As I sit in the quietness of my office I find myself once again listening to the audio from Boston this week. My heart is heavy for not only the loss of those men but for the agonizing last minutes that they had to suffer. And for the men who had to work to get to them knowing that they were lost. Its a feeling I hope to never experience. Its a feeling that I hope no one will ever again experience. But I am not naive enough to believe that that will actually happen. Rather, I am convinced that this will be the new norm. Rapid fire growth, catastrophic fire events, firefighters trapped and God forbid more firefighters lost. We need to spend more time training on our new battleground. We need to refine our basic skills and we need to conduct better and more thorough size ups. We must evolve with the world around us. We dont want to be involved in incidents like this and I sincerely hope that no one ever is. But will it happen. It will happen no matter how we prepare, no matter how much we train. By no means am I questioning, second guessing or passing any judgment on what happened in Boston this week. Sometimes in dangerous situations bad shit is going to happen. We know that, we accept that and we will deal with it. But in the mean time. We must train to be as good as we can be. We must look inside ourselves and ask if we are doing as much as we can to prepare for this moment. Can we count on ourselves to get out? To recognize the conditions around us? Can others count on us to be there for them when they need us most? I certainly hope the answer is yes. In the mean time as we train for these moments, hoping they never come we need to do more.... We need to live as true brothers and sisters. We need to live up to the traditions and values that have driven this service since its first days. We can not spend our days working in the background advancing agendas against our brothers and sisters. We can not stick knives in the backs of those who we expect to be there to support us when needed most, or into the backs of those who have done so much for us in the past or supported us any way they could. The brotherhood and traditions of our service should not allow these destructive things to occur. We must realize that in order to truly preform in these tragic moments of crisis that we need to know that unequivocally we can count on each other with our lives. That there will be no question and no hesitation for anyone under any circumstances. That we will act and act immediately when needed. Unfortunately, we all know those people in our service who truly do not understand what it means to be a fireman or a brother or sister. Its not about power. Its not about authority. Its not about making others look bad or ourselves better. Its not about working against our fellow firefighters. Its about service to our community, service to our departments, service to our brother and sister firefighters. Its about honoring those whove gone before us, honoring our communities, honoring our departments, honoring our brother and sister firefighters and honoring our own families name. Its about building relationships that stand the test of time and the test of disagreements or differences of opinion or ideology and still working together for the betterment of each other and the services we provide to our communities. Tragedies like that in Boston stretch the limits of those relationships to the very basic threads. In times like those we can not wonder who has our back. We can not wonder who is the one thats been working against us for months. Those thoughts can not enter our mind. We must trust that our brothers and sisters will be there, we can not question if they will risk their lives for us. It is moments like those that occurred this week that not only make your heart ache for those lost and for the suffering that their families will forever endure, but that also make you proud to know that not only did those men give their lives saving others but that their brothers did everything possible, at great personal risk to give them every fighting chance to make it out of that building alive. Those are not things that the MUTTS of the fire service are willing to do... So when youre being courted by a MUTT, lured to their dark side, remember that a MUTT will never have your back. They will only ever protect their own. There is not one thing that is more important than another in the fire service as everything is needed to come together perfectly in times of crisis. But there are some traits or skills that always rise to the top in keeping us strong. Basic human decency and brotherhood are among those things that will always rise to the top. So make sure that when things are bad, and youre brother or sister firefighter is in desperate need of help that the last thing they will ever think about is if you are going to be there for them. Give them the comfort of knowing by your everyday actions that you will be there without question when they need you the most. FTM-PTB
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 02:49:05 +0000
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