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Where did the fire service go???
I know, I know, it's still here. But...
I was one of those hard chargers when i came on the job at 20 years old.
Thought the old ways were outdated, and needed changes to make "our" fire service safer and more efficient.
Well...I was wrong in more ways then I was right. We have done away with too many of the things that made the fire service, the fire service.
The other night my Captain and I were sitting in the empty day room discussing where the fire service has gone dreadfully wrong.
Gone are the days of firefighters sitting around the table playing cards and sharing stories.
Some of those stories, ok many of those stories were embellished a bit, but many more were full of nuggets a rookie could use when things got bad and their experience didn't cover that type of emergency.
When it got bad, something old Jake said about a bad one years ago would pop into your head and that sign staring you dead in the face would become a SIGN, not a death warrant.
Those evenings were full of nuggets.
Those evenings were full of training disguised as a game of Spades.
But not today...
We used to go out on weekends and do live fire evolutions.
You old Jakes remember what I am talking about. Burning the house that was making way for a new strip mall, or that dilapidated 2 story in a rough side of town, too expensive to revive, but with great bones so collapse was several good ones away.
But not today...
Sure in some parts of the country, live fire burns are still the norm, but not many and not for long.
Training meant getting out on your apparatus and going over tools, cleaning them and putting them away.
As much as we all hated doing this, it meant we knew where every tool on the truck/engine was located and that it was in good working order.
But not today...
Now it is the drivers job to check the truck or engine, the firefighters have too many other vehicles and or medical bags to check out to walk the apparatus with the driver.
Today we depend on power point training that gives us yet another piece of paper saying we have completed the training.
But did anyone get a frakkin thing out of said training???
Mostly NO! I'm as guilty as most, but if it is something I don't know inside out will actually read the entire training. But, I still forget 99% of it by evening. And most just click through it to the end and print a certificate.
Then, go to their respective rooms and watch TV or talk on the phone...
We eat 1, maybe 2 meals a week together, and then it is the old guys cooking who have conversations during prep and cooking...
There are no stories to be told, because the young guys would rather be playing HALO in their room with 1 or 2 of the guys.
We don't burn real fires anymore because the EPA and NIOSH, oh yeah and let us not forget OSHA, think it is: 1. harming the environment 2. a liability 3. Too dangerous! (#3 is my favorite)
We can't train the way we work. Isn't that the point!
There is no knowledge exchange in the house.
Idiots in charge at the government level somehow think doing a power point training makes up for actual training.
And not the classes your department spends thousands on to get you certified, ACTUAL FRAKKIN training. Those are wonderful, but a month after the trainers have gone we are back to the same old thing.
Burn towers and Simulators are well and good, but they do not make up for REAL live fire evolutions.
And why do we not burn anymore, besides the agencies listed above???
Guys got hurt and or killed doing live fire evolutions way more then should ever have happened.
But...that is not a good enough reason to throw the baby out with the bath water!
How many of our Brothers and Sisters are still here today because they recognized a situation happening that screamed, "GET OUT NOW"?
They sure as heck didn't learn that situation in a natural gas flames simulator, or from hay bales in a concrete block building with instant egress options.
Now the real point of my diatribe.
How many of our Brothers and Sisters do we mourn a year who should still be here!?!
How many of them could have learned to read a fire in a controlled environment?
stay with me here. I know training fires are not controlled per se, but they are great learning environments that should have many hours of preparation and planning built into them
How many of our brothers and sisters could have learned over a conversation with the old guys at dinner, that all those stars adorning the sides and front of late 18th and early 19th century merch's should be skulls and cross bones instead. Those building will get you killed in a hurry. But they weren't.
Why? Because we are more concerned with having individual space and privacy, than a great training environment taking place when no one knows it is happening.
We need to get back to basics brothers and sisters...
The slippery slope of individualism is killing us...literally!
Young guys: Make time to sit around and play cards or dominoes or aggravation with the old guys a couple nights a month.
Old Guys: Quit sneering at the young guys and take one aside regularly and walk through the apparatus and share a nugget or two.
I was one of those hard chargers when i came on the job at 20 years old.
Thought the old ways were outdated, and needed changes to make "our" fire service safer and more efficient.
Well...I was wrong in more ways then I was right. We have done away with too many of the things that made the fire service, the fire service.
The other night my Captain and I were sitting in the empty day room discussing where the fire service has gone dreadfully wrong.
Gone are the days of firefighters sitting around the table playing cards and sharing stories.
Some of those stories, ok many of those stories were embellished a bit, but many more were full of nuggets a rookie could use when things got bad and their experience didn't cover that type of emergency.
When it got bad, something old Jake said about a bad one years ago would pop into your head and that sign staring you dead in the face would become a SIGN, not a death warrant.
Those evenings were full of nuggets.
Those evenings were full of training disguised as a game of Spades.
But not today...
We used to go out on weekends and do live fire evolutions.
You old Jakes remember what I am talking about. Burning the house that was making way for a new strip mall, or that dilapidated 2 story in a rough side of town, too expensive to revive, but with great bones so collapse was several good ones away.
But not today...
