HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., MIFireE

A couple of months ago, I was asked to speak on a public service talk show for a Washington, DC radio station. Thanks to the wonders of modern electronics, I was able to do this without setting foot out of Adelphia. It was an interesting opportunity to share my views and feelings regarding the state of the fire service in this great land of ours.

I thought that in the post-election state of current confusion, I should share my thoughts with you. I do this as a sort of public service in order to take your minds off of the election chaos. I also do this in hopes of us coming together as a group of fire service thinkers to address these concerns.

You may agree with some, all, or none of what I am saying. That is the greatest freedom available to us here in America. We don’t all have to think exactly alike, but we really do need to be involved in society as thinking citizens. It is only through the mechanism of thinking about what is going on can we begin to create solutions to the problems we face at the local, county, state, and national levels.

Far too many people are being ignorant, when it comes to the problems of the fire service. I am not saying that they are dumb, or stupid. I am suggesting that they are ignoring the reality of the world around them. By ignoring problems, you are de facto qualifying yourself as ignorant.

One of the primary behaviors that I teach in my problem-solving and decision-making courses involves a simple reality. Problems that are ignored do not go away, they get worse. So let us now take off the blinders and look at one man’s view of the problems facing our fire service.

All across America fire departments are struggling to get their rigs on the road. Rare is the community that is swimming in emergency services talent. But do we step up to the plate and work to solve our problems. No, of course not, we lower our standards or simply state that we are doing OK.

How many of you have seen fire departments that send three or four members of the age of 60 out to daytime responses, telling all who will listen that everything is OK? How many of you have seen fire departments that live off of the largesse of their mutual aid partners? (Mutual Aid Mooches – Remember that one?) How many people do you know who are living off of their past achievements?

How many of you have seen fire departments that have the billboard out front of the fire station declaring: "Volunteers Wanted – Hard Word / No Salary". How many times have the people in those stations sat around a meeting table in that same station pondering over the ways in which they can run off the people that do not fit their image of what a member of their fire department should be.

If we are so hard up for help, why are we going out of our way to make it harder to maintain membership? If our ranks are thinning, why are we driving people away with a boot camp-like mentality among our leaders, many of whom have never been much for obeying the rules when they were the followers?

If it seems like I am asking some real tough questions then you are staying with me. We are short of money, people, equipment, and government support at all levels; yet we are going about our business as though it was 1965, and there was a waiting list to join our ranks.

It is my sad opinion that we in the fire service are in the early stages of a self-fulfilling-prophesy. By doing business as we always have, we are greasing the skids for a journey into oblivion. Even though the present times cry out for a new way of doing business, I can think of a number of fire departments that have responded to growth in their areas by turning inward, rather than outward.

They have worked very hard at becoming proprietary social clubs who just happens to go to fires. These are the groups that I was referring to a bit earlier. They take great pride in running off people who do not fit their image of club members. And owing to the secretive nature of their private clubhouses, the public lives with the perception that their local emergencies services are in great shape and ready to help them on a 24x7x365 – basis.

It bothers me that I do not have a solution to offer you. Should you choose to make a difference by recommending a course of change, you become the outcast. So many people in these clubs devote their energies toward making you feel so bad, that your only rational choice seems to be leaving. Dealing with the human psyche is an extremely complex business, and I am not a psychologist. But it has been my experience that even the most patient person in the world eventually sees an absence of hope burns out and walks out the door, never to return.

After the process runs its course, you are left with a tightly controlled group that is usually too small to get the real job done. You are also left with an organizational framework that has no heart or soul. It just has rules and regulations, and people that only do that which they are required to do. Organizations such as this are usually no fun to be with.

Then someone comes up with the idea that there is only solution. They feel that it is best to hire career people. All of our problems will go away, if we hire some people. Sometimes I think that these people go out of their way to kill the volunteer group so that they can create jobs for themselves. In any event, this leads to the next round of problems.

Career fire departments both large and small (and in between) are being starved for funding by municipal administrators and politicians who love the police and at best tolerate the fire service. We have actually confirmed a report that one state government offered bailout money to one of their major cities with a proviso that they fire nearly 60 firefighters. That same state had two retired police superiors create a new staffing pattern for one of the state’s largest cities.

Another story from the south involves a fire department that confirms that we are our own worst enemies. This is an agency that is obviously penny-wise and extremely pound-foolish. It seems that there was a real big football weekend looming, and the shift supervisory personnel recognized that the need existed for additional staffing. They were concerned about the impact of the extra 100,000 – plus visitors would have on the community. This seems like a most logical course of action.

The front office turned their request down, saying that they had to run the fire department like a business, and that they simply could not afford to hire the extra two people on overtime. An interesting corollary comes from the fact that the entire police department was on duty that weekend. I am truly surprised that we do not issue our people shoes with targets on them. This would make shooting ourselves in the foot a heck of a lot easier.

Lest you think that it is just the career fire departments that are suffering from dollar deficiency anemia, small departments across the mid-west are setting out on road trips to get donations of used fire equipment. Many times it seems like people are forced to fight these battles by themselves. There is, however, someone out there that does cares though.

A recent e-mail message from Mark Warnick tells me that there is hope out there in the heartland. He has formed a group called Helping Our Own. This group is working to mate up people with things to donate with people that need those donations. His group is also quite active in getting legislation passed that will limit the liability problems with donations that scare many people off. You can reach him at 573-292-4423 or e-mail him at rdnkcheif@excite.com. His is a group worth supporting.

Our own Congress continues to ladle out the billions in grants to the police every year. But where is the fire service when it comes time to dole out the dollars? The election is over, but the shrunken empty package known as the FIRE Bill has still not been funded. I guess that we are all destined to be hopelessly lost in the post election confusion. But remember, if nothing happens by the end of this latest version of Congress, we have won nothing.

Lastly, if my mail volume is any indication, we are in the midst of an unprecedented epidemic of poor leadership. Far too many fire chiefs and officers have gone in the direction of becoming managers, instead of leaders. Now don’t get me wrong, fire chiefs need to be able to administer the affairs of their fire departments.

They need to learn to talk the talk of government bean counters. But that doesn’t mean you forget that you have an obligation to provide leadership and support for the people in your departments.

This is a real quandary. But there is a way out of our malaise. We need to create a sudden and serious emphasis on a very simple concept: The Golden Rule. And we must do it as individuals, at least to begin with. I still get a kick out of treating an adversary in a manner that falls distinctly in the center of civility and good manners. I am not saying that this will be easy. Heaven knows, it is always easier to become angry and yell a lot. As a backslider in this area, I will tell you just how hard it is.

But try we must, if we really care about the fire service. I am going to put on my thinking cap and see if I can come up with some solutions to the problems I have identified. I need to be part of the solution.

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