How many firefighters have experienced
Candlemoth Syndrome? I know I have, particularly when I was younger and less experienced. Candlemoth Syndrome is a firefighting cousin of
Target Fixation, where firefighters ar…
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Added by Ben Waller on November 4, 2009 at 7:33pm —
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If there are concepts that are polar opposites, Brothers and Enemies are great examples.
Brotherhood means treating the people whom you call "brother" as if they were indeed blood relatives.
Practicing the concept can sometimes be a little tricker, as brothers sometimes engage in family fights.
I have three br…
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Added by Ben Waller on October 13, 2009 at 1:30am —
13 Comments
Another FFN blogger recently posted this little gem
"I Am Just An Ambulance Driver". I have several problems with this. For starters, the piece was obviously copied from somewhere with no attribution. I found a previous version of it with a minimal search at
EMTLife forum board. Note that the comments ther…
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Added by Ben Waller on September 20, 2009 at 3:00pm —
15 Comments
I recently spent a week on vacation that included a lot of reading on the beach. I was able to complete a six-book series, the
Corean Chronicles by
L.E. Modsitt, Jr... an excellent read if you're into the genre. In one of the books, a group of soldiers is deployed to an area with which none of them are familiar. They're tired from traveling and just want to…
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Added by Ben Waller on September 6, 2009 at 12:20pm —
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From
All Hazards Contemplations...
Although I love to read, I haven't had much reading time lately. Work and completing the edits of my chapter in Jones & Bartlett's new…
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Added by Ben Waller on August 30, 2009 at 9:38pm —
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Added by Ben Waller on July 3, 2009 at 8:58am —
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Added by Ben Waller on June 21, 2009 at 2:03pm —
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Once upon a time, some researchers conducted an experiment. They obtained five monkeys and placed them into a single cage. In the center of the cage was a stairway that terminated in thin air. After a hungry night in the cage, the monkeys saw a researcher lowering a bunch of ba…
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Added by Ben Waller on June 7, 2009 at 10:12pm —
7 Comments
We're supposed to be responders to
All Hazards - in other words, we don't do just one thing. In the range of things we do, it never ceases to amaze me how many times I hear or see really bad ideas espoused…
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Added by Ben Waller on May 25, 2009 at 1:00pm —
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Added by Ben Waller on May 16, 2009 at 2:59pm —
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If you have a personal or departmental "
Extinguishment Culture", would you grab a line and enter this flashed over abandoned house that is showing signs of impending collapse? If you have a personal or departmental "
Safety Culture", would you wear your SCBA ,…
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Added by Ben Waller on May 1, 2009 at 8:30pm —
17 Comments
From my
All Hazards Contemplations blog:
One of the things I do with my all-too-rare spare time is that I read. My favorite genre is science fiction and sci-fi fantasy, because it often fuels m…
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Added by Ben Waller on April 21, 2009 at 10:01pm —
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From my
All Hazards Contemplations blog...
During simple call like a room and contents fire, it's usually fairly easy to evaluate progress.
The black smoke turns to white steam, the fire goes out, the building cools d…
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Added by Ben Waller on April 11, 2009 at 10:31pm —
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From my newborn
All Hazards Contemplations blog:
Skip Kirkwood's
Jems Connect blog had an excellent post about the recent multiple shootings at the nursing home in Carthage, NC, Binghamton, NY, and todays triple police officer murder in Pittsburgh, PA. Skip made some excellent points about how to approach dangerous scenes.
Skip's post triggered reminders of some old street safety habits that were daily occ…
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Added by Ben Waller on April 4, 2009 at 10:57pm —
3 Comments
Does your fire department or EMS system suffer from Organizational Schizophrenia?
Most career departments have at least three shifts or platoons. A 24-on/48-off shift schedule is fairly common. In this type of department, different shifts often do things in very different ways, based on the personalities of the firefighters, paramedics, and officers that gravitate to that shift. In departments with a Shift Commander position, each shift often mimics the shift commander's personality and ways of…
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Added by Ben Waller on March 29, 2009 at 9:30am —
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There is a classic attitude that I've seen in quite a few places throughout my career. It is a side effect from the fact that all of us want to be members of the first company to a fire, but another unit gets to the fire first.
The result is what I call "Second Due Syndrome". If you're not there first, there's a subconscious pressure to drive a little faster, mask up a little quicker, and rush to get into the building before someone else gets all of "our" action.
Second Due Syndrome is dangero…
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Added by Ben Waller on March 13, 2009 at 7:30pm —
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From my blog at The Kitchen Table
http://thekitchentable.firerescue1.com/
A symphony orchestra spends a lot of practice time on their musical pieces before they perform in concert.
There is a lesson in that for fire-rescue departments. The time that we - the “orchestra” - spends with our “instruments” and in practicing with each other, the better the "concert" will sound to our audience. Most of us realize how important training on both individual and team skills, knowledge, and abilities can…
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Added by Ben Waller on March 5, 2009 at 9:00pm —
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Thursday night, Continental Communter Flight 3407 crashed into a house less than two blocks from the firehouse in Clarence Center, New York. This incident killed 50 people and injured several others. It also destroyed a Dash 8 aircraft and the home into which it crashed.
How many of us have heard the phrase "
It can't happen here"? This can be heard when firefighters and medics don't want to take NIMS training or to consider EOC or logistics roles because "
That's not what I s…
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Added by Ben Waller on February 14, 2009 at 10:34am —
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From my Kitchen Table blog at: http://thekitchentable.firerescue1.com/
Vince Lombardi, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach once famously said "
Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect."
Old Vince had a good thought but face it, perfect practice on a regular basis is unattainable for most people. More importantly, is perfect practice really important to the fire service?
An unknown author's reply to this was "
Practice makes perfect, but nobody's perfect, so scr…
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Added by Ben Waller on February 11, 2009 at 10:26pm —
14 Comments
Cut Back
You may have to cut back on your use of metered services, fuel for non-essential apparatus movement, and out-of-town training. This includes keeping the thermostat at 68 degrees F, turning off the lights when everyone leaves the room, using energy-efficient light bulbs, bringing the meals to work instead of going shopping in the engine, and training locally as much as possible.
Caution - Look at the economic downturn as a chance to do more back-to-basics tra…
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Added by Ben Waller on February 7, 2009 at 6:30pm —
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