That’s what I overheard a certain young fire officer tell a probie recently.

“If you’re worried about getting cancer — you probably shouldn’t be a firefighter!”

I didn’t miss-hear or mis-understand him, nor did I take his comment out of context. That’s exactly what he said.

I nearly blew my cork. What an immature, ignorant, reckless thing to say.

Here’s all I have to say to him: “This one’s for you.”

THE FOLLOWING IS A MUST READ ARTICLE – DON’T SKIP IT.
IF YOU’VE EVER THOUGHT ABOUT TAKING YOUR MASK OFF, EVEN JUST FOR A SECOND, WHILE THERE IS STILL SMOKE OR FUMES PRESENT — THINK AGAIN!  READ, PRINT, POST AND DISTRIBUTE THIS ARTICLE
TO EVERY FIREFIGHTER YOU KNOW.

“We Danced With The Devil: One Firefighter’s Cancer Chronicles”

Editor’s Note: If you can stomach reading this gut-wrenching story, you might like to read:

• Make It Personal!
• Clean the Litterbox

Stay safe. Train often.

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If you are a Fire/Rescue Chief, Commissioner, President, Fire Officer or in a leadership role of a Fire Department or Fire Company, you have the responsibility of ensuring firefighter safety.

With the holidays right around the corner, here’s a cool opportunity for your organization to provide something to your members, and support the work of the Safety, Health and Survival Section of the IAFC. By policy, the IAFC does not fund the section, the section must raise all of their own funds in order to operate.

This is not some huge request (especially during these tough budget times), as this is for your FD to consider $1.50 (each) for the purchase of a pocket “Firefighter Survival” 2010 planner for all of your members. That’s “chump change” — less than the cost of a large coffee. Aren’t they worth it?

Quite honestly, it’s a ”dirt cheap” risk management tool that will put some very specific FIREFIGHTER SURVIVAL messages in front of all of your members-everyday. You can also have up to five lines printed on the cover for your FD …and these will be delivered before Christmas.

Here is the info:

http://www.positivepromotions.com/product.asp?pn=itp10cf

http://www.iafcsafety.org/1256862796Calendar_Order_Form.pdf

It’s just $1.50 per member. Please consider it for your fire department, fire company, county or regional association or even for your firefighter related business, as a give-away for customers.

100% of the proceeds go strictly toward the operation and programs of www.IAFCSafety.org  in supporting FF safety, health and survival.

Special Thanks to my good friend BillyG for passing this along.

www.FireFighterCloseCalls.com

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Firefighters must start living the Life Safety Initiatives for us to see an impact on LODDs.

The following article is a reprint from the June-2009 edition of Fire-Rescue magazine. It is also a companion piece to my blog titled: Clean the Litterbox.

I recently attended a seminar on preparation for line-of-duty deaths and firefighter funerals. If you’ve ever read one of my blogs here or at FirefighterNation.com, you know that I have very strong feelings about firefighter deaths.

But, for the first time, the subject really hit home with me. While it’s important to plan that stuff, if we really think about it, doesn’t the need for proper funeral planning only further acknowledge our acceptance of failure in protecting our own from the risks we face? 

Too often we focus more time, energy and attention on those types of activities instead of the things we can do to prevent them. Firefighter safety, like fire prevention itself, is not glamorous. Whether it’s civilian or firefighter lives, it’s easier to take stock of those lost than those saved by implementing effective safety measures.

The 16 Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives (LSIs), available at www.everyonegoeshome.com, are our road map to improved safety practices.

A close review shows us that while several of the concepts must be addressed at a national level, many of the initiatives are personalized calls for effective risk management.

Own It

The first four LSIs  focus on increasing accountability for how we integrate risk management within incident management at every level within our organizations.

THE FIRST FOUR LIFE SAFETY INITIATIVES:

1. Define and advocate the need for a cultural change within the fire service relating to safety, incorporating leadership, management, supervision, accountability and personal responsibility.
2. Enhance the personal and organizational accountability for health and safety throughout the fire service.
3. Focus greater attention on the integration of risk management with incident management at all levels, including strategic, tactical and planning responsibilities.
4. All firefighters must be empowered to stop unsafe practices.

Note: For the complete list of the 16 Life Safety Initiatives,
go to www.everyonegoeshome.com/initiatives.html.

They address the need for a health and safety culture change within the fire service.

Our culture is built from our values, beliefs, mindset, attitudes, actions and behaviors. But I question whether the LSIs personalize the solutions enough for us to embrace them-or whether the deciding factor for real behavioral change will come from the wake-up call of a personal near miss or the sting of losing someone dear to us. What will be the catalyst for change for you, for me, for us?

The solution lies in how we apply these safety initiatives. Like anything else we do in the fire service, changing our culture, especially when it comes to safety, is challenging at best. It requires courage from the top down and the bottom up, simultaneously.

