Have you been watching—the Berlin Christmas market; Bastille Day in Nice, France; the attacks in Paris; Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, FL; San Bernardino, CA; Chattanooga, TN; the Boston Marathon? Are you watching this new style of global warfare where the battle lines are drawn through populated civilian areas and innocent civilians are the targets? Do you see the devastation, carnage and chaos? Now look into the middle of it all. Do you see those wearing bunker gear, making rescues, fighting flames, shoring collapse, triaging and treating? Do you understand what this means?
It is time for the U.S. fire service to rethink public education and make it a priority. We need to perform a total overhaul of our image, its value, its perceptive mission, and our strategy and tactics beyond the fireground. The world is changing and so must we. We can no longer allow ourselves to be perceived as the friendly local civil servants who respond to individual community misfortunes that happen now and again. If the last decade has shown us anything, as evidenced by worldwide news coverage and the last presidential election, this world and our society have changed in a very dramatic and almost unrecognizable manner. Civility has changed. Values have changed. Morality has changed. Warfare has changed. Weapons have changed. And in the middle of all this change is the American firefighter trying to bring order and save lives.
Firefighters have always been there, and many of us have simply refused to push aside modest heroic intentions to allow the full reality of what we really do sink in. This then limits our ability to correctly educate the public about our profession and its needs and risks. Maybe this natural modesty prevents us from seeing who we really are and what our true core mission really is. Maybe our modesty was a form of public protection itself, and by shielding our citizens from the reality of what we really do, we are giving them the confidence that the fire service has the situation under control—always. But with a single match capable of leveling entire communities, and ignition to flashover occurring in 5 minutes or less, ask yourself, do we really have the situation under control?
History defines the battle
The evidence of who we are and what we are truly up against is found in the history of our nation and the preservation of the union itself.
In 1864, Union General William Sherman led the Union army on a 285-mile march through the South on a mission to terrorize the Confederate civilians into abandoning their cause. While the general utilized several tactics, one of the most effective was fire, in what some historians describe as a “scorched Earth campaign.” Only 5 months after Sherman’s march, the Civil War ended and the Confederacy was defeated.
Fire is, and always has been, a weapon of mass destruction. History books of every nation contain stories similar to Sherman’s march where historic battles have been fought using fire as an effective weapon, and where the flames themselves have turned the tide of a war. No matter if the army was victorious or defeated, the battlefields have been littered with horrifically charred carnage from which any recovery is questionable at best. Has this changed in any way?
A most destructive force
While firefighters have sold their image as kindly citizens battling isolated incidents of community misfortune, the fact is we have been soldiers long engaged against an enemy that has been more successful than any terrorist in racking up American body counts and leveling entire communities. Fire has killed more Americans on U.S. soil and in their homes, with the victims more often the most vulnerable among us—the young and the old. Yet we struggle to protect them, largely due to public apathy secondary to proper education and awareness by us.
Fire codes, code enforcement, acceptance and universal use of sprinkler systems in all construction, fire alarm systems and smoke detectors, smoke detector installation drives, proper staffing, investment in new technology should no longer be sold as “niceties” and extra safety precautions to invest in when the economy and time allows. Rather, they should be deemed items required to contain and crush the most efficient and effective terrorist known to man.
Is this theory too far reaching? Too dramatic? Too left field? Well consider this: A May 2012 report prepared by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis—in conjunction with other federal, state and local agencies—released a report discussing the interest of terrorists in using fire as a tactic to “cause casualties, economic damage, and resource depletion.” The report cites several known terrorist publications and blogs, including the al-Qaida’s Inspire Magazine, where “pyroterroism” is encouraged due to its effectiveness in causing large-scale damage, its low costs, its limited need for technical expertise, and its low risk for apprehension.
More recently, this January, the USFA’s Emergency Management & Response – Information Sharing and Analysis Center released an edition of The InfoGram, stating that the most recent issue of Rumiyah, an online propaganda magazine produced by the Islamic State, was calling for arson attacks in the United States “in places where infidels gather.” Among the targets suggested were residential buildings, factories, schools, and even a specific church in Dallas. (Learn more about the threat in the Homeland Security Today article at http://tinyurl.com/hstoday-terrorism.)
The threat is real and it is coming. While terrorism was not the cause of the recent devastating fires in Tennessee, in which at least 14 people died and more than 2,000 homes were destroyed by the simple use of matches, the effectiveness of fire as a weapon is quite evident.
When our citizens learned our servicemen and women were not getting the weapons they needed overseas in the War on Terrorism, this country rallied to their support. We need this same emotion, passion and support for the war against our enemy back home. Fire is a known and effective weapon of mass destruction being studied as such by people who wish to do us harm. We need to reeducate our citizens and stop being the modest heroes with good intentions who respond to simple misfortunes, and start being the soldiers in a war where the frontline now lies down Main Street USA and firefighters are the first and last line of defense.
Overhaul needed
The next headline you read that states that fire has killed or destroyed, simply replace the word “fire” with “terrorist.” One simple word changes everything and stirs a totally different set of emotions and a call for action. Public education today is more than stop-drop-roll, and it requires a complete overhaul of our profession. It’s time, because the frontline in this war is on your community’s doorstep, and the only thing standing in its way is the American firefighter.
