towers and who tried to rescue people, who gave us a lesson of humility. Who would accept to trade their own life against another? These 343 Men did it. "That is part of the job" as many firefighters said. On this day of remembrance, why do we not we accept to let hope come inside our hearts and make us better towards our fellow humans? 9/11 is a day of commemoration but also a day to make us closer.

………. Laurence Delorme, Vaugneray, France

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Posted by on September 11, 2011 • Filed under: commentary • Tagged: ,

Engineer Sam Tells About a Local Observance That is Special

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Every year at this time 9/11 is memorialized in some fashion, which as it should be. On the first anniversary there were a great many observances, and again on the fifth. This year, the tenth, there seems to be many more than in past years. One of our local fire companies, Hartsville Fire Co. (Bucks Co., Pa. Station 93) has held a memorial every year without fail. They set out 343 American flags in their station lawn and invite the public to stop by and reflect on the events. That evening, they hold a service which includes the reading of all of the names of the firefighters whose lives were lost.

But they do something additional that is very special in the local area. Across the country, whether directly as a result of 9/11, many firefighters joined one of the branches of the Service. Some of them have since lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two of them were members in local departments.

One was John Kulick, a volunteer Assistant Chief in Hatboro, Pa., just across the line in Montgomery County from Hartsville. John was also a career firefighter in Whitpain Township, also in Montgomery Co. He and my son Randy served together for a time in Hatboro and were particularly close friends. The other was Tristan Smith, a young Lieutenant in my department, Bryn Athyn Fire Co. in Montgomery Co. Tristan was the nephew of then Chief Kris Smith.  John and Tristan were serving as enlisted men in the U.S. Army and both were killed in action in Iraq in separate incidents, locations and times.

In addition to all of the FDNY members lost, Hartsville Fire Co. makes it a point to memorialize John and Tristan each year as part of their observance. Additional flags are placed for each of them, and their names are read as well.

Earlier this year, Hartsville Fire Co. received a piece of steel from the twin towers, to be used as part of a permanent display at their firehouse. There will be a wall which will have the names of all the firefighters lost. Included in the display will be two plaques, one for John Kulick and one for Tristan Smith.

The memorial is to be dedicated at 6 PM on September 11, 2011

………. Sam Yardumian

Posted by on September 11, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Engineer's Desk • Tagged: , , , , , ,

My 9/11 Story – A Ringside Seat to That Terrible Day …. by Steve Marshall

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In September of 2001, I was working as a photographer and editor in the news department of an ABC affiliate TV station. My normal shift ran from 10 pm to 8 am. and my primary job was to edit together the hundreds of the various elements that make up a 90 minute morning news show.

I had gotten into bed a little late on the morning of September 11th, having worked overnight and then covered a small news story before trying to get some sleep. My teenage son was home sick that day, or else I would have slept through the whole attack. He woke me up right after the first plane hit and I went right back to sleep. He was back at my door soon afterward, telling me that a second plane had hit the other tower.

Of course at that point it was obvious that this was far more than an errant plane flying into a building. I got up and watched the first 20 minutes of TV coverage and called my News Director to see if additional help was needed to cover the local angle of the story. He told me that all news personnel were being recalled to work EXCEPT the night-side staff. They were to stay home and try to get some sleep because it was going to be a long night ahead of them.

By now, the attack at the Pentagon was making headlines, although for some strange reason, one network kept saying the attack was a car bomb at the State Department even though we could plainly see it was the Pentagon.

I tried to go back to sleep but it wasn't going to happen. Finally at 6pm I headed for the station, prepared for total chaos. What I found at the station was un-nerving. It was eerily quiet as everyone was standing around watching the story unfold on TV. The Network had taken over with a Level 1 Break-In shortly after the attack and local news was sidelined for the most part. We would be given a 10 minute time slot for a local report and that was all for the 11 pm show…and the morning show was canceled altogether. No one knew how long the Network would remain at Level 1 and in control of our airtime.

My first assignment was to head to our local airport and try to catch some interviews with passengers from a commercial airliner that had been forced to land while en route to another city. By the time we got to the airport, the passengers had been bused to a hotel for the night but the pilot was still there. Even hours after the fact, the pilot was still white as a ghost, obviously terribly shaken up. He told me he had been told via radio to sit his plane down RIGHT NOW at the nearest airport. He asked for clarification, and was told to sit his craft down right away or risk being shot down, as the entire continental United States had been declared a "no fly zone" and was given no other info. He said that the only thing that he could figure that would cause such an order was a nuclear attack on the US and when he landed, he was sure that was exactly what had happened. He actually was somewhat relieved to find out it was only a terrorist attack. We returned to the TV station for further assignment, driving through totally deserted streets, as America hunkered down in front of their TVs and waited for the next blow.

Back at the station, my instructions from the News Director were clear. I would babysit a set of 6 videotape recorders that were constantly receiving live satellite feeds from all over the world, but especially from New York. I was to review all of the video coming in for "suitability". In other words, I was to eyeball every foot of that footage we are now all so familiar with and decide what would make air and what was simply too graphic. I would be archiving the entire event as it happened, fed live from Ground Zero, Shanksville and the Pentagon.