Personal responsibility is the key at every level of the fire service safety chain. It all starts with each of us. Management can market the safety concepts to us, but those messages are lost if we don’t make them our own.

Conduct a Safety Assessment

Changing our culture requires a personal commitment to safety at every level of the fire service. Management can market the safety concepts to us, but those messages are lost if we don’t live them in all of our actions, every day.

Like any other form of “advertising,” we need to surround ourselves with safety messages to constantly reinforce their meaning. Posters, postcards to your members, business cards, e-mails, videos and hands-on training are all ways to get the safety message across to your firefighters, subliminally or through “in your face” marketing techniques.

But are they enough?

To make the LSIs more than hollow rhetoric, we must pause and examine all of our practices and identify opportunities to improve the level of safety at which they are performed.

A great time to get started is during this year’s Fire/EMS Safety, Health and Survival Week, scheduled for June 14-20 (the event formerly known as the Firefighter Stand Down). But don’t stop there.

Self-assessment should be a continual process.

Completing a thorough safety analysis doesn’t require reams of forms, slide rules or a degree in rocket science. Whether we realize it or not, we hold safety briefings almost every time we get together, often around the kitchen table or sitting on the tailboard as we dissect the last run or the actions of another fire company. We just need to be honest about our own unsafe acts and support each other to correct them.

Initiative No. 4 tells us that firefighters must be empowered to stop unsafe acts. That empowerment doesn’t come just from leadership; it comes from each other. Once in a while we need to drop the tough exterior and allow each other to speak freely about what scares the stuffing out of us on the fireground.

It’s not enough to just remove the threat of retaliation for speaking out; real success will come when we actually reward those who create positive changes in our safety culture. A popular Homeland Security theme is: “If you see something, say something.” That should be our safety motto, too.

Some might argue that we’re attempting to soften, to sterilize the fire service with all this safety stuff. Nonsense. The ability for any firefighter to throw a figurative or real red flag at an incident scene is still a reactive but effective means of saving lives. That will never change.

Implementing the Initiatives

Once we’ve completed our safety assessment, we need to study the 16 LSIs as a complete organization, not just as part of a class a few firefighters attend and then attempt to disseminate across the team with varied results. There are so many tools and resources available, including a variety of Web sites and other sources, that there should be no excuse for not incorporating a different safety theme into every training session and every teachable moment.

Our attitude toward safety is the only thing that stands between “It hasn’t happened to us” and “It hasn’t happened to us yet.”

Armed with a plan (the 16 initiatives), a list of opportunities (safety assessment) and the knowledge to act (training), we can now go about the business of changing our safety culture. The best place to start is with the low-hanging fruit. Small victories add up quickly and build lasting momentum. Nothing breeds success like success itself.

Some examples:

• You don’t have a mandatory seat belt use policy? Google it and get one. E-mail me and I’ll send you one. Tweak it to be your own. Train on it. Implement it and after a month of 100 percent compliance, reward your firefighters and let them pick the next safety challenge to tackle.
• Still running hot to cold calls? Still bullying your way through intersections with a 20-ton piece of apparatus and an oversized air horn hoping that the sheer sound pressure will push oncoming traffic out of your path? Get a grip. Get a response and intersection policy in place. Not sure where to start? Here’s a real simple one that even I can remember: Stop, look, listen. Then proceed … slowly. Every time.
• And then there’s firefighter health and fitness. We’re at a higher risk for both heart disease and cancer. How long have we known that? Start with more thorough exams at your annual physicals. Why do we spend years specifying a single piece of fire apparatus and only minutes to choose our medical screeners? Educate your firefighters on how to avoid the risks. Educate their families on what to look for and you’ll never find stronger advocates for any of your safety programs. Is STS (Spare Tire Syndrome) slowing your firefighters down? Initiate a “Biggest Loser” contest like many firehouses have done, and reward your members for coercing their fellow firefighters into the competition. Pay by the pound and offer gift certificates for free fitness center memberships. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.

A Final Word

In this day and age, there’s no shortage of access to information, no lack of available training, no insurmountable barriers to our safety success-only attitudes and excuses.

It takes more imagination than money to understand and embrace the premise of the 16 Life Safety Initiatives. It takes more willingness than it does sheer will.

It just takes the courage to be safe.

Stay safe. Train often.

Download a reprint of “Make It Personal” from Fire-Rescue Magazine. ©2009 www.tigerschmittendorf.com

This article is a companion piece to my blog titled: Clean the Litterbox.