Sure in some parts of the country, live fire burns are still the norm, but not many and not for long.
Training meant getting out on your apparatus and going over tools, cleaning them and putting them away.
As much as we all hated doing this, it meant we knew where every tool on the truck/engine was located and that it was in good working order.
But not today...
Now it is the drivers job to check the truck or engine, the firefighters have too many other vehicles and or medical bags to check out to walk the apparatus with the driver.
Today we depend on power point training that gives us yet another piece of paper saying we have completed the training.
But did anyone get a frakkin thing out of said training???
Mostly NO! I'm as guilty as most, but if it is something I don't know inside out will actually read the entire training. But, I still forget 99% of it by evening. And most just click through it to the end and print a certificate.
Then, go to their respective rooms and watch TV or talk on the phone...
We eat 1, maybe 2 meals a week together, and then it is the old guys cooking who have conversations during prep and cooking...
There are no stories to be told, because the young guys would rather be playing HALO in their room with 1 or 2 of the guys.
We don't burn real fires anymore because the EPA and NIOSH, oh yeah and let us not forget OSHA, think it is: 1. harming the environment 2. a liability 3. Too dangerous! (#3 is my favorite)
We can't train the way we work. Isn't that the point!
There is no knowledge exchange in the house.
Idiots in charge at the government level somehow think doing a power point training makes up for actual training.
And not the classes your department spends thousands on to get you certified, ACTUAL FRAKKIN training. Those are wonderful, but a month after the trainers have gone we are back to the same old thing.
Burn towers and Simulators are well and good, but they do not make up for REAL live fire evolutions.
And why do we not burn anymore, besides the agencies listed above???
Guys got hurt and or killed doing live fire evolutions way more then should ever have happened.
But...that is not a good enough reason to throw the baby out with the bath water!
How many of our Brothers and Sisters are still here today because they recognized a situation happening that screamed, "GET OUT NOW"?
They sure as heck didn't learn that situation in a natural gas flames simulator, or from hay bales in a concrete block building with instant egress options.
Now the real point of my diatribe.
How many of our Brothers and Sisters do we mourn a year who should still be here!?!
How many of them could have learned to read a fire in a controlled environment?
stay with me here. I know training fires are not controlled per se, but they are great learning environments that should have many hours of preparation and planning built into them
How many of our brothers and sisters could have learned over a conversation with the old guys at dinner, that all those stars adorning the sides and front of late 18th and early 19th century merch's should be skulls and cross bones instead. Those building will get you killed in a hurry. But they weren't.
Why? Because we are more concerned with having individual space and privacy, than a great training environment taking place when no one knows it is happening.
We need to get back to basics brothers and sisters...
The slippery slope of individualism is killing us...literally!
Young guys: Make time to sit around and play cards or dominoes or aggravation with the old guys a couple nights a month.
Old Guys: Quit sneering at the young guys and take one aside regularly and walk through the apparatus and share a nugget or two.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John Rulli Jr. on
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Great post Allen! Couldnt agree with you more.
The oldhead war stories are the best.
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Permalink Reply by Bonnie on
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What a great piece of writing. I was captivated. Please keep writing Mr. Wahlstrom. I would love to hear more of your nuggets. I am a newbie who believes more can be learned by listening to those who have lived it than by a powerpoint or text book. Thanks.
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Permalink Reply by Allen Wahlstrom on
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Naahhhh...birthday is still a week away.
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Oh and mine would be a 1970 Challenger with a 440 and a 6 pack...beats the hell outta those chevy's!
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Permalink Reply by Smoke Eater on
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Give me a '63 mustang please. I just love those cars and I work for a competitor!!!
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Probably one of the best posts I have read since being on this site! When it comes to our modern day training everybody wants to bow down to this new age sissy training. Every time these agencys come out with new guide lines for safety, they are throwing out the realistic training of the days of old. I have been fortunate enough to have had the experience of being both volunteer and a paid fireman and have seen that of what you speak.
My service started in 1990, back then the Fire Dept would aquire abandoned houses, we would fill the house with furniture and burn all weekend long, then drop the house. I learned more about fire behavior, fire attack, ventilation, overhaul than any simulated burn tower could ever begin to teach....and better yet we did those burns with old jakes showing us the way, not some new age, power point teaching instructor, who jumps everytime one of these agencies tells them how high!
Please do not misunderstand that I am all for saftey that makes sense, but when in comes to this job there is no replacement for the real thing. Statistics show we have 100-175 lodd every year, given that anytime in the US alone, we have over 1-2 million firefighters on the job. Now take 1-2 million peolple in the general population and see how many people in that group will loose their life in the same time period. I am not stating that we should not learn from our mistakes and not correct the common things that are killing our brothers and sisters, but at what point do we stop? Also, I am not condeming any current day instructor who is out there teaching our future firefighters following the rules they must abide by.
