I’m not referring to forgetting the personalities of the firefighters who died, or what jokes and actions they made to create a laugh from deep in your stomach. Part of the process of never forgetting the fallen—whether you knew them personally or not—is learning about the circumstances that led to the loss of life and then heeding any preventable-turned-actionable measures to honor their sacrifice.
It’s not just those who died on Sept. 11 that we should never forget. It’s the firefighter who died when their personal vehicle or apparatus was involved in a crash, or a firefighter who died when caught by a flashover or collapse.
With each line-of-duty death, there are factors that can be looked at and applied to training in your own department. Those lessons range from wearing the seatbelt, stopping at a red light, understanding fire behavior and building construction. Those circumstances include knowing the limitations of your gear, tools and skillsets to prevent you from getting into environments you are not able to operate in safely.
Each year, Firehouse shares details about lessons learned from incidents across the country at Firehouse Expo and Firehouse World, online and here in the magazine. You can expand from there and research NIOSH Firefighter Fatality Investigation Reports or look at after-action reports published by fire departments that suffered tragic deaths.
Sadly, sometimes there are deaths that are not preventable. You can educate yourself and prepare for myriad of factors. The firefighters who died on Sept. 11, 2001 died from the unthinkable.
Preventable tragedies
As we head into October and Fire Prevention Week, we need to commit to never forgetting the preventable tragedies that took the lives of citizens in the community. Those communities can honor those who perished by checking or installing smoke alarms, educating residents on the factors that led to the deadly fire and the dangers of fires in their homes. Just because one resident died from a cooking fire on the east side of town does not mean that an at-risk resident on the west side would know about the dangers of cooking fires.
The death of 4-month-old Megan in a Maine fire (firehouse.com/11181268) led fire prevention author Daniel Byrne to focus on fire prevention and education throughout his career. Daniel’s efforts to honor Megan’s loss by creating fire prevention programs in his community have taken to the pages of Firehouse to help spread the message that community risk reduction efforts have saved lives. Daniel has been contacted by departments large and small to help them with their prevention and education efforts to stop the loss of life by fire.
Leading up to Fire Prevention Week is Memorial Weekend in Emmitsburg, MD, hosted by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. The four-day event offers us a chance to pause and honor the firefighters who died in 2018 and support their survivors. The fire service works en masse to help the survivors—the spouses, children and colleagues—that the fire service has not forgotten.
What will you do to honor the fallen?
Firehouse Expo Update
We’re just a few weeks away from Firehouse Expo kicking off in Nashville, Oct. 8–12.
New this year are sessions for fire apparatus engineers/drivers to set the stage for success and sessions focused on EMS skills and tips to improve training for all fire departments. Lessons learned will be shared in many classes, including an Amtrak train crash in Philadelphia, a confined space rescue in New Jersey and hearing from the incident commander of the 2017 mass shooting that led to the deaths of five Dallas police officers.
Register before Oct. 4 to save on your registration fees at FirehouseExpo.com.