Tiger Schmittendorf is chairman of FASNY’s Recruitment and Retention Committee and serves the County of Erie Department of Emergency Services (Buffalo NY) as Deputy Fire Coordinator. He created a recruitment effort that doubled his own fire department’s membership and helped net 525+ new volunteers countywide. A frequent presenter on the subjects of leadership, incident management, safety, recruitment and retention, he is a Nationally Certified Fire Instructor and has been a firefighter since 1980. Visit his blog at www.tigerschmittendorf.com.

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Dig in.

“Early on in my fire service career, we responded to a report of a tractor-trailer rolled over on a nearby state highway. We arrived on scene and found a truck lying on its passenger side. The wheels were facing the roadway and the top of the cab was on the shoulder of the road. The truck driver was being treated as walking wounded. It seemed like a relatively benign accident.

As we approached the curb side we realized that this was no ordinary call. It turned out that the truck driver had a young female traveling with him. When the tractor trailer tumbled on its passenger side, the girl apparently fell half way out the window. Only her right arm was now visible outside the overturned cab, turned up at a ninety-degree angle towards us, her hand motionless.

She was buried alive and we were given reports that just prior to our arrival, her muffled screams could be heard from underneath the several feet of mud and snow that accumulated on the side of the road when the truck finally skidded to a stop.

Being the smallest and lightest of our crew, I was suspended by my ankles into the cab by two other firefighters. As I began digging feverishly with my bare hands in the muck that the eighteen-wheeler had plowed through, her cries for help became fainter and fainter, until they stopped all together.

You can imagine the outcome – and the emotions that came with it: frustration, anger, sadness – every extreme imaginable. I was in maybe 19 or 20 at the time and completely unprepared to deal with the personal side of tragedy. The whole episode lasted just a few minutes, but it was an experience I will never forget.”

Why do I share this story with you? Not to be a bragger, for there are no bragging rights to be had in recovering those who we could not save in time.

My goal is simply to stress to you the importance of telling stories, of sharing our experiences.

Very early on in their book titled: “Made to Stick,” brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath point to the fire service’s success in sharing stories as a means of sharing experiences, passing down critical information to their successors. The book is based on the premise of why some ideas survive while others die.

“Firefighters naturally swap stories after every fire, and by doing so they multiply their experience; after years of hearing stories, they have a richer, more complete mental catalog of critical situations they might confront during a fire and the appropriate responses to those situations,” they say in describing the sixth principle of their “stickiness” theory.

The Heath brothers are not firefighters. Chip is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford. Dan is a former researcher at Harvard. The book is about many businesses, including the business of delivering emergency services. But you don’t need to be a Stanford or Harvard graduate to figure out that they’re right.

It’s my opinion that the need for telling stories in the fire service has never been greater. We may be winning the battle of fire prevention but as our fire load goes down, so does our experience level – a double-edged sword.

The way I see it, there are essentially three ways of compensating for this downturn of experience.

First, we can prematurely promote personnel who are unprepared to progress. We know how well that works… Not! The outcome is not only predictable and unfair to those we put in this position; it can be deadly as well.

Secondly, increase both the quantity and quality of your training. Train more often and get the most realistic training that safety standards allow. This is paramount and cannot be overstated.

Lastly, learn from others.

But what’s required to accomplish that? We, the more experienced of our profession, need to be better and more frequent story tellers.

In recent conversations with a lot of firefighters, I ask them if this accurately describes their fire department: We have a stable cadre of firefighters with five years of experience and less, and a dwindling cache of firefighters with fifteen years of experience or more. Furthermore, we’re real lean in the five to fifteen years of experience range. Essentially, we lack depth, qualified bench strength in our organization.

I haven’t met anyone yet who hasn’t nodded their head in at least partial agreement.

Let’s first take a look at what transpires while we’re building off of our first five years in the fire service. Ideally, those next ten years are supposed to be the officer development phase. We’ve captured their attention, they’re getting the hang of things, starting to really contribute and they’re ready for more challenges; hopefully growing towards a position of increased responsibility and leadership.

Here’s part of the challenge. Their first five years might look nothing like our first five years in the fire service, thanks to the aforementioned decreasing fire load. It may take them ten or more years to gain the same level of real life firefighting experience that some of us saw when we entered this career twenty years ago or more.

If we match this same ten year niche against the 25-35 year old demographic I referred to in “From the X-Box to the Box Alarm,” we come up against another obstacle. In this time warp I affectionately call “the lost years,” most volunteer firefighters are simultaneously going through a time of significant personal and professional growth. Think about what traditionally happens during this period in a person’s life: marriage, careers, families, job advancement, home ownership, etc.

Furthermore, it’s my belief that this ten-year gap in experience directly correlates to a ten-year period where we were asleep at the switch in the fire service.

There was about a ten-year spell where we focused more on being professional and less on our people. Some of us even dropped the word “volunteer” from “volunteer fire department.” We forfeited the virtues of being volunteers in favor of being viewed as equals to our paid counterparts. Worse yet, we let our trusted position as the social epicenter of the community run out the end of the hose line.