WJET-TV newsroom

As the night wore on, more and more footage was turning up, not only of the attacks, but of the

collapses, the rescue efforts, and the reactions of the Nation.

There exists far far more graphic video footage of the attacks than you could possibly imagine. Most will likely never make air due to the shear emotional power of it.

In my opinion, the most disturbing footage came in from Afghanistan. The locals were dancing in the streets in celebration over the attacks. Right then and there, I decided it was probably a good thing that I had not been the President that day, because I sure as heck would have blown that country back into the stone age.

Late in the evening, our Live Truck and news crew that had sped to Shanksville to cover the Flight 93 crash, returned, totally exhausted. They tossed me their videotape and went home. For the most part, all we could see of the Flight 93 crash, was the now-familiar smoking impact crater, but it was enough to tell the story. It would be weeks before the true story of Flight 93 would come out.

In the early hours of the 12th, the station's General Manager came into the newsroom and pinned up a memo from the Network. It was a very sternly worded order listing about 20 different video clips that were banned from airing on the network. They were the most graphic of the footage. The list included the shots of bodies falling from the towers, close ups of live victims standing in the windows waiting for rescue before the collapse and a number of other shots that were way beyond anything we would even consider airing in our conservative small market. The order included a threat that any station airing any of these clips would be in danger of losing their network affiliation.

The "powers that be" in New York had spoken. The 9/11 attack was being sanitized for Main Street America.

I would continue to archive the footage for the next 7 days. Every foot of the video that ABC, CNN and FOX had fed to the affiliates via satellite, was safely hidden away on tape. At my station, I am the only one that has ever seen all of it.

For the most part, as I watch the replays in the run-up to the 10th anniversary, I can tell you who shot what clip, where it come from and when it was shot. It's burned into my mind. I hope someday the worst of it will be forgotten in the fog of years gone by.

…….. Steve Marshall

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Posted by on September 11, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Gnome Report • Tagged: , , ,

Shock … followed by purposeful action

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A brilliant and terrible Tuesday morning

Fourteen months into retirement I am teaching a Fire Officer II class at the Reagan National Airport fire station. The classroom is also their kitchen. The kitchen has a television.

The acting battalion chief steps in, apologizes for the interruption, and turns the television on. 

Good Morning America (ABC) is covering the breaking news of a plane that has hit the World Trade Center.

As the news camera focuses on the entry hole, many of the experienced air-crash-rescue guys are speculating on what type of plane hit the tower and the issues facing FDNY.

After a dozen minutes I try to restart the class. Agree to leave the television on with the sound turned down. I get one or two sentences out when we see the second plane hitting the tower.

Class over!

You do not need a Formal Announcement to Mobilize

As FDNY Firefighter James Hanlon (Ladder 1) points out in the opening of the Naudet Brothers documentary 9|11:

… there were days we would go to the Trade Center five times in a single shift. My point is, we knew those towers as well as anybody. But nobody, nobody, expected September 11th.

When the civilian editors of Fire-Rescue Magazine and Journal of EMS were vetting my article, Attack on the Pentagon: The Initial Fire and EMS Response (April 2002 issue), they struggled with the concept that hundreds of emergency responders initiated action without receiving a formal notification.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Fire Department never expected a 757 to be used as an assault weapon against the Pentagon. When the second plane struck in New York, the dozen off-duty members attending the Fire Officer class joined the 16 on-duty members preparing for the unknown.

They were not alone.

Most of the senior staff and urban search and rescue commanders in my department started purposeful action when they heard of the second plane in New York City. The information came through radio and television, informal digital networks and word-of-mouth.

Rapidly deploying 72 USAR members and 75 tons of equipment

It takes dedicated action by dozens of staff, support and non-USAR firefighters to make a deployment happen.

A point of pride is the ability to assemble the team well within the response deadline for domestic and international response. A deployment represents an administrative five alarm event.

A small role I had while assigned as a company officer at the Fire and Rescue Academy was to respond from home to get the facility unlocked on evenings, weekends and holidays. The Academy, with six classrooms and a large training bay, is the point of staging and assembly for the team.

Far from high tech. The tasks included moving apparatus out of the bay, properly configuring the "quad" – a large space with movable walls to create smaller class spaces, and powering up the facility.

Have to do Something

Ten years ago I also had a part-time job as a civilian Fire Instructor III at the Fire and Rescue Academy.

American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon shortly after I left the airport.

I was stunned. What could I do? No fire gear in the car, not in uniform, my "retired" fire department ID card did not provide KardKey access to headquarters or communications.

Headed for the Academy. Maybe they are assembling a fire crew with Engine 407.  I was at the Academy in 1982 when we loaded up a Suburban with EMS gear and responded in near-blizzard conditions to the Air Florida 90 crash at the 14th Street bridge.

Not this time. All of the on-duty uniformed staff are away, either responding to the Pentagon or the anticipated USAR deployment. None of the remaining staff experienced a USAR deployment. 

