This is NOT an April Fools Post.

I want to take up the topic of exploring the ideas I brought up in my article Four Dimensional Firefighting.  We are forging a Fire Service Warrior culture through this website, and I hope through those people who read, study, and apply the work I did in The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness.  I am going to be 100% honest with my readers and say that these posts are about trying to learn how to articulate a very personal process that has been part of my life since I was right out of high school.  Nearly two decades later I feel like I have a deep enough understanding to begin expressing it.  I'm not sure exactly how to teach you how to practice these skills, but I hope we will discover that together along the way.

Ultimately the objective of looking at Four Dimensional Firefighting is to improve the capacity of the individual Fire Service Warrior to operate on the fire ground.  It is about embracing our duty as a spiritual quest as much as anything else.  I've looked at Western Culture and Eastern Culture for a long time.  I've read hundreds of philosophical essays and I've read tens of thousands of pages on both Fire Department Strategy and Tactics and Military Strategy and Tactics.  What I have found is this: those cultures (regardless of their hemisphere of origin) that have embraced the spiritual elements of success in combat speak about doctrine and guidelines; cultures that ignore the spiritual talk about technology and procedures.

Procedures are rote skills that we expect our people to accomplish.  Task A must be completed using steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.  Guidelines on the other had are more general descriptors of what End State we want to reach and allow the individual Warrior to accomplish it has he or she sees fit.

Let's use the donning of an SCBA as an example.  When we take new candidates into our recruit academies we give them a Skill Sheet, a Procedure, to follow.  Step 1, turn the cylinder valve on; Step 2, grasp the back plate of the SCBA and lift; Step 3, allow the SCBA to slide over your arms and into position on your back.  The Procedure is important to Teach a Skill that we want to Measure the students ability to achieve.  With the guideline however we give the Warrior an End State we want achieved. "In 30 seconds be fully encapsulated and ready to go 'on air' to enter the fire building."  We don't have to say How to accomplish the task.

I have been trying to figure out WHY despite the decline in structure fire responses our Line Of Duty Death and perhaps more significantly our Fireground Injury rates are not declining.  I realized that key problem the other day looking at an inflatable shelter system covered in signs saying "Command", "Safety", "Rehab", and "Accountability".  We have totally lost the Spiritual side of the American Fire Service.  We invest in technology; we invest in signs, vests, and accountability systems.  We fail to invest in the Warrior though who will go into harms way.  Far too many departments will gladly drop hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy the newest, prettiest: Engine, SCBA, Turnout Gear, etc.  Yet I see those same departments cutting their Training budget as an acceptable way to "do more with less."

We need to embrace a long held view of the United States Special Operations forces: "Equip the man; Do not man the equipment".  We have been putting our energy in the wrong place.  We have focused on manning the equipment.  Far too often our selection and assessment tools that determine if an individual has the ability to learn this trade are focused on meeting an arbitrary standard.  We spend our finite budget on technological solutions and on procedures because they are easy to grasp.

That is why I keep exploring this Fire Service Warrior ideal.   We have to start "Equipping the man".  We must hire the best and brightest, who have drive and clarity of vision about their duty, and then train them until they CANNOT FAIL.  Look at what members of the United States Special Operations Command do all over the globe: with minimum support, minimal oversight, and at times using indigenous weapons and equipment they DOMINATE on the modern battlefield.  Why?  Because they only select into the fold those who will make the selfless choices, who will train not until they get it right but until they cannot get it wrong, who will be guided by their mission and their ethos.

The time has come for the American Fire Service to return to its roots, to our sense of DUTY, but to add in a cultivated, tangible Spiritual Essence if we are going to improve.  Those who want to learn and excel will.  Those who are afraid of these ideas will express hatred and dismay at the very idea.  If you are sitting at your desk, at the kitchen table, or in the recliner reading this know that our time is now.  Ignore the naysayers, do not allow the fearful to dissuade you from striving EVERYDAY for excellence

Monday we are going to talk about Meditation and a means of practicing it.  Cheers

Various and sundry things.

First off if you aren't reading Urban Firefighter go now and start.  This is the baby of Erich Roden (Milwaukee FD) and Ray McCormak (FDNY) two guys who created a magazine with amazing content to inspire, educate, and remind those of us whose vocation it is to crawl down a fire ravaged hallway to "keep fire in your life."  Read it now, thank me later.

Second, my post today has generated some great conversation.  I was on the phone with a friend of mine who is an aggressive Fire Officer and Career Battalion Chief who brought up some good points.  It is important that we remember that each and every fire is the first time we are seeing it, sort of like each time a surgeon removes a skull based tumor its the first time he or she has done it in that persons head (even if they have removed them thousands of times before).  That means we need to be vigilant in our size-up and allow good information to guide our decision making on the fireground. 

Your size-up should be starting before you ever get on the rig in the morning.  Who are the brothers and sisters you are riding out with that day?  What are the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals and the crew?  I had a Lieutenant who looked at his assembled crew one morning and said, "These guys are like dogs on a chain.  If we get a fire its going to be like turning three pitbulls loose on a hunk of raw meat."  Those are people you can trust to do things like Vent Enter Search, or allow an Outside Vent Member to go to the rear alone.   Conversely if you have new, or less talented, folks on your crew you MUST reduce the speed of the fireground operation.

Unfortunately we do not always get to dictate that the crew for the day will have all of the abilities we would love.  Not everyone willingly assumes that mantel of being a Fire Service Warrior.  Or, we may not have the staffing we need to operate safely. 

I've discussed the Line Of Duty Death of a 24 year-old volunteer firefighter (NIOSH F2008-34) in the past.  He was one of three people operating on the scene of a house fire, where there we reports that the occupants were out, and he entered alone, became disoriented, and was caught in a Flashover.  That is unacceptable.  Not because he wanted to be aggressive, but because he didn't have a solid Standard Operating Guideline to follow that spelled out how many people needed to be on scene to make the building behave BEFORE we commit to interior operations.  He did not belong in there, but his personal condition: his view of his Duty, compelled him to act.  Rather than relying on an inexperienced member to stop we should have training or SOGs that spell out the minimum safe standards when they can go.  It shouldn't be about deciding if the victim might be savable, it should be about deciding if our department can make the building behave to afford us a relatively safe battleground.