Commentary

Let us think....

 I have titled commentary pages such as this random thoughts in the past. I have changed this week as I present some random thoughts and comments in the hopes that we will take these thoughts and turn them into action instead of idle thoughts in our mind. I heard a Chief Bob Halston say something one time about admiring a problem instead of fixing it so I am asking that you take some of these bullet points and apply them wherever you think they fit. Please don't email me and tell me where to put them either!

• If your department uses the NIOSH reports for training, what positive actions, policies, or procedures have you implemented after receiving the lessons contained in them? Or do you review them and never change your operations? Could you read them and say, could that be us?

• If you are not using them as a training tool, then you should be! There is a link from my links page to the cdc.gov site.

What have you done for your department without being asked this week?

The fire service needs to take a critical look at changing the way we react to things. Firefighters have been trapped and killed while in buildings. The fire service created RIT to solve this problem. Hundreds of thousands of person hours have been spent training line firefighters and officers on these necessary and life saving skills. How many of these deaths and injuries could have been caused by command decisions, breakdowns and or failures? What have we as a fire service done to correct these issues of command and size up that might have prevented some of these catastrophic circumstances to begin with? What have we done? Let us think...

The fire service needs to study the "chain of events" of bad circumstances and review what could have been done at each step to change the circumstances. I look at the tragic events of 911 and review that if any number of actions had been taken along the way, the death toll might have been limited. This goes all the way back to the terminal gate and the box cutter which would have prevented much of it. We as a fire service should look at critical incidents and review what actions taken when, or soon enough would have made a difference. I am doing some research on that now and will be presenting a case study on that soon.

If on your third alarm assignment you have an asphalt truck and a line paint striping unit you should probably change your tactics.

Stay safe, and feel free to let me know your thoughts.

More next week!

No simulation change this week on the training bulletin page, sorry!

Send your comments, thoughts or items you would like to see published here to info@petelamb.com. or pete@petelamb.com

Your opinion matters! (To us anyway)