As firefighters, we all know what triage is. Simply put, it is the sorting out of patients so the outcome is the greatest good for the many.

I am a huge fan of what the internet and social media has done for the fire service. Speaking for myself it has allowed me to create this Blog, create the podcast, and the Firefighting Today Weekly Roundtables, and Training on Demand among other things.

My point is that the downside of social media is how quickly and how fast things are flying at us. My informational triage sort of looks like these four categories: Facts, Opinions, Both of these, neither of these. Lets take a look. This triage can be used for social media discussions, sitting around the firehouse table, or even at organizational meetings.

Facts

Facts are just that. They are statements that are true with out much dispute. There will always be people who disagree with facts but facts will usually stand on themselves. The sky is above us and the ground is below us. Facts. Now someone will say, what if I am hanging upside down or something. One of the good and bad things of the fire service is the phrase “What if?” It is really good on the fireground and during size-up and preplanning but in discussions it is most likely used to “argue” a point. If I present enough “What ifs” I can persuade you and prove my point.

Opinions

The old phrase is that everyone has one. We are very possessive and righteous about our own opinions and it clouds us from actually seeing the facts in some cases. Yours and my opinions, while they may be string beliefs don’t necessarily have to be factual. Most of the social media discussions and current events are based upon differences of opinions. This sometimes has value if it remains constructive but can be very destructive and devise it if remains unchecked.

Both of These

There are times where facts and opinions can coincide but it many cases they are not crystal clear. Many good debates use a blur and a mixture of facts and opinions to prove their point. We need to “diagnose” a little further when we triage these.

Neither of these

Generally this situation occurs with someone very uninformed or they are they result of a deliberate action because the person doesn’t know or care about the facts and just makes statements that can’t be verified or backed up. This can be deliberate misinformation to cause some desired result or just a lack of caring. I have seen both.

In a triage system, facts should be seen as GREEN. Easy to handle, require very little of our time and effort and will probably turn out OK.

Opinions can be seen as YELLOW. They should be measured and monitored and the outcome still is not certain.

Both of These are RED. They require a lot of effort and they should be diagnosed quickly because they have multiple issues and the outcome could be terrible.

Neither of These is a BLACK tag and maybe the best thing we can do is walk away and not expend any resources if our intention is to do the most good for the many.

Think about the information triage system before you engage next time.

Incidentally, in case you were wondering……This is only my opinion. ( Insert YELLOW tag here.

I would love to take credit for this quote but it was given to me by an older crusty Deputy Fire Chief From Massachusetts, so I give Jack all the credit for this one.

What does it mean?

I watched a social media thread the other day, and I am mad that I did not join in because I agreed with much of it. It had to do with instructors selling their souls and trying to be all things to all people.

There is a capitalistic side to fire service training these days and I am not sure it is a becoming trait. Now before anyone goes off the rails, I do get paid for about 20% of what I provide. You see I do  not charge for most stuff at all. I barely cover expenses. You see none of that makes me smart, but it does mean I just want to help and give back.

I hope that we all take a breath and just be genuine in what we are sharing. be sure to cite references when re-sharing others writings and classes. We now have a reached a point where we have people teaching, writing and lecturing about skills they have never performed.

I am not sure this helps any of us in the service, and it might be harmful to a young impressionable firefighter who does not know how to sort or how to begin vetting the information they are reading.

The moral of the story is just try to be a “good fireman”. You should review if that is your goal or is it to collect money to become a famous fire service professional. Do believe everything on your resume….I know the author!

Join the panel on Sunday July 30, 2017 at 8:00 PM Eastern time. Watch us live on petelamb.com, firefightingtoday.com, or live on YOUTUBE.

If you watch live on YOUTUBE you can use the Live Chat to interact with the panel. We also monitor the twitter feed @petelamb to also interact.

If you miss the live show the video can be found later here or on firefightingtoday.com

How come what I was trained to do, didn’t work?

I became a basic EMT in 1975. This is a story of my first loss.

When you are a young rookie, you hate to lose. Some things never change, but when you are young and inexperienced it leaves a mark.

When you first come out of EMT school, you think that you can cure most if not all of the ills of the world. Also, as gruesome as it might seem you sort of wait for something bad to happen to really test your skills. I guess it is sort of like the military that way, you don’t want to have a war, but it is nice to see all of this training in action so you know it works.

Paul & Dennis were twins. Both of them served as volunteer firefighters when they were ages 16 through 18 and had first aid training. Paul and Dennis went to school with my sister. You know, it’s sort of funny that in small villages or towns, there is always some connection to your own family or back to the department somehow. I think that is something that folks in large municipal fire departments miss, that direct connection to the community.

