A View From The Summit

This has been a special week for the American Fire Service. An extremely diverse group of fire service folks came together to attack a serious problem: line-of-duty deaths. Regardless of their place within the world, they all had one common element that drew them together. They all had a passion for attacking the line-of-duty death quandary that the fire service has said they have been addressing for quite some time now.

As I sat in the airport at Tampa, Florida, I found myself reflecting on the rightness of our mission. Was my journey worth the time and resources I had devoted to it? I want to tell you here and now that I am extremely glad that I took the time to come to the National Fallen Firefighter Foundation (NFFF) Life Safety Summit for the reduction of line-of-duty deaths. The time that we all devoted to our tasks at the Harbor Island Spa in Tampa was quite well spent.

As I sit here at my computer in Adelphia, I am even more convinced that I was part of something really special. The next question that comes to mind is a bit harder to answer. Did we break new ground in identifying ways in which we can save the lives of our fire people, or did we simply rehash yesterday