08/07/2024
Quit hiding from behind your phone.
If you are like me and enjoy cruising social media you have to notice some of the back and forth going on over the past few months. Mission over self, for them, and preaching this over that preaching has become a deafening roar that has this ole jumpseat firefighter almost ready to turn off the noise.
While monitoring this back and forth and remaining quite, maybe I should take a page from our friend, Chief Harry Carter and share an opine (rest easy, chief), “You can’t bull crap the bull crapper Ryan”
So here we go:
For them: Our mission has ALWAYS been about protecting life and property, PERIOD. But it’s not a trade me for them. It’s a service we provide to help save THEM! Putting your life in jeopardy for the process of making a rescue is a deeply personal decision. Until you have made that choice and have done it you may never know what this choice is really like and how it affects your entire life. Your work life, your home life, and your choices on the next fire with reports of people trapped. And, yes, there will be multiple ones in your career.
Instead of preaching these “mottos,” we should spend time on educating and training our officers to make informed decisions on available information and giving our young jumpseat firefighters the hands-on skills needed to complete our mission of saving lives.
Let’s start with our officers who have gotten younger and younger. Instead of having the blind leading the blind, let’s point them in the direction of leaders who can help them make better more educated decisions of the fireground.
Leaders such as Andy Starnes from Insight Fire Training who can teach you can help you decide when to go versus no go due to thermal severity. How about sharing information from Nick Martin on commanding a fire with a mentality of getting the job done with direction and accountability. Maybe spend some time following Bobby Eckert's taking it to the streets drills of realistic conditions found on our changing fireground.
In today’s world of influence, our voice carries weight. Not all of us get to go to fires day in and day out. Many of your followers do not have multiple vacant structures to battle fires in. Heck, some of us get lucky to see one structure fire a year.
Firefighters take time to work on the controllable. You can control your fitness, your hands-on skills, and your ATTITUDE. Make sure that before you point out the flaws of others you take a hard look in the mirror. Some of the best advice given was from Battalion Chief Wagoner: “Put a mirror in front of yourself so when you make a decision you can look yourself in the eye and know you did it for the rights reasons.”
Trust me when I say that we ALL have tons of things we can improve on. So quit jumping on the “hot topics” and jump on the training grounds and do the work. Follow people like Eric Wheaton from Vent Enter Search, Jeremy from National Fire Radio, and Marcos from Hard Knock Sunday. These thought leaders are about actions NOT WORDS.
I guess at the end of this rant is just that. We chose this job! Whether you collect a paycheck or not you need to spend the energy on fixing one person, YOU!
Let’s start a new hashtag. I can’t help them If ME isn’t prepared!
Jump on that hashtag bandwagon and lets push to improve this job in a way that will for sure save lives. Better fitness, better education, better skills, and the biggest better mental health! Let’s encourage our brothers and sisters to find ways to control the controllable!
Before you’re so quick to judge or share an opinion look yourself in the mirror and have a conversation about it with yourself and push the job forward with positivity!