I looked up in time to see the South Tower collapse on live TV. 

Purposeful Action – Setting the Academy for USAR deployment

No more wondering what to do.

Without asking for authorization, started moving academy apparatus out of the high bay building and up the hill. Configured the quad. Tried to set up the communications equipment, but no one had the key to the cabinet.

Before the 11 am official federal mobilization notice, the academy was ready …

… and I was on my way home, satisfied that I did something worthwhile in reaction to the unthinkable.

An Inherent Orientation to Action

Emergency service folks are hard-wired to take action.

To validate the impact of our Citizen CPR program we tried to identify the background of every person who performed CPR prior to the arrival of the department. More than half of the citizen responders were off-duty or former police, fire, ems and health care staff. 

The same orientation that motivated Jeff Simpson, a Dumfries-Triangle Rescue Squad volunteer EMT who was near the World Trade Center. 

From the National EMS Memorial:

"I have no doubt whatsoever that, while I was stricken with disbelief and inaction, Jeff was figuring how he could help.

It was clear in the few minutes we were in the plaza that thousands of people had and would continue to be injured. There were many police, fire and EMS squads arriving at the scene and it was toward these and the injured that Jeff was headed the last time I saw him.

Frankly, there was no other reason for him to go towards the World Trade Center. His hotel, work site and safety were in the opposite direction.

With the second plane hitting the tower, Jeff would have been thinking about the increased number of casualties. I believe Jeff was caught in the collapse of the towers.

I do not know if he was inside the towers or working at one of the triage stations that had been set up close to the towers. In either case, he was doing what he was trained to do and spent his final hours helping the victims," stated Joseph T. Finnegan.

Mike "FossilMedic" Ward

Earlier 9/11 essays:

2011: Remembering 41 EMS responders who died at WTC, including a hero from Prince William County, Virginia

2010: A Terrible and Brilliant Blue Sky Morning

2008: Reprint "The Anger Never Dies"

Posted by on September 11, 2011 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, aircraft, Command & Leadership, commentary, communications, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Safety & Health, Firefighting Operations, In the Line of Duty, Line of Duty, Major Incidents, Mass Casualty Incident, Rescues, Response times, Special Operations, Technology & Communications, Training & Development, Urban Commander • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Al Mullins Remembers 9/11

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Remembering That Day …. September 11, 2001

I barely remember the day that JFK was assassinated. I remember my Mom watching the news on the old black and white television and her crying, but that is about it. Fast forward to September 11, 2001, well yes I remember it like it was yesterday. How can you forget that day, and how we have changed in that time?

Like everyone else on the East Coast, we woke to a pristine fall day, clear blue skies light humidity and a gorgeous day. Our daughter was in kindergarten so getting up and getting her out to the bus was the big activity that morning, that and the fact that I had a couple of errands to run that day with our twin boys. After walking my daughter up to the bus stop and seeing her off, I headed back down the street to get my boys and head out on my errands. Twin boys are very cool, everyday that I spend with them is just amazing and this day started that way.

Our first stop was at the bank, I had to drop something off at my bank (well before online banking) so I grabbed the guys took them out of their car seats and headed into the bank to take care of the transaction. As soon as I did that, I was headed to our favorite barbershop to get everyone a haircut, but as I was walking out of the bank, a woman who was walking in stopped and told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Now she did not have to fill in the rest since I naturally knew where they were and what they were. In fact, I am a native New Yorker and as a young boy, I watched the WTC or twin towers being built. I lived up in the Catskills, but had relatives in New York so we would often come down to visit.

I heard her say that the WTC had been hit by a plane and my love of anything FDNY (Fire Department of New York) reminded me that something like this had happened before in New York. A Mitchell B-25 (Twenty Seconds over Tokyo or the twin-engine bombers in the movie Pearl Harbor for the younger crowd) flying to Floyd Bennett Field had gotten lost in the fog and had crashed into the Empire State Building. I looked up again at the sky and I just thought that some wayward general aviation plane had really messed up; I did not even consider a terrorist attack. I really dismissed what she had said and drove over to the barbershop.

Stopped the car got the boys out of their car seats and walked in to the barbershop where I stopped dead in my tracks. The 55-inch rear projection high definition television in the barbershop was showing pictures from the WTC and I really knew right then that this was not a general aviation plane or a mistake. I also knew that every firefighter in New York was going to this fire. If I was at the firehouse and this came in, I would have done the same thing. Yes I know and you know that this is wrong, but back then… yeah I was going.

This was like no fire I had ever seen in my life, First Interstate Bank and Meridian fires in LA and Philly paled in comparison (and they were both huge fires). I also knew this was going to be the toughest fire these guys would ever have to handle, especially since all the elevators were out and those guys had to walk. I have had to go up 10 and 20 story buildings with full gear and equipment on and know that was tough, but almost 100 floors OMG!