In closing, I just want every new firefighter both volunteer or paid to have the same realistic training I had, that more than once has saved me a lot of misery, and to sit back listen to the history, and to enjoy the bonds that will be made throughout your career......TCSS
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Permalink Reply by Paul Young on
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Allen, I am embarassed. I too am one one of the old guys now. My mentor retired a couple....ok 5 years ago, and he told my I am one of the old guys now. I am fortunate at my career station myself and my driver hired together 21 years ago, our Captain is a 30+ old fart and our "rookie" has 5+ years. Now my hometown department is a different story. Our most experienced captain has 7 years. We have many very green but eager firefighters. I am going to print your blog and hang it on my wall next to my desk to remind me that the paperwork will wait and try to pass on what my mentor passed on to me.
Thanks Brother.
Paul Young
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Permalink Reply by Robert Owens on
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I agree with some of the things you are saying but disagree with some...
My biggest issue is that while yes the oldger guys have alot of knowledge and have been around a while is there knowledge still up to date??? I have alot of guys in the Fd that can tell me how "Lewis Road apartments burned in the 1980's" but none of them can explain new construction, RIT operations, thermal imageing, and why synthetic materials burn hotter with more toxic smoke. This is because they are living off of those old fires and not living into today.
I have taken Dave Dodsons class 5 times and he says something that every older guy and younger should listen to. He says that while some of the experience is valuable today the fires of today are not like the fires of yesterday. Todays fires involve synthetic materials that produce toxic smoke containing ladder fuels that burn hotter, faster and with more intensity. This coupled with lightweight construction means that todays fires are different and must be dealt with differently.....do the old guys know this??? Mabey some do but a majority I encounter on my FD do not.
We had a fire just last nite were we had a long lay out and needed the second due engine to pump to us....A 20 year vet was driving the second due rig and could not figure out how to pump to me, he pulled the wrong lever and was pumping to a blind cap on a discharge that he had no line coming from and could not figure out why.....so I ran out of water becuase a veteran that should know is job did not.
I don't care old, young, man, woman if you can't do the job then you have no buisness being there and last nite this guy couldn't get the job done.
I will leave you with this......"Experience only keeps you from making the same mistake twice....training keeps you from making it the first time"
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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I'm with the original poster (even though thankfully a lot of the things he mentions don't apply in my Brigade!) and I'm also with you Robert.
I have many years under my belt, but not that many in the fire service. I see people with many years both ways, and some of them (not all) don't want to know about the new stuff. The teachings that come to us because of tragedies, because of research. Because of newer, better equipment. Thankfully those people are in the minority, but they exist.
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Permalink Reply by Art "ChiefReason" Goodrich on
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Kevin:
Though fire training over the years has changed, because it had to, I don't know that the "new age" training has been sissified. We continue to kill firefighters in training, so obviously, a concern for safety while training is a key element.
We have the luxury of doing live burn fire training here. Even so, it is done in accordance with NFPA 1403. In the "old" days, it was not done like that. We did some very foolish things, so I guess we should consider ourselves lucky.
New types of construction demands new ways to train. Fire certainly doesn't burn the same as it did 30 years ago. That's why regional training sites with burn cans should be the starting point for any new firefighters. From there, each fire will give the firefighter much needed real life experience.
Robert:
Though I wouldn't trade the "old days" for anything, I agree that it is important to keep up with the ever changing face of firefighting. Anyone who didn't keep up are going to struggle to the point that they fail to accomplish the mission. You stated that very well.
War stories are fun conversation, but they are just that. They hold a certain entertainment value, but the debriefs that come after you return to the station will yield more useful and productive lessons learned so the fight the next time out will be better choreographed and successful.
When a firefighter stops training, he has significantly numbered his days.
TCSS.
Art
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Robert - So there are dumbas@es at every age, and guys who slid under the radar their entire careers only to be found out at the worst possible time. Likely the case with your pump unoperator last night.
I never mentioned doing away with todays advancements in training.
I am a huge proponent of RIT and keeping up to date on modern construction techniques and materials.
Saying that we don't need to keep up is not at all the point of this post.
We are all responsible for keeping up with advances and understanding new techniques that make the job easier. If guys don't they are wrong, and training needs to be addressed to remedy those situations.
However...
Discounting experience is a mistake. If you were talking to a firefighter from the 1940's or 1950's, I would agree, the fires were different.
But...and this is a big but, Those of us who came up in the 1980's are not dinosaurs.
We were the ones who discovered the hard way that vinyl siding was a killer.
We were the ones who learned all to often with dire consequences, that lightweight trusses failed with little or no warning, and prefab construction with gusset plates made interior operations a dicey gamble at best.
But we learned and many of todays advancements came out of our generations painful learning experiences. Dodson, is one of those guys.
Synthetics have been around in abundance since the early 1970's and many houses from as early as the 1950's, were utilizing plastics in their construction, not to mention vinyl coverings on furniture.
If your guys are not up on these construction types, that is your departments fault. Unless your entire district consists of Victorian, Arts and Crafts or some other heavy timber construction type that lends itself to old school firefighting techniques.
If you will re-read my post, I am railing against BS training on the computer that serve up certificates like fast food. Throw in burn centers that substitute hay or natural gas for synthetic fibers and the types of fuels we encounter in the real world.
now my nugget for the evening.
Dodson's "Art of Reading Smoke" is a terrific tool. If you haven't read it, read it, know it, live it.
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