HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., MIFireE

A few months back I wrote a commentary that basically screamed out to you that I had met the enemy, and that the enemy truly was us. Each week the information that flows back to me over the Internet and the articles that I read in the trade journals confirms exactly what I said back in May. At least when it comes to issues of safety, we are truly our own worst enemy.

All that I read, and a lot of what I have seen has given me a great deal of professional heartburn. I have the terrible feeling that too many amongst us are more concerned with the quality of our line of duty funerals, than the quality of our training, operations and equipment. I see far too many fire people around the country that are teaching their people that Kamikaze Attacks are permissible if there is the barest of perceptions that lives might possibly be at stake.

Lest you accuse me of a personal lack of guts, let me set the record straight. I retired from a fire department that, in my opinion, is second to none when it comes to aggressive interior firefighting. As a member of the Newark Fire Department I took my share of risks and spent some time in the hospital for my efforts. But the one thing that I avoided like the plague, was the use of firefighting personnel on obviously destroyed structures. One of my great concerns, and the most dreaded, was that I would have to tell someone’s widow and kids that their loved one was killed protecting an abandoned warehouse.

Allow me to share a quote with you from my firefighting text to bolster my position. On page twenty of my IFSTA text, Firefighting Strategy and Tactics, I state the following in Hoseline Hint #4; "Your greatest chance of success lies with making an aggressive interior attack on the seat of a fire, whenever possible. Be aggressive, it can save lives." Bear in mind the key words, whenever possible. I have never been one to preach human sacrifice firefighting.

As a matter of fact, my friend, the late, great William Clark pinned me to the wall of history in the second edition of his outstanding text, Firefighting Principles and Practices. On page 203 he states, "The difference between aggressive firefighting and unnecessary risk taking should be clearly delineated. Dr. Harry Carter, a veteran fire officer and author, says that the life hazard to the occupants should determine the firefighting risks acceptable. Firefighters must be taught to identify unsafe conditions and avoid unsafe acts. Protective equipment is not meant to take the place of knowledge. Technology is not a satisfactory substitute for clear thinking." I think that you can see how much Bill and I were in agreement on this issue.

But I’m afraid that there are fire people amongst us whose sole goal in life is to die in the line of duty so that they can get that hero’s send-off. In their minds eye they see the folded flag, the grieving family, the crying friends and they say to themselves, "… that’s the way I want to go." These are very, very dangerous people.

They have flash backs to the shots of little John-John Kennedy saluting his Dad’s casket back in 1963 and say, " Yeah, that’s for me. Let them all cry on my behalf. Let them remember what a great guy I was." Not me brother! I want to see all of my kids graduate from college, march the two girls down the aisle and see my son marry the girl of his dreams.

By now you are probably seething with anger as you read my words. You are saying, "Harry, how can you be so insensitive about our honored dead?" If you are thinking and saying this, than you are missing the true impact of my message. Some of our honored dead, did not have to die. The post-mortem investigations have told us what went wrong. But there are too many people who live their lives in denial. They fail to read the facts and understand that there but for the grace of God go you.

Quite simply, I am afraid that there will always be line of duty deaths because of the nature of what we do in the fire service. There are certain things that are truly beyond our control. Unseen structural forces may be at work to cause an unexpected collapse. Equipment can fail and even seemingly healthy fire fighters can die of a heart attack two days after their annual physical. But it is my contention that we are going out of our way to juice up the numbers by the way in which we do business.

Let me offer a few thoughts to you to help make my point. When I joined the Newark Fire Department back in 1973, they were in the midst of switching over from the time-honored leather fire helmet to the new polycarbonate models that were just coming into the market. As a traditionalist, this bothered me, so I began to search out the reason for this change. It seems that there was a long time tradition at work in the NFD.

Even though there was a department policy in place to guide the members on the proper maintenance of a leather fire helmet, it seems that the members were more interested in looking "salty." Which is to say, the members of the truly busy units wore dirty, bent-up, dried leather helmets. While they looked like truly classic, time worn fire guys, their helmets lost their protective capabilities because of the lack of fresh paint and the constant wetting and drying of the helmet. So to prevent this in the future, they went to the newer plastic helmet.

The same thing is still at work in the area of protective clothing. The NFPA standards for protective firefighting ensembles specifically state that turnout gear should be washed at least every six months, and more often if exposed to frequent fire duty. And there is a real great reason for this provision. The newer gear is designed to breathe. The heat from your body is supposed to move outward through the protective ensemble. But if the pores of the clothing are clogged with dirt, their ability to breathe is seriously diminished and heat is retained.

In spite of this, I invite you to go into fire stations throughout North America. And I would be willing to bet a few bucks that in many stations you will find dirty gear and no extraction washing machines. And if they are not there, how could you possibly expect the proper drying equipment to be in place as well. So because of this affinity for looking like a dirty, bedraggled veteran, you have firefighters being placed at risk for heat injuries during the warm weather season. And in many places, this season goes on for quite some time.

Just take a look at one of the bits of information that trickled into my mailbox over the past several weeks. The Boston Fire Department has created a new turnout gear policy. Because of heat exhaustion concerns, the powers that be have given their members the option of using a diminished level of structural firefighting ensemble protection. While they stress that this is a temporary measure, it is being implemented on an optional basis. While the original order did not specify this, a later amendment suggested that they have the gear on the apparatus, in the event it may be necessary to don.