None of what Paul and Dennis did as volunteers, or the fact that they went to school with my sister mattered now, but those thought went through my mind somewhere while I was repeatedly counting out loud,….One, one thousand, two, one thousand, three on thousand…. Paul was 29 years old, and was lying lifeless on the floor. We found him sitting upright, with the telephone still in his hand, from his mom’s answering service business. My partner on this particular day, Dave,  lived three doors away and was a good friend of Paul’s about a couple of years younger. As I breathed into his lungs, by sealing my mouth over his, Dave continued to pump on his chest. I asked for an airway to put in, because we were getting air in, but his color was getting worse, from gray to blue from lack of oxygen. Paul’s elderly and handicapped mother was hysterical and  that made it very difficult to work on him. One one thousand, two one thousand,….breathe dammit!

Paul was a very large boy and probably weighed over 270 pounds so moving him out was a real chore. We continued CPR, we ventilated with a bag valve mask with oxygen, but his color only got worse and worse. When we arrived at the hospital, we explained all that we did, and they worked on him a little and then the doctor said to stop.

Stop! What the hell do you mean stop! he is only 29 years old! C’mon, lets keep going I said to Dave. The nurse had us stop and took us into the small side room where the EMTs made their report. Dave and I made eye contact, and we both started to become emotional.

Dave had lost a friend, I had my very first loss. I kept reviewing it all in my mind, what had I done wrong? I did exactly what I thought was right and what I had been taught. Just then the doctor came in, and spoke to us. It seems that Paul had an aortic aneurysm, a sort of a bubble on the main artery leaving his heart. This aneurysm ruptured suddenly and he never felt anything, and all we did , by doing CPR was to fill his chest cavity with blood.

How come nobody told me about that during EMT class? Sure we learned about heart attacks, and anatomy, and even about aneurysms, but I was supposed to be able to fix that, after all he was only 29.

I still have that mark, that was left on me so many years ago.

I know, I know when a firefighter says what gear are you in, you are thinking Globe, Morning Pride, Janesville, FireDex or many others. What I am really talking about is what speed are you operating or functioning at?

Park

You are a member of your department that doesn’t move. You just exist. You hang back at trainings, use all of you sick time, and seem to always have trouble crossing the threshold. If you Park in the wrong place you can just be an obstruction! Members that are parked are really difficult to move, and they really don’t help any of us get to where we want to go.

Reverse

If you are in Reverse you are generally looking in your rearview mirror all the time. You don’t really care where we are going, you only care where we have been, and the good old days, and the way we used to do it. You spend a great deal of your time taking the crew further away from where the organization wants to go while they move forward.

Neutral

If you are in Neutral you are easily influenced meaning you can go either forward or reverse and you are easily moved with just a little push. This might be a big part of your organization and it is the job of the officer and the rest of the crew, to make sure that you are moved in the right direction. The problem with neutral is that while you are not hurting the mission you are probably not going forward. These folks in neutral also have to be monitored, because after some forward progress, they will easily slip if not properly chocked!

Drive

If you are in Drive you are trying to move the organization forward. You are helping others and can probably take passengers (other crew members) along with you for the ride! You are fully engaged and participate in all activities, training, house duties and you are awesome on the fireground as well. This analogy is the only time I am in favor of everyone driving, and I will even accept backseat drivers too!

LOW

If you are in Low I am Ok with that also. You might be a senior man that is cautiously moving forward but at a slower pace. You might have travelled this road before and you know it can be uncertain about the terrain. You want to move, but have good traction, good torque, and while a little slower you are almost guaranteed to finish the journey. In addition if you are careening down a hill of uncertainty at a high speed, being in Low can slow you down and make sure you descend slowly and safely. These members can be a tremendous asset to the organization and eventually they will probably pick up the pace and shift gears into Drive.

So as you read this you were probably naming the members and what gear they were in. We all have them.

If you are an officer, figure out your role, are you the navigator? Are you the mechanic? Are you the tour guide? …..Oh, and by the way what gear are you in as the officer?

Whether you want to or not at some point in your career you will be ordered out of a dangerous building. If you are an officer you may be the one giving that order. We give out recruits some basic training about this tiopic but should we be saying just a little bit more?

Each agency and jurisdiction has it’s own procedure for how the evacuation is initiated. Often it is an order over the radio followed by a sequence of blasts from airhorns or sirens on apparatus. The notification is important but what happens after that really matters.

After the notification to withdraw has been made the first action is that all companies shall acknowledge receipt of the message. “Engine 2, second floor, received, leaving the building”. (Some of you might be familiar that in The Hackensack Ford Fire, the order to evacuate was given, but never acknowledged.)

What do you tell your people to do? Take the lines? Take your tools? Does everyone leave at exactly the same time? here are my brief thoughts.

