When it comes to water, Paul Shapiro is the guy who can perhaps move the most of it out of anyone I know. And I’ll start this month off with a plug of his article and the metaphor that it brings to the fire service: When things get moving, what’s left is referred to as the residual. Paul gives us the technical aspects of four-inch vs. five-inch hose–more specifically, in how much more water one can move over the other. Although Paul can put it all into layperson’s terms better than most, he begins by describing why it’s the residual pressure that’s left once water is flowing that will determine how much water you’re going to be able to move on the fireground.
As I read this article, I immediately realized that, as a fire service, we are ingrained to leave it all on the fireground–that is, to put all 100 percent of it in to get the job done safely and effectively. Although that’s an ethos we can all get behind, we must make sure that we have some left afterward to recover. Although recovery is finally being considered as effective as prevention, it must also be considered for the public–and the firefighting community. Once our administrative matters, planning, and operations get moving, we must make sure there are residuals left over to recover in terms of not just water availability but resources, (behavioral) health and wellness, and preventive measures for all the above. What’s left after a fire, resource cuts or reallocations, and unavoidable personal problems is what’s left in the tank, or the residuals. Unfortunately, we can plan for most means of having some left, but not in every case. Regardless, we’ll do our best to help you discover yours, this month in FireRescue.
As we follow Shapiro’s article, we move to Brandon Green’s article on creating the culture of fitness. We need to have the capacity to do the work that is required of our profession, not just what the fitness community deems proper strength and cardiovascular conditioning. Moreover, Brandon makes a salient point that we also must ensure that we set ourselves up to have enough left in the tank to enjoy a strong and healthy retirement. I can get behind that, and it is why I’m killing myself alongside the rest of you.
David Rhodes brings us another great Hump Day S.O.S by giving his take on how physical fitness has evolved into a tremendous component of the Georgia Smoke Diver program. This is an extremely intense and demanding program that weeds out more people than make it through. David describes why the program uses exercise to wear people down to see how they function with very little left in the tank. The residual left over is what makes the candidates in this program; it forces them to discover everything about themselves–and what they have left to offer.
Dena Ali gets a lot of real estate in this month’s issue as we display two of her great works. The first article is a review of the second annual Rosecrance-Florian Symposium. Dena takes us through this year’s agenda and leaves us with some of the speakers’ main points and takeaways. Each speaker brought his own unique experiences and expertise and left those attending with a greater awareness of behavioral health in the fire service.
After an incident, an unavoidable personal tragedy, or even a career, there may not be much left in the behavioral health tank. This often leads to behavioral health disorders and maladaptive coping strategies when one isn’t aware of available (peer) networks, facilities, and strategies to manage these personal maladies. Dena is not one to shy away from facilitating these tough conversations–and we shouldn’t be either. Organizations must have the foresight to establish the “residual” resources to discover these issues in their own people, eliminate the stigma, and create strategies to ensure that we have EVERYTHING left for our own, after. Dena also introduces us to some interesting metrics in the wildland urban interface in her second piece and makes a very important case to have enough left over for prevention after wildfire season. We have seen fire season durations increase exponentially, and Dena will help us understand it all and why there are things left to do once the season is over.
Residual pressure in the hydrant dictates what we can flow at a fire. The residuals of resources, health and wellness, and applicable policy dictate how fire departments are going to recover from everything we do. Nothing is more troubling to an incident commander who needs a company to deploy to fix a problem than turning around and finding nothing left. Make sure that you always have something left to give your troops, your family, and the fire service.