Then as I was watching the second plane hit, I could not believe it now I started to get nervous since one was bad, but two was worse and I thought that two would not be the end of it. Shortly after (at least what seemed to be shortly after) the second plane hit the twin towers I called TROT (Technical Rescue Operations Team) central. Fire Station 18 in Fairfax County is really TROT central and as a former shift member there, I knew the number by heart. The driver on the shift answered the phone and I asked him if they had seen the news and were being geared up, as I was talking to him the third plane hit the Pentagon and FS18 actually were toned out on the response… I said a quick good bye and was a little worried, since I knew all of those characters and was concerned for their well being.

Now I turned back to the TV and saw a humongous cloud of dust in New York, and my blood turned to ice water. I knew what had just happened and I knew that many firefighters had just died. As a former member of the TROT group in Fairfax County I had gone up to Baltimore in the late 1980’s to work with the folks from Montgomery County in a drill at the Francis Scott Key Medical Center. The medical center was dropping one of their 14 story buildings and we were going to work on it after it fell. As a young sergeant on the rescue, I was really forward to getting an opportunity to get some good experience on this structure. Battalion Chief Mike Tammillow and Captain Chuck Jarrell, two of the more senior members of the team were kind enough to give me a video camera and put me in position to catch the falling of the building. I grabbed the camera got as close as the security folks would let me and started filming, it was really a great vantage point and I got to see and hear the entire demolition of the building from a close vantage point. Now remember that dust? I had no clue about the dust in the late 80’s, heck I was still listening to Journey… So I am filming the building coming down and watching the dust come towards the camera and not really appreciating what was going to happen next when I couldn’t breathe anymore…. I know how the people on the ground felt that day and I knew the significance of the dust.

(To be continued tomorrow…)

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Posted by on September 10, 2011 • Filed under: Al Mullins, commentary • Tagged:

9/11 Thoughts of Eric Lamar

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343

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Ten years after, the number continues to defy believability in its astounding size.

Never before had the profession of firefighting experienced such an extraordinary cataclysm. It was beyond the realm of imagination, contemplation or nightmare.

Today that same sentiment or feeling remains. It is true that life has gone on and they say that the Fire Department has been re-built but the stunning magnitude of the loss will stay with us always, immune to the passage of time.

Those numbers, three-four-three, define the before and after of our profession, a gigantic breach eluding comprehension.

In our minds and indeed in the minds of most Americans, firefighting has always been associated with a degree of selfless service which extends beyond the notions of job, work and profession. Those 343, in their collective sacrifice, transcended the expectations of mortals, even of the heroic men.

On this tenth anniversary we can struggle to do them justice by remembering their individual uniqueness while at the same we will forever marvel at their sense of duty and commitment on a day that both defined our greatest loss as well as the bravery and courage of firefighters, for all time.

………. Eric Lamar

(Note:  This is the third entry of Eric's 9/11 trilogy.  You can read the first two HERE and HERE.)

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Posted by on September 10, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Eric Lamar • Tagged:

9/11 Remembrances of Patrick Mahoney

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I've been struggling with what to write for this group 9/11 discussion. Should I take the easy route and write about where I was and what I was doing that day? Should I take the contrarian (pageview-bait) route and rail against the appropriation of 9/11 in the fire service outside the FDNY? Should I bitch about the cheapening of 9/11? I don't know. All of those things are easily said and just as easily dismissed as so much noise.

What I would like to do instead is tell you about my friend Ash (that's short for Ashley, but he is a he). Ash has been a volly fireman in Connecticut and Texas for probably around 20 years. He's a white collar investment type and has lived in San Francisco, Australia, Connecticut, Texas, and maybe a few other places. This is the sort of guy who wears Brooks Brothers and windsurfs. But he's also a good fireman and drives a truck and hunts. He has a great labrador named Bucky, too. He is one of those guys you want to hang out with and who has an interest in people. He's a good guy.

Ash's brother, Robert, worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in one of the towers and, like so many with that company, he died on 9/11. I haven't seen Ash since maybe 2003 but every year around 9/11 you can see the outpouring of love for him on Facebook. Despite not seeing him and rarely talking to him for these many years, I still hold him as a friend. I know he misses and loves his brother; indeed, I know he is sad. Like many, many thousands of others, Ash lost someone who was not a firefighter but was no less keenly missed.

I think the fire service has tended over these ten years to claim 9/11 as its own. We would all do well to remember Ash and his brother.

………. Patrick Mahoney

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Posted by on September 10, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, FireHat • Tagged: ,

9/11 in Memory and Memorial

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I traveled to New York last week to see War Horse, a play about the First World War as seen through the eyes of Joey, a horse, sold by his owner into army service. Joey serves with utterly useless distinction in the British Calvary on the fields of France before being captured by the Germans. 　In a way, it is a memorial to the marathon of horrors we call war, absent the granite and marble.

Michael Morpurgo

Being in New York on the eve of the tenth anniversary of September 2011 and seeing a play about the senseless losses of World War I makes me wonder how the terrorist attacks will become part of our collective American Experience, as all great events must with the passage of time.

