We have talked about the importance of being Mindful on the fireground and in our preparation for the challenges we face. To me, being mindful is the culminating point that allows us to truly engage in Four Dimensional Firefighting. Mindfulness is the ability to bring a state of perpetual calm, a state of Serenity, on when you are actively engaged in combat. Mindfulness can be thought of as a single pointed focus on our fireground mission to improve our operations and increase our ability. We cannot simply jump into a state of mindfulness though. We have to begin by laying a foundation of emotional resiliency and developing a capacity for self awareness.
Self Awareness is a critical skill for our Fire Service Warriors to develop if they are going to thrive. In our trade there are many situations we can be witness to, or a participant in that can cause us to experiance acute stress reactions. The fact of the matter is we often find ourselves picking up the shattered pieces of the lives of our fellow human beings. This can cause the acute stress reaction we discussed before, or it can strike us on a much deeper level and manifest as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
PTSD is a diagnosable condition according the the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). There are multiple critera that must be met to be diagnoised with PTSD. The Department of Veternan's Affairs has a page with information you can review here.
I think it is worth us spending a few minutes thinking about the stressors we experiance and developing a mental and emotion resilincey in light of the recent suicide of Lieutenant John A. Garcia (ret.) of the FDNY. Lt. Garcia was a Company officer at the Deutsche Bank Fire in 2007 where Firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino died in the line of duty. Lt. Garcia was their officer that day. One can only imagine what emotions and feelings Lieutenant Garcia must have had in the wake of such a terrible day. The New York Times covered the Lieutenant's funeral in a piece published on May 20th.
Suicide is a taboo subject that is rarely discussed in our firehouses. The fact of the matter is it occurs, from large cities to small villages. In 2010 the Phoenix Fire Department had four suicides in seven months. I remember in the late 1990's a firefighter from a neighboring department committed suicide by immolating himself, in the town he worked in, on his shift day. The brothers who responded were the men he worked with every day. They had to treat his burns as he lay dying the the back of the very Ambulance he often worked on. The FDNY, the Chicago Fire Department, and countless other departments have seen suicides of active and retired members. Suicide is not the act of an emotionally healthy and resilient person: it is an act of desperation and hopelessness.
We cannot eliminate our brothers and sisters from being witness to the tragedies of the neighbors protect; our sworn duty requires us to be there. What we must do is help our brothers and sister by offering them strategies to develop resiliency, performing an after action review of our responses to allow for discussion before an issue begins to fester, and watch one another for signs of acute or post traumatic stress and have the moral courage to offer the floundering member a lifeline.
There a many more qualified then I am to develop specific strategies to aid in these matters. However I do believe that one of the core reasons to use the Fire Service Warrior Ethos is that it gives our members a defined set of guideposts that if discussed and reinforced through application MAY help develop mental and emotional resiliency. Also, I cannot say enough that for me a grounding in the Stoic School of philosophy has helped tremendously. Remember the words of Epictetus, "It is not the thing itself, but the view we take of it which disturbs us." We do get to chose if we will be weighed down by the emotionally difficult events we are witness to, but our ability to chose is related to our practice of resiliency skills.
Take care of your brother and sister warriors; offer them your support, encouragement, and the tools you have mastered to cope with the challenges we face. If you think a fellow firefighter might be having trouble dealing with an acute or chronic stress condition GET THEM HELP! Remember, "Fire Service Warriors acknowledge their responsibility to their Brothers and Sisters." They may not like it if you bring it to the attention of the Company Officer, Department Chief, or the Employee Assistance Program that they are short tempered, having trouble sleeping, drinking too much, irritable, or any other symptom that you think indicates they are having trouble coping, but getting them help now just may save their lives.
As an aside I find it appalling that we do not track PTSD related suicides as Line Of Duty Deaths. The United States Fire Administration will classify the death of an 86 year-old Fire Captain from a Heart Attack as being in the line of duty, but the suicide of an active member isn't? Why? Is it because there is a stigma associated with psychological emergencies that we don't attach to medical emergencies? I think that is a likely reason.
I don't know how many people have read Malcom Gladwell's book Tipping Point, but in it he examines the rate of teen suicide in Micronesia. One of the things that he found was that once the first teen suicide occurred and was publicized under a given set of circumstances it set off a wave of teen suicides in the small Pacific Island nation. Is it possible that the Phoenix suicides occurred for similar reasons? It's worth considering.