I am never a fan of leaving tools. You carried them because you need them, and you may need them when evacuating.

We have all ben taught to follow a hose line out in difficult situations. My initial thought is that you may leave hosel ines in place because it might take too much time to back them out. There could be a delay that is unacceptable. However, if the evacuation is called because of extending fire, there may be a time when you need to take the hose line with you to fight your way out.

Emergency evacuations should be responded to in haste and with purpose but not panic or confusion. There should be some thought given and an awareness of where companies are operating.

If you are a crew on the first floor you may be able to get out quickly and could be the first crew out. My suggestion is get to a doorway, but insure the safety of the crews that might be exiting from upper floors if they are using stairs and not ladders. Do not delay but if you have a hose line you may need it to protect those stairs and get that crew down.

I am not suggesting delay in any way here but I am saying at this most critical time, critical thinking might be in order.

Have this discussion with your crew at the kitchen table or on training night. The time to train and discuss this is now, not when the air horns are sounding.

We are Americans. We Are Firefighters.

Have a great day. be Safe. Enjoy your family and friends.

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Watch Out !! 

This is great advice for firefighters. This could be during a response while driving, it could be operating exterior at a collapse situation, it could be interior for signs of hostile fire conditions.

But today I am talking about non fire situations. We as fire service prfessionals should be like the wise old owl with their head on a swivel. We should be watching many, many things.

Look around at our crew. Are we the best we can be? Does someone appear to be “off” suffering from personal problems or issues?

Look around for positive actions from the superiors. Watch out and catch your troops doing something right.

Watch out for the political climate in your community. Watch out for the slipping of public support.

Watch out for each and every learning situation and teachable moments. Sometimes these maybe routine things in every day life that you could take a lesson and apply it to your situation in the fire service. I have made teachable moments from eating in a restaurant, to a song playing on the radio. Sometimes even the most routine or mundane things can trigger a thought that makes a difference.

Watch out for the ability to improve yourself.

Look in the mirror often. Not to promote your ego or self importance but take the time for honest self reflection.

Remember when someone yells watch out, you should duck, run, throw water, or do something! You see it is natural to take some action. Thensame goes in a non emergency situation. Ifnyounsee something, DO SOMETHING! Take an action always, but think first.

Think about these things, and maybe the next time someone yells Watch Out!, you will already have them beat because your have been watching all along!

Edited with BlogPad Pro

This week in the Podcast we spoke of three historical fires. I cannot stress the importance of reviewing these fires in detail with our troops. I have had a passion for studying these LODD incidents for years. There are many instructors that share this passion for case history review but in my opinion, not enough. I would be remiss if I did not give a shout out to Chief Joe Pronesti from Elyria OH because he does as well if not better than most. In fact he just did a piece in detail on these same three fires for Fire Engineering. He included diagrams and details.

There is a famous phrase that says that if we do not study history then we are doomed to repeat it. As an older member we take for granted the fires we studied but there are generations of new folks that might not know what happened in Hackensack, Bricelyn Street, the HappyLand Social Club or many other catastrophic fires that killed multiple civilians or firefighters.

Don’t mistake us all LODDs are important but multiples should be reviewed. They all should be reviewed.

I know you might know the story, but the action key is when and how did you share it with others?

There is much talk about fireground communication in relation to fireground emergencies and LODD.

As an experienced incident commander i have come to realize that all communication, does not have anything to do with radios.

I am am a firm believer that every firefighter should have a radio, but only half of them should get a battery!! I am joking of corse, but i think any of you might get the satire here. Not everything that is said in fireground audio is meaningful.

So what is non verbal fireground communication?

Sending a crew to floor 2 of a 2 1/2 story wood and telling them the fire is in an upstairs bedroom, then several minutes later you hear glass crash, you see steam and white smoke, and you see a fog pattern ventilating on side D (delta), that is communication. The crew made the top of the stairs, turned right, and got water on the fire, it is knocked down and the attack crew is ventilating after fire control. A radio message would be great, but an experienced incident commander should know and understand what it means.

For some reason the second due ladder cannot get a position on side A and has no access to side C, but suddenly 3 firefighters come down the street with a 35′ and or a 24′ or 28 ‘ and some tools and reports to you on the A (alpha side). That certainly is communication and speaks to the company charachter and the officer credibility.

As IC you assign a RIT and they report to you with no tools, PPE not on properly, and no ancillary equipment. That is communication.

As an IC you issue orders for an interior attack, and nothing is getting better and smoke and heat signatures are getting worse. That also is communication.

My point with these simple examples is that a fireground IC must be fully engaged and not distracted and must be attentive to all that they see, hear, and observe.

Communication has a lot more to do than radios!

Edited with BlogPad Pro