“…It's disheartening and hurtful to be portrayed as the economic destroyers of the community, the ones who work such a short career and live such a wonderfully long retirement at the expense of the people we served - portrayed as something bad, as if our work, lives, careers were some sort of scam we have perpetrated on the community. I guess on a line item in a budget or in a ledger, we are just another number.”

Earlier this year, the…

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One of our members Abe Winter has put a call out for any SOP's/SOG's you might be willing to share with him. His department is in the process of updating theirs.



Folks, this is exactly what needs to be done.



In my last post, one of the recommendations constantly surfacing in NIOSH LODD reports is to develop or update effective SOP's and SOG's. Having a set is not enough; keeping them current is a constant task necessary to ensure the safety of our… Continue

I see that NIOSH reports have popped up on the radar of the blogosphere recently. Frankly, I’m surprised at the heat a few have been giving them. Maybe I’ve been missing something (it’s happened before). So I took a closer look.

We already know that heart attacks and traffic accidents are the main murderers of us firefighters, so I’m sure we’ve already dedicated the necessary resources to firefighter health and safety initiatives and…

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We have such a wide variety of ages in the membership here at FirefighterNation.com. Such diversity offers the great opportunity to pass along nuggets of knowledge from the old, grizzled, sometimes cranky old veterans down to the younger firefighters who represent the future of the fire service.



Some are good, some are just plain funny. But, I've found that I can learn more from just listening to an old Chief talking then I can learn in any… Continue

I had just finished reading a depressing thought I found on facebook by Christopher Naum:



“There’s an awful lot of time, energy and resources being committed and directed towards fire service safety. Is anyone really listening? Does anyone really care?” Are we just running against the wind?



Almost immediately after reading that, I… Continue