In July of 2014, I had enough! I couldn’t go on. I was so confused not knowing what was going on in my life − why was I like this? I had to stop myself from hurting my family. I felt I needed to eliminate myself; they would be better off with me not hurting […]

Incident Management in the Fast Lane: Reducing Responder Road Rage! “From our perspective, we considered it a minor accident: two passenger cars, a few bumps and bruises but no serious injuries – to either driver or their vehicles. However, the way the vehicles were positioned in the roadway and the amount of clean-up that would […]

For me and I’m sure many others, February 12, 2009 was one of those moments in your life where you’ll always say “I remember exactly where I was, what I was doing … at the moment I heard of the crash.” My wife Laurie and I have always had an unwritten rule that we don’t […]

I make no apologies if my readers have grown tired of my semi-annual tribute piece to a man who meant more than a mentor to me, as this year is even more special to me, and even more important than the previous five. Each time I've written about how Bob Newell impacted my life and […]

I am often reluctant to write about commercial business ventures in my blogs and other platforms as I am sensitive to the trusted relationship between a writer and their readers, and leary about self-promotion. Thus I have delayed writing this post for quite some time. It wasn’t until I came to the realization that this […]

Despite the fact that I wrote this piece for Fire-Rescue Magazine last year, I’m pretty sure its content is still relevant as we ponder recent and not so recent events during Fire/EMS Safety, Health and Survival Week http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/topics/usfa-reminds-you-that…. As I stated in comments to another blog by John Mitchell (www.firedaily.com) titled: “The Charleston 43” (http://www.firefighternation.com/profiles/blogs/the-charleston-43) […]

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 […]

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

This blog is a companion piece to my article titled “Make it Personal” featured in the June edition of Fire-Rescue Magazine. I was reading a not so tongue-in-cheek blog onFirefighterNation.com written by my good friend Art Goodrich titled: Ordering From the Risk Menu and it reminded me of a Saturday I spent recently, full of fire […]