Today, we know it as a date, as in December 7th, its emotional and historic predecessor. We employ the short-hand form of the three digits of its month and day, 9/11. 　Those two numbers, nine-eleven, conjure up the jarring images of a sunny and peaceful day which ends with the deaths of thousands in a whirlwind of billowing dust. 　But, will our understanding of the event stop there?

The slogan for 9/11, or at least one of them, is "Never Forget" but surely that is inevitable to a degree, as those that witnessed it first-hand and those that felt the loss the greatest grow up, and grow old. 　Time does heal all wounds mostly by obscuring anguish in a fog of distant and hazy memories though even the densest fog will occasionally lift revealing the stark landscapes of our lives, with all our valleys and peaks. For better or worse, the inescapable fact is that life (and death) goes on.

We attempt to stave off that fading into nothingness by creating monuments and memorials to honor loss and sacrifice. 　It is our tradition to create touchstones, literally, where the past becomes real again, if only for an instant. 　It is a wonder that a memorial, of any type, can be transformed in our minds into a moment that represents a distant time and place. 　I could know no one killed during the First World War and I have never been to a battlefield cemetery in Europe but I can conjure up a powerful vision, none the less, and in that moment the soldiers live, yet.

World War I Memorial.org

It is a case of mind over matter, or rather at the end of the day, it is the mind that matters. 　Perhaps the real value of memorials is that they allow those who can't remember, because they were yet unborn, to connect with an act or event and to make it both real and relevant.　But great memorials crumble too, and unless the event lives on in our collective consciousness it is destined to disappear over time.

Our remembering now and our desire to memorialize for the future could ultimately be about the need to seek meaning in the most chaotic and inexplicable of events. Memorials may, in a way, allow us to place a kind of metaphysical bookmark, so we can return as we need, to ponder again the "why" of such an occurrence. 　In that context, memorials, concrete or otherwise, are crucial.

The "why" of 9/11 remains elusive or even unknowable, left for understanding gained through time and patience, perhaps.　

If time does soften the blow, hopefully it will not prevent those who perished from being remembered as they were; many of them did extraordinary things.　

If we struggle we will see them in our minds as real people first and foremost, before they were swept up in the arm's of history as a three-digit code.

Crystal Inks

……….Eric Lamar

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Posted by on September 9, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Eric Lamar • Tagged:

9/11: Cause and Effect?

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Strategic Interest and Ideology

This coming week we pause to reflect upon the losses of September 11, 2001, and to honor all those killed or injured that day, as well as the families and friends they left behind. It is also fitting that we should remember the many soldiers killed or wounded in the intervening decade as they fought those identified as being responsible: Al Qaeda and their sympathizers.

Khaama.com

Ten years after, we continue to assess responsibility for 9/11 and while Al Qaeda is certainly responsible for the act, the true picture may be more complicated and less precise.

It is accepted and perhaps even inevitable that countries, both democratic and otherwise, will engage in all manner of unseemly alliances as they attempt to protect their strategic interests. These alliances can be uncivil, undemocratic and potentially damaging, but we engage in them none-the-less. That fact, coupled with our very short memory, allows us to repeat our mistakes while engaging in an assessment of responsibility that is often incomplete and sometimes just plain incorrect. (We denied sanctuary to Jews being murdered by the Nazis during World War II and then immediately provided sanctuary to Nazis to aid in the fight against Communism—so much for humanitarianism or the punishment of war crimes.)

Osama bin Laden once served in a strategic alliance with the US as the Afghans fought the Communists over control of their country. We were happy to train, equip and assist bin Laden and his compatriots as it dove-tailed nicely with our needs. Bin Laden was a terrorist then but happily, he was OUR terrorist as he shot down Hind helicopters and plotted the eventual defeat of the Soviets. His was a successful endeavor.

Wired.com

He moved on to more militant religious causes and was furious with one of the world’s least democratic countries, Saudi Arabia, when they invited US troops on to their soil in support of the First Gulf War. America was happy to cozy up to a repressive and tyrannical Saudi government if it secured our supply of oil. It was the presence of the US military in an Islamic country that fanned his hatred of America. We don’t need to like Al Qaeda, we can even hate them if we want, but we need to understand their motivations, whether or not we agree with them.

To paraphrase Britain’s Lord Palmerston, "Nations have no permanent friends, they only have permanent interests." Palmerston is, of course, correct and that fact leads to all sorts of moral and ethical ambiguity where today’s friends are tomorrow’s bitter and deadly enemies. There may not be room for either ethics or morality in foreign policy but that fact alone pre-disposes us to acts of terror and aggression as we selfishly ally ourselves based solely on our interests.

Just days ago the New York Times reported that Libyan documents had been found linking the CIA to Qaddafi and his famously repressive regime. The recovered papers suggest that the US shipped terrorism suspects to Colonel Qaddafi for interrogation. Perhaps in so doing we were only protecting our strategic interests but we should hardly be surprised about future reprisals when we find ourselves in league with Qaddafi, a man whom President Obama said, "had lost the legitimacy to lead." One wonders how the President defines "legitimacy."

The world is a complicated place, indeed.

