Excerpt from a vision of a more efficient fire service for Camden, New Jersey and other cash-strapped cities across the nation.  The full blog is found at http://www.pipenozzle.com.

Camden 9-1-1. We meet or exceed your fire suppression needs. Sir, I am sorry to hear the fire is now through the roof of your apartment building. Based on that assessment, would you prefer the…

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For you baseball fans out there, you may recognize this phrase. Usually it is used in discussion about a player that has been struggling and the team has been working with him to slow the game down, so they are better prepared and better able to react. As with many ideas and practices from Major League sports, there are applications in the fire service. This is another case of us being smart enough to learn from others.

 

At Backstep Firefighter and The Front Seat, we often use…

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For those of you that subscribe to The Secret List, I am sure that you noticed the loss of yet another brother, 31 years old, that passed away just shortly after leaving the scene of a structure fire. If anyone is keeping track, that makes three or four firefighters who have lost thier lives to heart attacks within hours of clearing a fire scene in the past couple months. Is this heat related, stress related, over exertion, hazardous materials possibly inhaled? Who really Knows? What i am… Continue

Have you ever successfully worked through a serious problem? Maybe you helped someone climb out of depression. Or, did you save the day with a huge departmental budget issue? If so, you should share the knowledge of how you made it over the hump--or helped others to do so.



Most of us desire to make a difference in this world; sharing stress management tips is one way to honor other people.



What’s interesting is that anytime you teach a coping skill, you’ll reinforce that… Continue

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Man it seems like ages since I've been to FFN.  The past 3 months or so I haven't been here to see what's going on or keeping up on what the gang has been doing here.  But hopefully I'll be fixing that and rejoining the ranks.

 

The past few months have brought about many changes.  I've been putting in many hours working EMS and just got hired working part time for another EMS service in a neighboring county. While this is good for the paycheck it does put a crimp into the free…

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For those of you that follow the news and happenings of the fire service, you may have noticed an increase in the number of bailouts reported. Now certainly some of this is a result of the media figuring out that a firefighter bailing out isn’t a normal occurrence, so as one outlet begins reporting it, others follow suit. But it begs the question, why? Why are so many of our brothers bailing out? Have that many incidents occurred where things have gone that wrong?



This year’s Safety… Continue

Excerpt of full blog on 4 July 2011 fatal Weston, Missouri fire and public and media response:  Continue

Brian Brush with two items you probably didn't know that limit your fireground awareness.





There is no shortage of discussion on the topic of situational awareness and rightfully so. If we can find ways to train firefighters to evaluate and process more information about what is happening around their task or operation the safer they will be. Unfortunately, there are a couple factors which seriously limit the scope of situational awareness… Continue

At work, one of my senior firefighters decided to perfect the front bumper hose loads on one of our engines.  One compartment holds 15' of 5" with a rubber mallet, universal hydrant wrench, and two LDH spanners.  The second compartment contains 100' of 1 3/4" line that's pre-connected with a TFT adjustable nozzle.  There's been a hundred different ways of packing it but my senior firefighter found a user friendly hose load for both hoses.…

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Join Matrix, Shear Attitude and friends as we pay tribute to the area’s fallen heros and raise money for a public safety memorial in memory of Corey Shaw.

 

 

 

 

Fun events will be held throughout the day as well as a Cut-A-Thon Fundraiser at the Fire Station!…

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This is the lead to a commentary I posted at pipenozzle.com on the blog there. It received a strong response, so I thought I'd post the lead here. To read the full entry, go to pipenozzle.com.



"It’s tempting to mention the irony of Philadelphia firefighter John Slivinski, Jr. killing himself just after I wrote about PTSD, but it would be foolish to do so, because we don’t have the complete story on his death yet, and I hope we do get the… Continue

I read an article about our troops in war zones. It quoted a special forces major as saying, "It has been quiet around here; been a while since a good firefight." To someone not in the business of high adrenalin that sounds strange. How can you have a good firefight?



Among firefighters we look forward to a "good fire." A good fire to me is no causalities, either civilians or firefighters: a house or apartment fire that is put out by the first alarm company and for sure not a wildfire… Continue

National Firefighter Near-Miss Reporting System; Untapped Resource

Christopher J. Naum,…

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