Anniversaries form an important part of many things in our lives. In a variety of different ways they serve as the milestones which mark our passage along the road of life. Sometimes they are for our family and at other times they are for our fire departments. At other times, like this, they allow us to pause and ponder our accomplishments over a period of time. So it is as we pause to mark the 10th anniversary of Firehouse.com.
It is hard for me to believe that Firehouse.com has actually been on the air for a decade now. It seems just like yesterday when a new form of communication was proposed and it was my good fortune to be asked to share my thoughts and ideas with you. I can recall my initial discussions with the gang in College Park, MD, which led to my joining the Firehouse.com team. Many have been the events that you and I have seen and shared in the years since I added the electronic media to my list of writing venues.
According to Firehouse.com Editor Peter Matthews, I have written more that 380 pieces of commentary for you since I began hitting the keys for Firehouse.com in 1998. Here is a question which I believe is fairly difficult to answer. Just how long is 10 years? While this may seem simple enough, it really isn't. Time is relative to each of us. To some folks, it is an endless array of days and nights which seem never to end. To others, yours truly included, it a period of time which passes with the twinkling of an eye.
Let me state for the record that the last 10 years has been a period during which you and I have been exposed to a great many serious incidents which have altered the way we, as a fire service operate. We need to look no further than September 11, 2001 to see that we have lived through a period with a great many changes, some minor and some of a life-altering magnitude.
On that tragic day, thousands of innocent people, along with 343 of our dedicated FDNY brothers, were murdered by a group of vicious savages. Each of us will remember to our dying day where we were when this new day of infamy burst forth across our nation's consciousness.
However, other tragedies, both great and small, have been dealt with on the electronic pages of our electronic magazine. Think back to the six firefighters who died in Worcester back in the early part of December 1999. Move forward a couple of weeks to the three firefighters who died (along with three citizens) in Keokuk, IA. That was a deadly month indeed.
So it has been through the years. We have tried to keep you informed of the problems which you will be facing. More importantly, we have worked very hard to see that you have received the latest help and guidance in meeting those needs head on.
However, not everything in our world involves tragedies. Think of the great things which have happened since Firehouse.com first saw the light of day. Primary among these fine things is the FIRE Act grant program. Back when Firehouse.com was getting ready to go live, we had no such program of federal benevolence. Now we do. More than a billion dollars has flowed into the coffers of our beloved fire service thanks to this generous brain child of Congressman Bill Pascrell of New Jersey.
Think of all of the lives which have been saved in the last decade. Firehouse.com has allowed the world to know about the good, as well as the bad, with a speed only possible in this generation of electronic media outlets. Let me now discuss an area where we have yet to experience an upturn in our efforts to make a difference: firefighter life safety.
Many of us have been battling the issue of firefighter death and injuries for a long time now. Back in March of 2004 I attended the National Fallen Firefighter's Foundation Life Safety Summit in Tampa, Florida. We spent several days coming up with an agenda that could be used to attack the problem of line-of-duty deaths among our personal.
We set some truly lofty goals back then. We wanted to lower firefighter deaths by 25 percent in five years and by 50 percent in ten years. We came up with the memorable list of initiatives which were going to guide us to the hallowed Nirvana of firefighter safety. As a matter of fact, I also participated in a number of the mini-summits which were held around the country.
Sadly my friends, we will hit the five year mark with fire deaths being at basically the same level they were five years ago. As a matter of fact, maybe they have notched up a bit. Why, you might ask is this the case? Let me be brutally frank with you right now. Our nation's fire service leaders have been onboard the safety train since it left the station in 2004.
However, the bulk of the fire service still does not get it. Just look at the firefighter who was seriously injured when he was ejected from his fire truck recently. Look at all of the tanker rollover accidents where the driver was thrown from the vehicle and crushed by the vehicle. How hard is it to simply buckle up a seatbelt? To see the battles that many of us have undergone, you would think we were asking the impossible of our people.