As long as our patterns for mental toughness are derived from the models of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood we are setting our members up for failure. If you want to hold up a man as an example of what courage and resiliency in the face of terrible adversary is have your members read up on the experiences of Vice Admiral James Stockdale as a POW during the Vietnam war in the essays Stockdale on Stocism I and II.
I also think it is worth sharing again the words William Henley wrote in 1875 in his poem "Invictus"
Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever Gods may be
for my unconquerable soul
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade
And Yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid
It matters not how straight the gait
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the Captain of my soul.
Showing posts with label Courage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Courage. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
The other day I added to our "Here's Why We Search" page with some information I got about a rescue that was made in Charlotte, North Carolina. An 11 year-old boy was rescued from the second floor of his burning home by Charlotte Firefighters; his parents and older brother had escaped. Kevin Boardman did what many other 11 year-olds would have done: when he realized that the house was on fire he went back in to try and save his animals.
Companies from the CFD arrived on scene and heard that Kevin was inside. It was just before 5:30 in the morning; a family gathered on the front lawn telling the crews that their younger son was inside; the building was deteriorating rapidly. The fire was burning up the basement stairs and spreading up the stairwell. The crew of a Rescue Company committed the search the second floor while an Engine Crew dug in the protect the stairwell. Conditions were bad: visibility was close to zero; heat was banking down to the floor; the signs of rollover were present in the smoke pushing up the stairwell. The firefighters searching knew that flashover was a real possibility. The Engine crew knew that if they did not hold the fire in check for the searching members from the Rescue that things would go very badly. The efforts of these warriors resulted in Kevin being pulled from the building. He was injured, but alive. He was rushed to the hospital and then flown to a burn center.
Kevin died from his injuries. He fought for awhile: from early Thursday morning February 3rd, until the evening of Saturday the 5th Kevin (and a team of Doctors and Nurses) fought for life. He ultimately succumbed to his injuries. My thoughts are with Kevin's family.
I bring this story up to continue the debate we started back with my post "%$#@ Victim Survivability Profiling... Do Your Primary Search." Based on the criteria that Captain Marsar published in his Fire Engineering articles those crews should not have committed to the search. The smoke conditions were such that CO and HCN were present in abundance. The likelihood of a viable victim being rescued was slight based on the studies he has referenced. However, the fact remains that the brave men and women of the Charlotte Fire Department committed to a very marginal set of conditions and managed to rescue a victim. There are those who might say, "But he died," as if that were evidence that the choice to search bordered on reckless.
I will pose this question. Would you have wanted another thirty hours with your 11 year-old before he died? That's what those warriors did; they crawled into a hell that easily could have killed or maimed any of them and in doing so they gave those parents, and Kevin's older brother, the chance to see him, to say good bye. To have a memory of holding his hand one last time, not one of a sudden and surreal loss. When Kurt Vonnegut spoke of the Fire Engine and a symbol of man's humanity to man it was that kind of Courage and sense of Duty he was speaking of.
Companies from the CFD arrived on scene and heard that Kevin was inside. It was just before 5:30 in the morning; a family gathered on the front lawn telling the crews that their younger son was inside; the building was deteriorating rapidly. The fire was burning up the basement stairs and spreading up the stairwell. The crew of a Rescue Company committed the search the second floor while an Engine Crew dug in the protect the stairwell. Conditions were bad: visibility was close to zero; heat was banking down to the floor; the signs of rollover were present in the smoke pushing up the stairwell. The firefighters searching knew that flashover was a real possibility. The Engine crew knew that if they did not hold the fire in check for the searching members from the Rescue that things would go very badly. The efforts of these warriors resulted in Kevin being pulled from the building. He was injured, but alive. He was rushed to the hospital and then flown to a burn center.
Kevin died from his injuries. He fought for awhile: from early Thursday morning February 3rd, until the evening of Saturday the 5th Kevin (and a team of Doctors and Nurses) fought for life. He ultimately succumbed to his injuries. My thoughts are with Kevin's family.
I bring this story up to continue the debate we started back with my post "%$#@ Victim Survivability Profiling... Do Your Primary Search." Based on the criteria that Captain Marsar published in his Fire Engineering articles those crews should not have committed to the search. The smoke conditions were such that CO and HCN were present in abundance. The likelihood of a viable victim being rescued was slight based on the studies he has referenced. However, the fact remains that the brave men and women of the Charlotte Fire Department committed to a very marginal set of conditions and managed to rescue a victim. There are those who might say, "But he died," as if that were evidence that the choice to search bordered on reckless.