We viewed story telling as boring bragging. We disregarded our senior firefighters. Our answer to retention was to increase our recruitment efforts. People became disposable. We didn’t value values. Our turnover rate skyrocketed until, like the stock market, the bubble burst.

What did that buy us? We invested heavily in everything that is useless without the people to staff it. We learned the hard way that you get what you pay for.

Every time a senior member of your department steps out of the line, retires or dies – we lose years and years of valuable experience through attrition. Years we may never regain. Years of experience you can’t put a price on.

The first thing I do in the leadership conversations I hold with firefighters around the country is to bring them to early consensus that 95% of the challenges we face are back at the firehouse, not on the fire scene.

Despite this revelation, we invest our time, energy, and yes, our money; in the exact opposite proportion. I have yet to find a fire department that invests as much as 1% of their net budget back into the one asset required to make every other resource work: their people.

What did that buy us? Apparatus we can’t staff, calls we can’t cover, and other functions of the fire department that are dysfunctional.

Here’s my call to action: If you are a chief, an officer, or a wannabe officer; I have two words for you – Dig in.

Dig in to your organizations and figure out what makes them tick. Break down your membership by age, years of experience, training level and skill sets. You might be shocked at what you find. Do a needs assessment. Then do a skills assessment of your people and match it against your needs assessment. Identify and address your gaps.

If you’re serious about the survival and success of your fire department, dig in and plan to be in the ranks for up to another ten years while the others catch up to your experience level. But don’t just hang around, don’t be “R.I.P. – Retired In Place.” Really contribute. Really lead.

Invest heavily in education, yours and theirs. Not just tactics and strategies but organizational management too. Read magazines like Fast Company and books like “Made to Stick,” Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and “Leadership” by Rudy Giuliani, to name a few.

Take notes. Talk to people who have had success in successful organizations. Learn from their experiences.

Truly train and nurture your replacements. Mentor, model and mold the future of your fire department. Motivate and cultivate.

As Hall of Fame Football Quarterback Joe Montana told me just the other day, “Let your work ethic be contagious, for your work ethic is what tells your teammates how much they can trust you.”

Become a great story teller, a trusted source. Share your knowledge and experience. Give back. Demonstrate a real desire to develop your officers. Become more engaged with your people than ever before. Be a real leader. Care.

Chip and Dan Heath finished their fire service analogy with, “Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation in the physical environment. Similarly, hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.”

Call me crazy, but it’s almost as if they’ve figured out our business. I just hope we can too.

I’ve told anyone that would listen that I think the next ten years are pivotal to the survival and success of the volunteer fire service as we know it today. Without smart investments in our people we’ll never see a return on any of our other investments. You have to be in it to win it.

The stakes are high. Will you lay your cards on the table to win – or will you fold?

Lastly, we need to face the reality that we can’t overcome all of the external forces around us, of which there are plenty. Nonetheless, there is hope. That hope is you. You don’t have to be an officer to be a leader. You can be the internal force for transforming your fire department into not just a surviving, but a thriving organization.

All you have to do is dig in.

Download Dig In.

[If you like "Dig In" - you might also like Mike Ward's "Just Enough Leadership” and my follow-up blog: Fortune Tellers.

Tiger Schmittendorf is chairman of FASNY’s Recruitment and Retention Committee and serves the County of Erie Department of Emergency Services (Buffalo NY) as Deputy Fire Coordinator. He created a recruitment effort that doubled his own fire department’s membership and helped net 525+ new volunteers countywide. A frequent presenter on the subjects of leadership, incident management, safety, recruitment and retention, he is a Nationally Certified Fire Instructor and has been a firefighter since 1980. Visit his blog at www.tigerschmittendorf.com.

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As I travel around the country talking with other firefighters, a commonly recurring theme of our chat is the future of the volunteer fire service.

The conversation always comes around to the topic of today’s firefighters and the next generation of firefighters. Some “more experienced” firefighters (notice I didn’t use the term older) share that they don’t understand the “kids” coming into the fire service today.

The veterans don’t think today’s recruits share the same values as those who are currently leading us. And they certainly don’t have the same appreciation for the traditions and discipline of the fire service. Community service is not in their blood as it is in ours. Or at least that’s their complaint.

The first question I ask is: Whose fault is that? Have we failed as parents, role models and mentors?

My second question is a more important challenge: Who better? Who better to re-instill the values of the fire service that have made it and America great? Who better to bring back the principles our communities need?

I then ask you: If not us, who?

“Reality Check: Understand them or not, like them or not – they are the future of the fire service. The reality is that there is no other generation from a parallel universe about to swoop down and save the volunteer fire service. They are it. Get over it. Get on with it.”