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Posted by on September 7, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Eric Lamar • Tagged:

The “R” Stands For “Rapid”

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Be Aware of "Over-training"

In 2001 the Phoenix Fire Department lost a firefighter named Brett Tarver at a supermarket fire. As with so many things, Phoenix gave freely of itself to the rest of the fire service and made sure the lessons learned were shared far and wide. Today you can hardly find a RIT class that does not in some way relate to the Tarver incident. From that incident we as a community have become more aware of how complicated, lengthy, and manpower-intensive RIT can be. We should not underestimate the needs.

Has there been too much focus on the Brett Tarver incident? I am not sure anyone has really crunched the numbers to find out how many firefighter rescues have required more than one company or special tactics and skills to execute. I have grown concerned with the prevalence of the notion that RIT is necessarily very complicated. It seems that nearly every RIT class or article teaches us to use a bunch of guys and some special techniques (or expensive specialty equipment!) to get our downed firefighters out. Assuredly sometimes that is necessary. But I suspect that most downed firefighters can be extricated by one company simply grabbing the downed member's SCBA straps.

Colleton County FRD

The problem is that when we overtrain something so that its performance becomes natural under stress, we have to pay special attention to overtraining only the right habits. I once participated in a RIT drill in an old YMCA building where we had several companies, volunteer and career, simulating a downed firefighter in the large building. The simulated victim was not entangled and not particularly heavy; he was a standard firefighter who may have been said to have simply become disoriented and run out of air. Yet I observed firefighters spending minutes working with webbing and knots and other stuff to try to rig up some harness thing to get this guy out. Did they do this simply because they carried these things and had the subconscious desire to use whatever they had? Or because they were overtrained in the use of MAST slings and complicated tactics and techniques taught in regional saving-our-own classes? It doesn't matter because the training failed them and the "downed" firefighter.

We need to pay attention to the complicated stuff that we learned in the Denver Drill and Brett Tarver cases. The complicated techniques and special RIT considerations learned in those incidents must not be overlooked. But don't make things more complicated than they have to be. Train on the complicated but also train for the simple rescues because those are the fastest! RIT is not the time to get fancy for the sake of fanciness. Teach your guys that, if they can, they can grab the SCBA straps and go! go! go! Prepare for the worst but do not fail to imagine the simple!

Engine 84 blog

………. Thank you.  Patrick Mahoney.

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Posted by on August 29, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, FireHat • Tagged: ,

Storm Prep For Probies

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Steve has some good tips for the youngsters scheduled to work during the hurricane:

My first night in the firehouse was June 21st, 1972, the same night that Hurricane Agnes hit the DC area. Assigned to ride bucket on Truck 11, it was a night that will stick in my mind forever. There are some lessons that maybe the current crop of Firefighters could benefit from, especially if you're scheduled to work this weekend:

#1. Report to work with extra changes of clothes and be prepared for at least 48 hours of hold over.

#2. Bring food!
Most all grocery stores closed early during Agnes as power was lost in the first round of storms and then didn't re-open the next day at all. The McDonald's down in the valley saved us by sending a grocery bag of burgers to 11 late in the evening on the 21st.

#3. If you have an extra set of turnout gear, make sure it's intact and at the station. You WILL need it. It's gonna rain. A LOT.

#4. Extra fuses for anything still running fuses as opposed to circuit breakers.
Tropical rain gets into everything. Remember the line from Forest Gump? Sometimes it even seemed to rain "up". Our windshield wipers failed early on from the heavy rain in the cab but the truck absolutely had to stay in service…so a volunteer was assigned to sit in the middle between driver and officer and spent the whole night pushing the inside wipers with his hands so that the outside wipers would work. (these new ffs have no clue that open cab firetrucks used to have inside and outside wipers!)

#5. Thank God open cab fire trucks are a thing of the past. Truck 5 was running as Truck 11 that night. It was the old American La France. I would have paid good money for a roof that night. Like they said in the movie "Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy"…bring a towel!

#6. Make sure your family is provided for before reporting for work. That means food, water, power and other emergency supplies. IF they are in a flood zone, MOVE THEM OUT EARLY.

#7 Units should be prepared to work on their own. We ran 26 calls the first 8 hours of Hurricane Agnes…that included 2 small working fires from lightning strikes. We were the ONLY truck company on the highway that night and ran many calls all by ourselves.

#8. Be aware that the huge firetruck you are on creates waves when it goes through deep water across roadways. Those waves will wash other vehicles clean off the road. T-11 did just that down near FT Belvoir during Agnes while responding to the bridge collapse in Woodbridge. We had to stop and do a swift water rescue.

#9. Water supply WILL fail early on. It did in Agnes and we had Air Force tankers running calls with us later in the night. Water supply failed again during later hurricanes too. Poor placement on the water treatment plant in Occoquan. The area floods easily.

#10 Got a camping sleeping cot? Throw it in the car and take it to work with you. Extra shifts and extra personnel will likely be spending time at your station….not enough beds to go around!

