As Firehouse Sees It: Remembering Our Fallen Throughout May

Although the month of May starts off with the annual Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend at the National Fire Academy in Maryland, it’s important that the entire fire service commits time to learning from those who died in the line of duty, no matter the cause or geographic location of the member’s loss. As the grieving process progresses for firefighters, the memories should be recorded and shared.

“Had no idea”

Last year when I visited a station in the Midwest, I asked one of the members about a firefighter from that agency who died in the line of duty, having remembered the department’s name from covering the incident in my early days at Firehouse.com. The firefighter wasn’t aware of that member’s death, which resulted from traumatic injuries at a building fire and collapse. As we toured the station, he sought out some of the other members and asked if they knew anything about that LODD or the member. I pulled a Firehouse.com news story and shared with them the details. The firefighters had no idea of the incident, and the name didn’t resonate with most. As we talked about it and they did some Google searches and made some phone calls, they learned, in fact, that two firefighters made their last call/lost their life in the line of duty responding from the station that we were standing in.

Later, an on-duty member who had been out on a run came back and said there was a memorial plaque in front of the station. We went out and looked, and there it was: a commemorative inscription denoting the final alarm responses of those two firefighters, about 40 years apart. The member who had just returned to the station only knew about the deaths because his father, who had been on the job, passed the information on to him.

Educating rookies

For nearly 90 years, past and present members of the Syracuse, NY, Fire Department gather on a usually cold Feb. 3 to honor the city’s most tragic loss of firefighters. Nine members were killed in a collapse during the 1939 Collins Block fire, and the department uses that date for its annual firefighter memorial service. The names of the members who sacrificed their life for the community are spoken. Afterward, stories are shared. Rookie firefighters take part in the service, to ensure that the sacrifice of the nine members won’t be lost to dusty log books.

Legacies live on

If your department suffered the unfortunate tragedy of a line-of-duty death, in addition to learning the tactical and operational lessons from the incident, I ask that you ensure that everyone is made aware of the loss. See whether the fallen firefighter’s survivors or a member who was working at the time of the tragedy are willing to speak to the department. From what I’ve heard over the years, and what I witnessed myself, hearing directly from somebody who was involved or a family member who is left behind leaves a stronger, more impactful message. Those words don’t have to create an immediate change in operations but, rather, a discussion to ensure that the member’s loss—and legacy—is something that lives on.

With the closure of the NIOSH Firefighter Fatality Investigation Team, people have asked what they can do to find training that’s related to firefighter deaths. You still can visit the NIOSH website, which has more than 700 LODD investigation reports, which include detailed incident histories, suggested operational tactics and more. Each one can be used by any department, because there always is something that can be picked up on.

Further, there are plenty of resources out there, in print and online. One great resource is Rick DeGroot’s “Building Construction for the Fire Service” Facebook group, where he regularly details line-of-duty deaths from across the country, adding personal and operational talking points.