The fire service was built on the values of pride, honor, loyalty, trustworthiness, integrity and community service. Last time I checked, that’s exactly why the American public trusts nobody, no other profession more than they trust firefighters – nobody.

When I talk about the target audience for new recruits, I typically break it down like this:

1. 14-18 years olds: Explorers and Junior Firefighters – the future of the volunteer fire service. Figure out how to win and keep them and you will keep them forever.
2. 18-25 year olds: Let’s face it; the bull work of what we do is a young person’s job. This demographic has always been and will always be the backbone of the fire service.
3. 25-40 Years old: The lost years. Think about what traditionally happens during this period in a person’s life: marriage, careers, families, home ownership, etc. However, if we can snag them early enough, we just might be able to keep them clinging on as contributing members during this personal and professional growth phase.
4. 40+: This demo includes settled homeowners; their kids are growing to an age of independence; focused on giving back; perhaps even looking for an outlet – or just an excuse to get out of the house.

Depending on what or who you read, it’s estimated that the current generation, Generation Y, is at this moment between 14 and 27 years old.

Call them Gen Y; Millenials; WebGens; NextGens; Generation Whine; Baby Busters; Nexters; Echo Boomers or whatever you like.

Understand them or not, like them or not – they are the future of the fire service. The reality is that there is no other generation from a parallel universe about to swoop down and save the volunteer fire service. They are it. Get over it. Get on with it.

According to Dr. Renee Downey-Hart’s matrix of generation gaps, never before have four generations been in the workplace at the same time. From traditionalists born after the turn of the century, to Baby Boomers and Generation X, and now Gen Y – these four generations create both challenges and opportunities for organizations looking to recruit and retain them.

Dr. Downey-Hart’s presentation emphasizes the importance of building “bench strength” as many Traditionalists and Baby Boomers, and even some Gen Xers are about to step out of the workplace.

Some could argue that their pending retirements are an opportunity for them to get involved in volunteering. Realistically though, they’re probably not going to be the interior firefighters we need to adequately staff our apparatus. That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty for them to do on and behind the scene.

Thus, we need to embrace Gen Yers as our future. To understand them we need to get to know them better. To know them, we need to surround ourselves with them.

Here’s what I understand of them from my limited research with people a lot smarter than I am (which doesn’t take much.)

They are often characterized as a self-entitled bunch of slackers who don’t want to pay their dues – not exactly the model we’ve promoted in the fire service for the last couple of hundred years.

I refer to them as the I-Generation or the Jackass Generation. “I” is for Individual because they often ask “What’s in it for me.” But they’re also independent thinkers who have been taught to collaborate and work in teams (Hey, maybe we could learn something from these punks.)

I use the term Jackass Generation only because of the TV show they watch with the title of the same name. Their risk-taker mentality is proliferated by modern media. We just need to figure out how to harness their youthful energy and teach them the living benefits of calculated risk management – and the “death benefits” associated with miscalculating those risks.

They are also an untapped powerhouse of potential. They are future oriented, tech savvy, multi-tasking young adults who are ready to contribute NOW! Their apparent restlessness is tempered with their ability to remain optimistic in difficult times, a trait that could come in handy given our current financial climate.

They are the most socially engaged generation since the 1960s. Don’t think so? Did you happen to pay attention to how President Obama got elected? Still don’t think so? Count up all the friends you have and then ask a GenYer how many friends they have on Facebook or MySpace. Forget it, save yourself the trouble and embarassment.

What troubles those of us who used to be card-carrying members of the 18-25 year old demographic (my card expired) is that they don’t engage with society the way we do. We do it face-to-face, by calling on the phone or by “popping in” on each other.

They engage themselves on-line. They can tap out a message on their cell phones faster than you can change the station with your TV remote.

Looking for the fountain of youth for your fire department? Try Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. That’s where you’ll find today’s recruits. They know more about what their friends are doing than two cops on an overnight stake-out. They are always in touch, always communicating — just not the way we’re accustomed to or comfortable with. Nonetheless, if they’re not coming to us, we need to go to where they are to get their attention.

I’m reading a book titled “Managing Generation Y” by Dr. Carolyn A. Martin and Bruce Tulgan. The book was written eight years ago but its observations still ring true today. They refer to GenYers as the most education focused generation in history, leading a new wave of volunteerism.

Does anyone else smell opportunity? They embrace socio-economic, environmental and community problems. Our challenge is to help them understand why ours is a cause worth taking up.

So how do we get them away from the X-Box long enough to respond to the box alarm? Lucky for us, Dr. Downey-Hart states that they highly value meaningful development opportunities and they’re full of fresh insight on how best to reach their peers. This might be tough to swallow, but they have the answers. Ask them how to best recruit each other and their friends.