#11 Ropes. If they are hanging in the store room, get em out and put on the apparatus. Even brush units and medic units will need ropes and flotation devices during a storm like this.

#12 Bring cash! ATMS will be out of service as soon as the power goes. Bring cash in case you have to buy something and can find a store still open.

#13 Still have a pair of the old hip boots? Time to dig them out.

#14 Check out the chain saws and trash pumps NOW, not when it starts raining. Extra chains, extra fuel and oil for them and whatever tools needed to replace those chains in the field should be on board the apparatus.

#15 Wear glasses? Bring a soft cotton towel just for drying your glasses. Every time you get out of the truck, those lenses will get wet and probably fogged over. Nice to be able to clean them off afterwards so you can see. If you truly depend on glasses to work, bring your extra pair to work with you.

#16. Hand lights. EVERY SINGLE HAND LIGHT needs to be working and charged and on-board the apparatus. Even the brush units will need extra lights and equipment not normally associated with a brush truck. A charged hand light does no good sitting on the shelf in the workshop or storage closet.

#17. Shelter. Is your station likely to be needed to shelter evacuees? Plan NOW who's gonna stay to supervise them, how they are going to be fed and make sure that a hand light is left for them. You will be out of the station when the power fails, and the emergency generator fails to start and they will need a light until you get back.

Good Luck!

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Posted by on August 26, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, training-fire-rescue-topics

Department of Near Miss: Too Much Info? – Conclusion

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Qantas Flight 32 – Conclusion

(This five-part series begins with Part One HERE.)

Parallels for Fire Crews

 Abbreviations: Captain (PIC-pilot in charge), First Officer (FO), Second Officer (SO), Check Captain (CC), Supervising Check Captain (SCC), Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor (ECAM)

The ATSB interim report describes the flight deck ECAM outputs variously as "multiple", "numerous", and "extensive." They refer to "numerous other warnings and alerts" and "continuously sounding warnings." Indeed, the flight crew was faced with 17 different systems warnings, each with its’ own list of actions to be taken. It appears that taking actions based on ECAM instructions caused further changes in some systems, as well. Finally, even key actions such as the discharge of two fire extinguishing systems resulted in conflicting feedback from the ECAM. All of this had to be digested by the flight crew.

The issue of flight crews, civil and military, being overwhelmed with information and sensory outputs has been previously discussed since there is a limit to what the human mind can absorb. As they focused on the ECAM warnings and alerts, the QF-32 crew missed two opportunities to communicate with company resources. It is useful to note that despite this cascade of information that the SO and SCC "returned to the cabin on numerous occasions to visually assess the damage." We may have the data, but we still want to see it with our own eyes.

In this age of information, all professions, including firefighting, can fall prey to the tendency to be inundated with information that may or not be useful. In fact, consumers are generally not in control of the information technology being offered in today’s market. There is intense pressure on companies to constantly provide new hardware and software products and this generally means products that are faster and which provide more data. More and faster may not equate to useable or better. Even when high-volume data systems are extensively integrated their output can be overwhelming especially if the output requires action or must be prioritized.

Where technology is concerned, it is not uncommon for people to be judged on their "savvy" or "with-it-ness" based on the speed, capacity and features of their Smartphone or other handheld device. (God forbid that you don’t have one.) It is easy to see how the ubiquity of these devices and the intense focus on "apps" and speed can bleed over into the assumption that life-safety critical equipment should also be super fast and have a rich menu of features. In fact, the opposite is true. Systems to track or assess interior firefighting operations or personnel or those that monitor key apparatus or PPE functionality should be simple, direct and extremely reliable. Lots of fast data does not necessarily fulfill any of these goals most especially if interpretation is necessary in order to make a decision.

The QF-32 crew obviously got it right despite all of their many challenges for several key reasons:

-They elected to go for a stable environment over the big, fast play so they could fully understand their situation,

- They utilized all of their onboard crew resources to diagnose the problem, determine a solution, and to stay on top of a very fluid and complicated environment,

-Finally, they communicated effectively with each other and with the other crew and passengers.

Great lessons for us, all.

………. Eric Lamar

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Posted by on August 26, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Eric Lamar • Tagged:

Department of Near Miss: Too Much Info? – Part Four

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Qantas Flight 32 – Part Four

(This five-part series begins with Part One HERE.)

Final Approach

Abbreviations: Captain (PIC-pilot in charge), First Officer (FO), Second Officer (SO), Check Captain (CC), Supervising Check Captain (SCC), Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor (ECAM)

Consistent with the fully computerized nature of the A-380, determining the required runway length for a given aircraft is accomplished using a software program known as the Landing Distance Performance Application or LDPA. Various factors are entered, including weight, weather, configuration and systems performance as well as the runway surface. On that day, the LDPA would not generate a landing distance based on the initial information entered into the program. With the knowledge that the runway surface was dry, that parameter was selected and the LDPA indicated a landing could occur with 328 feet remaining on a runway 13,123 long; not much room to spare.