Shades of the 1960’s!! When I got my copy of the General Order, I had a sudden picture of the old TV series Emergency flash into my head. There they were, Roy and Johnny racing around in the station boots, work uniforms, light-weight plastic helmets, and turnout coats. Yet another picture flashed into my brain! This one came from the movie Towering Inferno.

There were the firefighters from San Francisco, moving down the blazing hallways of that imaginary inferno, wearing canvas coats, leather helmets, woolen work uniforms, and steel toed work shoes. And I know both of these visions to be true, as I saw each during visits to the west coast back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

Come on gang, let’s wake up and take a look at the date on the calendar. The last time I looked, it said 2000. I have been around long enough to remember Project Fires in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The goal of that noble undertaking was to bring space-age technology to bear on the problems of structural firefighting. Two of those developments that we are now using are light-weight breathing apparatus and a light-weight protective ensemble.

As a man who wore a canister filter mask, the ancient Chemox oxygen breathing apparatus (still in use by the U.S. Navy if you can believe that), and the old heavy duty SCBA in his time, I am most pleased with what we now have. Is it all that it could be? Of course it isn’t. Until we can get to the point where the whole envelope of station wear and turnout gear breathes, we will continue to suffer from unnecessary heat-related deaths and injuries.

Lest you think that I am throwing a rock of criticism that only strikes the Jakes in Boston; Newark, New Jersey is no better. The administration in that city has fought all efforts to acquire the necessary washing and drying equipment (along with the necessary rehab equipment). There is a contract to send dirty gear out to be cleaned, but there is usually a shortage of spare gear to send out to the field. In that case, however, I attribute those problems to a lack of actual field experience on the part of the primary decision-maker. When you have a boss that has not responded actively to fires since 1967, a certain gap in experience can be expected.

As a long-time fan of the Boston Fire Department, thanks to my friend Leo Stapleton, I cannot imagine how they could move in the direction they did. It has long been my experience that field trials of a new policy or procedure like this are held to see if it works. After the period of evaluation the policy is either modified, implemented or rejected.

However, my volunteer department has a very effective extractor washer system. Right next to the washer is the drying system. We have the tools and we are working on the talent. But there are still those from the "old, salty look school who must be won over to the new ways." At least we have the tools, and are working on the talent.

It is my hope that no one makes the Supreme Sacrifice while "testing" the new Boston Bunker Gear system. But since I have never been a Jake, and have never used a rake, I am sure that the gang in Boston will dismiss my words as the ranting of some know-nothing kid from a second-rate city in Jersey who doesn’t know the Back Bay from Green Bay. However as a former truck company captain who has pounded more than one metal ceiling from its moorings, and as a former engine company firefighter and captain who has seen his guys pump a river of water in my time, I think that I am right on this one.

And as a chief and Incident Commander who has ordered an entire city block evacuated because of collapse potential, I shall stand on my record of taking care of the troops. I know that I was correct in my decision to evacuate the troops, because ten minutes after I did, the south wall of the old Clark Thread Mill fell where Engine Companies 9 and 15 had been operating. God Bless Bill Clark, Vinnie Dunn and John Norman for your help at that fire that night. Oh, you weren’t there with me in body, but I was running your textbook thoughts through my mind. And between the five of us (God, Bill, Vinnie, John, and Harry) we got it right.

Let me close by saying that the thoughts of my family, at least as they revolve around my funeral, are quite different from those I spoke of earlier in this article. Since it was never my desire to die in the line of duty, or to be responsible for someone else’s death, I never dwelled on that morbid area of interest. I worked to train myself, and my troops, in those skill and knowledge areas that would help to keep us alive in time of crisis. By and large these worked. However, since I was the Voice of Command at every line of duty funeral for about 15 years, I saw more than my share of sadness.

I would be willing to wager that if you could ask any of the people who have died in the line of duty whether they would rather have lived, I am sure that they would answer in the affirmative. They would love to have seen their kids grow to adulthood, graduate from school, marry and have children. But that was not in the cards for them.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not mocking the dead. But I am suggesting that there is a cult-like devotion to death that is moving throughout the fire service. There seems to be those out there in the fire service who revel in the pomp and ceremony of death. I can recall one firefighter I knew who, I believe, wanted to die in the line of duty. It took a great deal of effort on the part of a few of us to counter this propensity for a self-fulfilling death wish. And I will be damned if I know how to counter this trend of death by heroism.

Just look out across our country. We have cities that send three people to a fire on two fire trucks and call that fire protection (and that city is not far from Worcester). We have one school of thought that is making fireproof cocoons of us. And we have seen another emerge who would strip the protection from us. We have leaders who return much-needed money from their fire department budgets to their political leaders to curry favor and keep their jobs. And we have the bottom line "can-do" attitude of the fire service.

As I said back in May, I have met the enemy and he is us. Let us work to destroy this cult of Death by Heroism.

The commentary in this column does not necessarily reflect those of Firehouse.Com, Firehouse Magazine, their employees or parent company Cygnus Business Media. Harry R. Carter, Ph.D., MIFireE, is an internationally known municipal fire protection consultant and contributing editor to Firehouse Magazine. He recently retired as a Battalion Commander with the Newark, New Jersey Fire Department. His commentary appears regularly on Firehouse.Com. For more commentary and information, visit Carter's web site at www.harrycarter.com Harry has published several books available for online ordering, including Firefighting Strategy and Tactics and Management in the Fire Service