I’m experimenting with that concept right now as part of a $500k SAFER grant project to recruit and retain volunteer firefighters. Acknowledging very early on that “we’re too old” and the need to surround ourselves with GenYers, we’ve created a team of 20 people under the age of 30 to help chart the future of the fire service in our county. This focus group of firefighters will provide us with the insight we need to choose the right messaging, media and mediums to reach their peers. They’re in charge and we’re putting our trust and faith in them.

Dr. Downey-Hart tells us the good news is that they trust people over 30 and welcome the chance to partner with older, more experienced colleagues and bosses (mentors) and intergenerational teamwork carries particular promise in tough times. Combining the tech savvy and fresh insight of Generation Y with the experience and perspective of the older generations can be especially fruitful.

They are ripe for the picking. Behind their “I don’t appear to care” attitude, they are actually starved for strong leadership, mentors and role models. A recent study by Deloitte Consultants suggests that we redesign our rewards systems to encourage the rapid development of GenY talent and at the same time create new incentives for seasoned veterans to act as mentors to these young adults.

Frankly, I don’t claim to fully understand them. And honestly, there are days when I’m not sure I want to, despite “owning” two of them myself. (Kathleen is 20 and Alex is 16). But even I can figure out that we need to embrace them as the future of the fire service.

I’ve said before that the survival and success of the volunteer fire service depends on our ability to create more opportunities – for more people – to volunteer less time.

GenYers have lots of time on their hands if we offer them the right opportunities to quench their thirst for satisfying training and teamwork. What we don’t have is a lot of time for us to figure out what makes them tick.

We know what the challenge is. The only remaining question is: What are you going to do about it?

Here’s a couple of videos to help you figure them out:

A vision of K-12 Students today

A vision of students today

And this one, especially for instructors:  Pay Attention!

Seems this is a popular topic. Here’s a link to a similar article written by Brian Ward: Talkin’ bout my generation

Download the Reprint of: From X-Box to the Box Alarm

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For a comprehensive offering of R&R resources, visit my blog at www.tigerschmittendorf.com. Click or call if you’re looking for ideas or want to volunteer your own. I’d love to hear your experiences.

Let me know how I can help.

Until next time… “Stay safe. Train often.”

Editor’s Note: Recruitment slogans, programs or themes described herein may be the copyrighted intellectual property of the author or other parties. Please contact the author before reprinting or using such content.

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Tiger Schmittendorf is chairman of FASNY’s Recruitment and Retention Committee and serves the County of Erie Department of Emergency Services (Buffalo NY) as Deputy Fire Coordinator. He created a recruitment effort that doubled his own fire department’s membership and helped net 525+ new volunteers countywide. He is a Nationally Certified Fire Instructor and has been a firefighter since 1980. Visit his blog at www.tigerschmittendorf.com.

Tiger Schmittendorf will join Ret. Phoenix Chief Alan Brunacini and J. Gordon Routely in a fire service roundtable discussion at the FASNY Convention in Niagara Falls, NY on Thursday-August 20, 2009.

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My family is motivation for much of what I do in the fire service. Alex, Laurie and Kathleen (l-r)

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Last fall I wrote about doing the right thing by getting involved in an organization of firefighters known as Hancock Hope, formed for the sole purpose of helping other firefighters and fire departments in need.

I talked about the struggles of a very rural volunteer fire department in Oneida, Kentucky and of the goodwill of the Newstead NY Volunteer Fire Company who donated a used fire engine to them. It was a team effort with a lot of help of some more good folks from the First Baptist Church in Vandalia, Ohio.

That donated 1986 fire engine has served them well for the past six months. One of the church members, Michael Whitby – a young, energetic EMT himself; took it upon himself to do the right thing again and nominated Oneida FD in a contest to win a brand new fire engine from E-One Fire Apparatus. Michael made a compelling argument as to why this small, impoverished fire company - so much that E-One has chosen Oneida as one of seven finalists.

Here’s where you come in. To move Oneida from the “Final Seven” to the winners circle requires that you – and everyone you know – act now and go to E-One’s web site to vote for Oneida’s story as the best story.

To vote for Oneida’s story, click: http://www.e-one.com/news/eone-stories/vote-for-the-best-story.htm?id=651. (NOTE: I had to put my browser in full screen mode to see the vote button at the bottom of the page.)

IMPORTANT: To confirm your vote, you must reply to an e-mail that E-One will send you after you’ve cast your ballot.

Voting ends at 1:00 p.m. on April 24th and the winner will be announced at 3:00 p.m. on the FDIC show floor in E-ONE’s booth – #9104 Lucas Oil Stadium.

I’ll be there. The folks from Oneida will be there. I hope you will be there for them then, and now by casting your vote.

