Ihave learned a lot over the past 30 years. One of the hardest pills to swallow or the toughest lesson I learned is that things don’t come wrapped in nice convenient packages in our profession. In the world of physics, for example, gases always flow from areas of higher pressure to areas of lower pressure.
When I first came on the job and started trying to “figure” things out, I soon learned firefighting rarely allows for the use of the words “never” and “always.” When you first come to the job, you are told that life safety is our first priority. In that case, a two-month firefighter might think that “if life safety is always our first priority, then we should always search a building first to ensure that everyone is out of the building.” When was the last time you went to a fire and pulling an attack line wasn’t the first action taken? That is “almost always” the way we operate. But if that’s the case, where does this life safety thing fit in? I think I know the answer, but, as moderator, I’ll hold off commenting and see what you think. (Here’s a hint: There’s more than one way to skin a cat.)
-John “Skip” Coleman, deputy chief of fire prevention, Toledo (OH) Department of Fire and Rescue, is author of Incident Management for the Street-Smart Fire Officer (Fire Engineering, 1997) and Managing Major Fires (Fire Engineering, 2000), a technical editor of Fire Engineering, and a member of the FDIC Educational Advisory Board.
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