Aggressive is not a bad word and should be a desired, if not a required, trait in firefighters. Safety is a must in our industry and should always be at the forefront of our minds. With those two statements, I likely just offended a vast majority of the American Fire Service. I am always looking to raise the bar of achievement. Previously my efforts have only been focused on offending the fire service at a local level. Stick with me, it gets better.
As I write this, I am a little more than halfway through my 20th year as a student of this institution we call the fire service. I have been influenced by so many great teachers of our industry from my local level to the national stage. I subscribe to the aggressive work and teachings of McCormack, Fredericks, Salka, Shupe and Isakson. Yet, I also take heed of the messages of safety and common sense provided by Brunacini, Avillo, Goldfeder and Graham.
Safety begins with training
There are some who believe that you must pick a side and that you cannot be in favor of both. Perhaps this is just a carryover from a society which seems to have become more and more polarized each day. I think there is room for both sides, aggressiveness and safety, and that we should engage our minds in the open position just a little more and rely on that prideful ego just a little less. My philosophy on safety is that we achieve safety through proper training, proper equipment and then as chief officers staying out of the way while firefighters and company officers do what we have trained and equipped them to do. Nowhere does this philosophy include hamstringing my people from aggressively carrying out their duty!
I am blessed to lead a very dynamic and fabulous group of volunteers in my rural hometown that is in a neighboring county. While the fruits of this rambling have been 20 years in the making, the final inspiration to put fingers to the keyboard came shortly after I was rudely awakened by the sound of a Federal Q-Siren. After a relatively busy day I apparently dozed off. As I regained consciousness and realized that it was not me going to a fire in my dreams, I began to play close attention.
That familiar and glorious sound that I heard was coming from the TV where my firefighter had left the show “Live Rescue” playing in the background. This is not a show I normally watch: I am a little more "Bonanza" and "Gunsmoke," but I was immediately sucked in because these guys were headed to a fire and I like to go to fires. I am watching each detail and forming judgement because that is what firefighters do to each other. I see what upon first impression is a squared away crew. They are fully geared up, checking equipment and preparing to go to work. The officer is gathering information, checks his thermal imaging camera, secures his gloves and then, boom, there it is right in front of me. He is not wearing his seatbelt. From the camera angle I can see the rear-facing firefighter behind the driver. He is not wearing his seatbelt. I can also see the driver, again no seatbelt! Immediately before my eyes flashes Gordan Graham's “If it's predictable it's preventable”. The bells of St. Mary are going off in my head and my inner fire chief is having a come apart. It is 2021! Why are we still having conversations about wearing seatbelts in fire trucks?
Let us ignore for a moment the fact that this documented video evidence has now been broadcast nationally and all of the liability issues that could now follow in the event that this department sustained an apparatus-involved collision where a member was seriously injured or killed. That is for the lawyers to sort out and for the fire chief to go through a lot of Excedrin over. Let us talk about the cold hard reality. How do you justify this behavior? No really, I know some of you reading this condone and participate in this very same behavior. How do you justify it?
Have you ever watched the Everyone Goes Home video put together by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and Chicago Fire Department? Spend the time to watch the whole thing. When you are done, take a sheet of paper and write down whatever reasons you still have for not wearing your seatbelt and give it to your chief in a sealed envelope so that he or she will have something to tell your family when they ask why in the event that you are part of an unfortunate accident.
Seatbelt excuses
I have heard the excuses about how seatbelts make it hard to gear up and that they become tangled in the SCBA and cause delays in exiting. I probably used the same excuses as a young firefighter myself but it wasn’t used for long because seatbelts were not an option then and they are not an option now in the department that I have spent the last two decades as member. The fire truck does not move until all riders are seated and belted. Let me say that again, the rig does not move until all riders are seated and belted! I have seen this policy make a preacher cuss in the hurried fumbling that can come from trying to get the two ends of the buckle to meet.
For years, I thought this was how all departments did things. As I got out and about and saw other departments in action, I quickly found that this was not the case. I can still vividly remember visiting a nearby department and during my visit the tones drop for a fire. Since I have no one to visit with now, I head outside to get in my vehicle. Of course, I watch the engine pull out because, just like a small child, I am still enamored by red lights, air horns and a Federal Q. I remember seeing the firefighter in the back standing up putting on his coat as the rig traveled down the apron. He had to catch himself from falling as the rig made the turn from apron to street. That firefighter is a company officer now and I wonder if his outlook changed with the burden of responsibility.
Opening your mind
I am not one that jumps up and down screaming for cultural change just for the sake of changing something. I believe that change is inevitable in all things regardless of how much we may fight it but I also believe that a change should be justified and that justification explained to create buy in from those who must implement and live with that change. Culture drives departments and the actions of its members. To mitigate the risk that comes without wearing seatbelts in fire apparatus, a change in a department’s culture must occur. That change does not have to involve reducing or eliminating aggressive firefighting, it doesn’t mean you have to trade your leather lid for a space helmet or that you have to trade your smooth-bore tips for the latest flip-tip adjustable automatic constant gallonage combination trigger nozzle. It does mean that you must be open to new ideas and be willing to modify the way you have always done it. There are ways to pre-stage your gear and there are ways to get an SCBA on while seatbelted. They take a little practice to master but so did learning to throw ladders or advance a charged hoseline.
Flashing back to the crew featured on the reality TV show, I do not feel that they are bad people or bad firefighters. In fact, I was still impressed with the degree of readiness they showed to go to work despite being the fifth or sixth apparatus due to a fire that they ultimately were disregarded on. I feel that they were probably operating how they always have and how they were trained. Maybe their department has a seatbelt policy that they were violating and maybe they do not have a policy in place. Regardless, the message being sent was not one I would ever want to be affiliated with and cultural change will have to occur in that department to correct the behavior. During the same episode, I watched a crew from the opposite side of the country preparing just as equally while en route, geared up with seatbelts on, checking equipment and then coming off the rig to perform aggressive work on the fireground. I have seen my own firefighters perform the same way on countless occasions.
There will likely always be room for debate on where the middle ground lies between aggressive firemanship and safety. I know that my stance is one that puts the customer as the number one priority in the department’s mission to protect life and property while properly training and equipping my fire firefighters to operate as safe as reasonably achievable. It is 2021, wearing seatbelts in fire trucks is a measure of safety that is reasonably achievable.