I will pose this question. Would you have wanted another thirty hours with your 11 year-old before he died? That's what those warriors did; they crawled into a hell that easily could have killed or maimed any of them and in doing so they gave those parents, and Kevin's older brother, the chance to see him, to say good bye. To have a memory of holding his hand one last time, not one of a sudden and surreal loss. When Kurt Vonnegut spoke of the Fire Engine and a symbol of man's humanity to man it was that kind of Courage and sense of Duty he was speaking of.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
A Dead German's View of Courage
I was getting ready to go to bed the other night and didn't have a book in particular that I wanted to read, so I went trolling the book shelves and pulled out Essays and Aphorisms a Penguin Classics edition of Arthur Schopenhauer's work. Schopenhauer was a German (of Dutch decent) philosopher born in 1788. (I know, I know, German philosophy and a taste for fine wine tends to confuse people when they hear I'm a fireman, but my life is equally filled with Jameson and Irish Rebel Music, get over it.) Schopenhauer is best know for his work, The World as Will and Representation.
Essays and Aphorisms is a collection of shorter works of philosophy. So, I grabbed it from the shelf and thumbed through the table of contents to find a piece I had not read before. I chose, "On Ethics". I was enjoying myself when I reached the Eureka! moment (which I seem to find in anything I read).
"Courage however implies that one is willing to face a present evil so as to prevent greater evil in the future, while cowardice does the reverse."
I suppose that may be a core supporting idea to the Fire Service Warrior concept. We race into burning buildings because in doing so we prevent a greater evil... that of our neighbors suffering the loss of their lives or property. Perhaps, even more so is that we prevent them losing their sense of humanity. We race into those buildings because we have accepted as our duty to protect our neighbors from fire. Kurt Vonnegut said, "I can think of no more stirring symbol of man's humanity to his fellow man than a fire Engine." That attitude would not be there if we did not risk of ourselves to protect others.
Maybe it is off topic but firefighters and fire departments across the county have come under attack of late. We are seen as being a drain on municipal resources. We cost valuable dollars, but like an insurance policy we are not valued until we are needed. The result has been lay-offs, and brownouts, and reductions in services across the country. We saw the City of Camden layoff 70 firefighters, the City of Gary 40, and countless municipalities lay off line firefighters as a means of saving money.
At issue is the perception that we, the firefighters are to blame. There is an effort on the part of politicians to cast us as overpaid dilettantes. There is very little understanding about what we do. There is zero acknowledgment of the risks we face. I think every politician should watch the video of the Houston Fire Department Mayday from 2007.
The DVD of this MAYDAY is available from the guys over at The Bravest. It is a heck of a thing to listen to the sound of a brother taking what could have been his last breaths.
We must make it clear what we will and will not do. That is my entire point about the importance of defining missions.
Just a few thoughts. Cheers.
Essays and Aphorisms is a collection of shorter works of philosophy. So, I grabbed it from the shelf and thumbed through the table of contents to find a piece I had not read before. I chose, "On Ethics". I was enjoying myself when I reached the Eureka! moment (which I seem to find in anything I read).
"Courage however implies that one is willing to face a present evil so as to prevent greater evil in the future, while cowardice does the reverse."
I suppose that may be a core supporting idea to the Fire Service Warrior concept. We race into burning buildings because in doing so we prevent a greater evil... that of our neighbors suffering the loss of their lives or property. Perhaps, even more so is that we prevent them losing their sense of humanity. We race into those buildings because we have accepted as our duty to protect our neighbors from fire. Kurt Vonnegut said, "I can think of no more stirring symbol of man's humanity to his fellow man than a fire Engine." That attitude would not be there if we did not risk of ourselves to protect others.
Maybe it is off topic but firefighters and fire departments across the county have come under attack of late. We are seen as being a drain on municipal resources. We cost valuable dollars, but like an insurance policy we are not valued until we are needed. The result has been lay-offs, and brownouts, and reductions in services across the country. We saw the City of Camden layoff 70 firefighters, the City of Gary 40, and countless municipalities lay off line firefighters as a means of saving money.
At issue is the perception that we, the firefighters are to blame. There is an effort on the part of politicians to cast us as overpaid dilettantes. There is very little understanding about what we do. There is zero acknowledgment of the risks we face. I think every politician should watch the video of the Houston Fire Department Mayday from 2007.
The DVD of this MAYDAY is available from the guys over at The Bravest. It is a heck of a thing to listen to the sound of a brother taking what could have been his last breaths.
We must make it clear what we will and will not do. That is my entire point about the importance of defining missions.
Just a few thoughts. Cheers.
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