It doesn’t cost you anything but a few moments of your time. Your vote could mean a world of difference to a small fire department with a big heart. Now it’s your turn to “Do the Right Thing.”

Read the Original Article: http://tigerschmittendorf.com/2008/11/do-the-right-thing/

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Continental Flight 3407 crashed into a home in Clarence Center around 10:20pm on Thursday-February 12, 2009 - killing 50 people and changing the lives of thousands more, including mine.

I responded in the first wave of emergency services personnel sent to help restore order to the chaos that the crash created.

Frankly, I’m not ready to write about this experience at length. Not because I’m deeply disturbed by what I saw (how can you not be?), but because I don’t want what I write to be about me, despite my being intimately involved.

I just didn’t want to go any longer without conveying my deep sense of pride, admiration and gratitude to the men and women and the families of the Clarence Center Volunteer Fire Company.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been prouder of a group of people than I am of Clarence Center and all their mutual aid partners right now.

As Deputy Fire Coordinator for Erie County and as part of the Unified Command team in the EOC, I am not in the least surprised by their actions, their professionalism, their respect and their caring for all those affected. I would expect nothing else.

I am simply in awe.

I’ve known all along that we have some of the greatest firefighters right here in Erie County. Chief Dave Case and his entire team have just proven it to the rest of the world.

I was there with them from the onset and we will be together until the end of this operation and beyond. I am proud and honored to stand amongst them and to call them my friends.

I thank them for their service.

Stay tuned here for more insights into the heroic efforts of these firefighters and first responders.

2/24/09 – Chief Case Goes to Washington.

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Buffalo News Photo of 16-year old Amanda Hansen whose life was snuffed out by Carbon Monoxide - the silent killer

This morning’s Buffalo News headline featured the photo of a bright, beautiful 16-year old girl with a promising future, her life snuffed out by a silent killer yesterday.

Carbon Monoxide (CO) is colorless and odorless. It strikes with symptoms that could easily be mistaken for the flu. Small doses accumulated over time can be as dangerous as a prolonged exposure. Left undetected, there is potential for harm and death in almost every household in America.

Carbon Monoxide is a normal by-product of combustion. Natural gas fired appliances (stoves, boilers, hot water tanks, furnaces, etc.) give off carbon monoxide. So do wood burning stoves and fireplaces. However, under normal operating conditions and with sufficient ventilation, the CO does not accummulate to levels that can be dangerous to your health.

It’s when there is insufficient ventilation, incomplete combustion or a lopsided air to fuel mixture that problems occur. Such was the case with the hot water boiler that is believed to be responsible for Amanda Hansen’s death as she slept on a basement floor with her best friend and fellow swim team mate.

There are lots of steps to take in preventing its build-up, but the most important safety tool is a Carbon Monxide detector.

They’re not cheap but they are affordable, depending on the value you put on your life or that of your family. And, they are readily available at your local hardware store and even in many supermarkets, so there’s really no excuse for not having one.

Every house needs at least one and the best place to install them is closest to a potential source of CO build-up (gas or wood burning appliances) AND closest to where you’ll hear them.  The more the better. They’re designed to alert you long before readings reach deadly levels.

I’ve listed some resources that will help you understand what CO is and tell you lots of ways you can keep safe from Carbon Monoxide poisoning. But, all of this information is useless without a CO detector installed in your home.

So, I’m asking you this one favor, actually I’m begging you: Please CO-operate by purchasing a CO detector for your home today. Don’t wait. Don’t put it off until tomorrow, for as this most recent tragedy teaches us, tomorrow could be too late.

It’s a matter of life and death.

Buffalo News Article: http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/552790.html

Carbon Monoxide Safety Information -

EPA – http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/coftsht.html

US Fire Administration – http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/citizens/all_citizens/co/index.shtm

CDC – http://www.cdc.gov/co/

Home Safety Council – http://www.homesafetycouncil.org/safety_guide/sg_co_w001.aspx

Home Safe – http://www.homesafe.com/coalert/

Links to other Fire & Life Safety Sites – http://www.erie.gov/fire

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Friendship NY Firefighter Tom Torpey is flanked by his mom Sissy and wife Jessica at the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo NY

I recently responded to a post on FirefighterNation.com from my friend Adam Box, who shared the dilemma he was experiencing with his significant other:

Tomorrow, I will be attending the funeral of Elizabeth Fire Department Acting Captain Gary Stephens. This will be my second (unfortunately I doubt it will be my last) time attending a LODD funeral.

I was in a bit of a bad mood (about something unrelated) and was talking to my girlfriend and mentioned I would be attending the funeral. She asked me why, since funerals put me in a bad mood, I would go to another funeral that I didn’t have to go. I know I need to go.