The blown No. 2 engine and the accompanying damage to the wing had resulted in a litany of landing related problems:

-Reverse thrust was only available from the No. 3 engine
-No leading edge slats were available
-There was limited aileron and spoiler control
-Anti-skid braking was restricted to the body landing gear only
-There was limited nosewheel steering
-The nose was likely to pitch up on touchdown
-Maximum braking could not be applied until the nosewheel was on the runway.

With reverse thrust only on the in-board engines and one of those out-of-service, coming to a timely stop would be a challenge.

The approach began from 20 miles out and the crew constantly monitored controllability as the flaps were extended while the final approach speed of 166 knots was maintained. The landing gear was successfully lowered using the emergency extension procedure.

The crew determined that accurate speed control was paramount to avoid either a stall or an over-run. The PIC carefully used the engines to develop the required thrust. The autopilot continuously disconnected when the airspeed dropped 1-knot below approach speed and at 1,000 feet the PIC made the decision to fly the aircraft manually. Because of the extremely small landing margin the landing would be no-flare.

The aircraft touched down with nosewheel contact in about 6 seconds. The PIC initiated full braking and reverse thrust on the No.3 engine. Deceleration was reported as slow but as the aircraft descended through 60 knots the crew was confident of remaining on the runway. Full stop was achieved with 480 feet to spare, or about twice the length of the aircraft.

But, the fun, as it were, was not over. When the engines were shutdown the aircraft unexpectedly lost power leaving just one working radio. In addition, the left body landing gear brakes were registering 1500 degrees Fahrenheit and there was a fuel leak on that side of the aircraft.

The fire department foamed the affected area and requested that the crew shutdown the No. 1 engine. They replied that they had but they were informed by the fire commander that it continued to run. Despite repeated attempts to stop the engine, including discharging the fire extinguisher system, it would not shut down. Eventually the fire department drowned it out with foam and water.

Remarkably, the aircraft was successfully evacuated with no reported injuries.

The Australian Transportation Safety Bureau (ATSB) reported that, "the No. 2 engine had sustained an uncontained failure of the Intermediate Pressure (IP) turbine disc. Sections of the liberated disc penetrated the left wing and the left wing-to-fuselage fairing, resulting in structural and systems damage to the aircraft."

Tomorrow: Conclusion – Parallels for Fire Crews  is posted HERE.

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Posted by on August 25, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Eric Lamar • Tagged: ,

Department of Near Miss: Too Much Info? – Part Three

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Qantas Flight 32 – Part Three

(This series begins with Part One HERE.)

Abbreviations: Captain (PIC-pilot in charge), First Officer (FO), Second Officer (SO), Check Captain (CC), Supervising Check Captain (SCC), Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor (ECAM)

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QF-32, a Qantas A-380 enroute from Singapore to Sydney, had experienced a series of "bangs" followed by indications of an engine failure and other system failures shortly after take-off.

Instead of returning immediately to Singapore the crew decided to initiate a hold at their current altitude and to take the time to sift through the ECAM messages to gain a full picture of the condition of the aircraft. They contacted Singapore ATC with a request to hold near the airport for about 30 minutes as they worked through the ECAM messages. ATC placed them in a 20 nautical mile racetrack pattern due east of the airport at 7,400 feet. Their primary concern was whether there was enough fuel on board. The assessment was that it was sufficient to achieve the objective. Singapore ATC advised them of reports of aircraft components being located on the island of Batam, which they crossed on climb-out.

While the PIC and FO began the process of accessing and acting on the various ECAM messages the SO was sent into the passenger cabin to attempt to visually observe the No. 2 engine. Once in the cabin area, a passenger who was also a company pilot, drew the SO’s attention to a tail-fin mounted camera image showing a fluid leak from the area of the left wing. The SO descended to the lower level and observed that fluid, in a stream about 18 inches wide, was flowing from the area of the No.2 engine though the turbine was not viewable from any position. He also saw damage to the left wing.

 

QF-32 wing damage/Thai Forum

 

QF-32 Turbine damage/Flightglobal.com

Back in the cockpit he reported his observations. The crew declined to attempt to further re-distribute remaining fuel because there were several ECAM messages suggesting there might be problems with the integrity of the fuel system. In addition to the known liquid leak, the ECAM was showing a fault to the aircraft’s fuel jettison feature ruling out that strategy as an option for reducing aircraft weight prior to landing.

The PIC and the SCC communicated frequently with the passengers via the public address system to keep them informed and the SCC and the SO visited the passenger cabin for the same purpose and to visually re-inspect both wings of the aircraft.

The flight crew began to think ahead to how all of the aircraft’s various degraded systems would affect a landing that would be about 100,000 lbs. over the maximum allowable landing weight. The various systems failures and the imbalances would make the approach and landing a hazardous affair. It took about 50 minutes in the racetrack pattern to go through the ECAM messages and to carefully assess the aircraft’s fly-ability. This included manual checks to confirm that the A-380 was controllable given the damage it had sustained.

Tomorrow:  Part 4 – Final Approach  (is posted HERE)

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Posted by on August 24, 2011 • Filed under: commentary, Eric Lamar • Tagged: ,