Let me assure you that I am not going to give up on this one and neither are the members of our fine team here at Firehouse.com. As a matter of fact I joined the battle against firefighter heart problems back in September when I joined the fitness center at our local medical center. I am now swimming a mile, three days a week at the pool. My weight is only down a bit. However, my lung capacity has grown nicely. The life guard has even told me that I seem to be building up a bit more muscle now. I have to think that I am doing something positive. Let me be candid. If a hidebound, old reprobate like me can start exercising, I think anyone of you out there in our country can do the exact same thing. Hopefully there will be a bit less of me to see when we get together at the big conferences again during the New Year.
Let me tell you that firefighters have been bleeding and dying for a long time now. I guess the difference which has emerged in the years since Firehouse.com went on line is that word of these solemn events makes its way around the world far more quickly than it did in the early days of my career. Back in the 1960's you generally had to wait for the major magazines to cover a tragedy. That would usually only happen if the department chose to share their lessons learned. Far too many clammed up left the rest of us wondering.
In the years since Firehouse.com started covering the fire and emergency service world, many new trends have emerged. My friends, I wish I could tell you how many back to the basic movements I have seen over the years. This is a popular topic for discussion at the major trade shows. We have covered this one more than once.
Let me make an important point. Everything that we do in life is cyclic in nature. There are peaks and there are valleys. There are ups and there are downs. There are years when we can buy a lot of stuff and there are years when the wolf of bad times is howling at our front door. It would seem that we are in the early stages of one of those really bad downward turns in the cycle of our lives. Right now the forces of the American economy are at work to make your job and mine a heck of a lot more difficult.
One of the topics I have loved to write about through the years has dealt with those pencil-necked geeks, bean-counters and penny-pinching business administrators who end up killing a fire department with their bean-counting expertise. As much as I wrote about this in 2000, so too could I continue writing about it today.
Time and again the fire and EMS forces of our nation have been made the scapegoat for a community's fiscal problems. So it is again today as our economy has hit the skids for a record period of bad times. Fire departments across the nation are downsizing. Individual firefighters are being asked to do more with less. You know my friends I really want to meet this guy Less. He must be one energetic SOB.
We also need to devote a lot more time to training our people in the dangers of building construction. I cannot count the number of times over the past decade when some firefighter or officer was killed when a building fell on their head, or collapsed under their feet. This is one problem that is not going to get any better or go away. Buildings are being built that can barely overcome the forces of gravity, let alone the ravages of fire.
We need to continue educating firefighters about building construction. More importantly, we need to improve their education when it comes to explaining the damage caused by the interaction of fire with that deteriorating style of building construction. Perhaps in this way we can build a better decision-making process for the people who are responding to the fires and emergencies in our nation's communities. We have been doing this for 10 years now and we must keep up the hard work.
As we move into the future, it is my hope that Firehouse.com will continue to lead the way. We do this by gathering knowledge from as many places as we possibly can and then sharing it with you as quickly as our resources allow. This is the rapid turnaround which was missing during the early part of my career. However, this knowledge sharing is a two-way street. It can only work if you read what we write and then pass it along to the people with whom you work.
Firehouse.com is in the knowledge business. We have been here for ten years now. It is my hope that we will be here for at least ten years more. I guess the possibilities are infinite, as long as we continue to meet your needs. Take care and keep up the good work in your individual parts of our world.
Editor's Note: Dr. Carter was the first contributing editor for Firehouse.com Click here to read all of his columns.
HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., CFO, MIFireE, a Firehouse.com Contributing Editor, is a municipal fire protection consultant based in Adelphia, NJ. Dr. Carter retired from the Newark, NJ, Fire Department and is a past chief and active life member of the Adelphia Fire Company. He recently published Leadership: A View from the Trenches and Living My Dream: Dr. Harry Carter's 2006 FIRE Act Road Trip, which was also the subject of a Firehouse.com blog To read Harry's complete biography and view his archived articles, click here. You can reach Harry by e-mail at [email protected].