My question, I suppose, is how do I explain to someone outside of the fire service the brotherhood that we all share and why I would feel compelled to go to a funeral of a man I’ve never met?

I read his question with great interest because I’ve been in his shoes before. I’ve tried to explain this “thing” that we share. I’m not sure I’m very good at it. Here was my response:

Adam -

You’ve answered your own question. The fact that you feel compelled to go to a funeral of a man you’ve never met – is the definition of brotherhood.

The answer to why you feel compelled to go – is because he would do the same for you.

That’s the real brotherhood of the fire service in its rawest and most public form.

I readily admit that it’s difficult to explain and can even be quite intimidating to those who “don’t drink from the same cup,” but as my good friend Art Goodrich said: If she doesn’t get it, she probably doesn’t get you.

Two words: Good Luck.

That very same day, I too attended the funeral of a firefighter from a neighboring county who died in the line of duty.  I never met the man, but you see, I didn’t need to. I know plenty just like him.

His brother firefighters did a great job in giving due honors to Corfu/East Pembroke Captain Norm Koch. I was proud to stand amongst my brothers in Genesee County. Here’s the link to the newspaper article detailing their efforts: http://thedailynewsonline.com/articles/2009/01/05/news/5025653.txt

Still in my Class-A uniform, I decided to go to the Erie County Medical Center to visit Friendship NY Firefighter Tom Torpey. ECMC is the trauma center where Tom had been since a brick wall collapsed unexpectedly on him and three of his brother firefighters from Friendship and Cuba at a commercial structure fire on December 22, 2008.

Tom’s a hard-working young man, a dedicated volunter, all of 29 years of age; and a father figure to five children with his wife Jessica. In what should be the prime of his life, those bricks crushed his body, but certainly not his spirit. He’s a fighter.

I went to his room, but he wasn’t there. Just a few days out of the ICU, and with the help of his wife and a fellow Friendship Firefighter, Tom was roaming the halls in a wheelchair, making friends and influencing people.

He’s completely aware of what happened that fateful Sunday morning. Feeling blessed that the outcome wasn’t worse, Tom keeps himself busy sharing his positive attitude with anyone who passes him in the hall. Not letting it keep him down, he’s already taking baby steps with the aid of a walker. But he’s far from out of the woods.

It’s expected that he’ll need close medical attention for at least another month or more, whether in the trauma center or after being moved to a rehab center closer to home, which is more than 80 miles away from the hospital in Buffalo.

For now, their lodging and transportation needs are being met through the graciousness of our local Ronald McDonald House in Buffalo, but there may be gaps where they need our help. Jessica is starting to go home on the weekends to take care of the kids and because of the distance, Tom will be left alone at times.

In just our brief encounter, I can tell that Tom Torpey is a self-motivated person. And to keep him motivated and in good spirits, everyone’s suggesting that he gets lots of cards, patches and visits from his brother and sister firefighters. See what you can do about that.

Send cards and well wishes to:

Friendship Fire Department
P.O. Box 503 – Friendship NY 14739

A benefit is planned for the four firefighters on Saturday-February 28, 2009 from 1-6pm at the Friendship Fire Department. A fund has been established by the Cuba and Friendship Fire Departments to assist the firefighters and their families with expenses.

You can visit the Cuba Fire Department’s web site: www.cfdsmokeeaters.com for frequent updates on the injured firefighters and fundraising efforts. Please send checks or money orders to:

Collapsed FireFighter Fund
c/o FASNY FEDERAL CREDIT UNION
107 WASHINGTON AVE.
ALBANY NEW YORK 12210

Before I left the hospital, Tom’s fellow firefighter thanked me for stopping by. As I shook his hand, I sensed that he was a little taken back by my visit, maybe wondering why I just appeared at the hospital, unannounced.

You see, I had never met Tom Torpey, but I didn’t need to. I know plenty just like him.

I thought to myself, “Because he would do the same for me.”

That’s why.

This blog is also published at YourHub.

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URLs in this post:
[1] Image: http://tigerschmittendorf.com/files/2009/01/dscf4362.jpg
[2] FirefighterNation.com: http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/topics/ff-funerals
[3] Adam Box: http://www.firefighternation.com/profile/Pokey559
[4] Gary Stephens: http://firefighterclosecalls.com/fullstory.php?77841
[5] Art Goodrich: http://www.chiefreasonart.com
[6] Genesee County: http://www.genfirewire.com
[7] http://thedailynewsonline.com/articles/2009/01/05/news/5025653.txt: http://thedailynewsonline.com/articles/2009/01/05/news/5025653.txt
[8] collapsed : http://www.buffalonews.com/437/story/530171.html
[9] Ronald McDonald House: http://www.rmhbuffalo.org/
[10] www.cfdsmokeeaters.com: http://www.cfdsmokeeaters.com

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