Dennis Smith.com- A Tribute to Firefighters' Survival

Dennis Smith My Published Works   Smith is the author of 14 books. His latest is “San Francisco is Burning – The Untold Story of the 1906 Earthquake and Fires"

A Tribute to Firefighters Survival Delivered by Dennis Smith IAFF 2005 John Redmond Fund Symposium.   Here we are, shoulder to shoulder on this beautiful, other worldly island - remember, it is purely a volcano - a day, certainly, to remember. Indeed, to remember this day will be to remember all days in our past that are framed with a concern for our brother and sister firefighters. It is the past that brings me here, a not so happy past of too many firefighter fatalities. And, I hope that when you remember this day, it will remind you also of a time when you - who certainly know more than anyone the tragedy of the death of a firefighter - found a way see more clearly, perhaps for the first time, your own future rising on the horizon of daybreak.  It would be a great honor for any person to be asked to come here to address this particular gathering of people on this particular day, but for me it is an especially distinctive honor, for although I have had some publishing success, and although my department made me an honorary deputy chief when I retired, I still feel that my greatest success is as a backstep firefighter, someone no different from all the firefighters you know, someone who is more proud to be part of a large group of line firefighters rather than a smaller group of distinguished leaders.  And what is particularly wonderful about the IAFF is that you have great leaders, and I know many of them. We are a group that needs help and direction in addition to being as family and a union. Togetherness has always been our byword. We are communal in our living, and we are communal in our shared risks. We share everything in the fire service, which is why we are together today.  I want to ask you to focus your thoughts, in a collective way, on the loss of the firefighters you have known. There are so many of them. Sometimes I think the only persons who have been to more funerals than I have been to are Harold and Vinny. Funerals are a regal time for us, stately, certainly appropriate to the profound loss we feel for the families of our fallen firefighters and the high honor we convey their loved ones. But, today, I want to ask you to remember them with a little more than honor and sadness. I want to ask you to also remember them with rage. Because you know and I know that some of those deaths could have been avoided, a fact that we appropriately will never talk about at funerals. But, I am saying that if we can share our love and our grief, we can also share our rage.  Here is a good reason why. When I was asked to Chair the National Commission on Near-miss Reporting by Garry Briese, the director of the IAFC I saw that the mandate was equally shared by Pat Morrison, our host here and a man who cares as much about the health and safety of firefighters as anyone I have ever met. And, when the commission was developed we had the head of safety for NASA, and the FAA, the Coast Guard, and the safety officers of several fire departments of all sizes. Can you imagine the safety issues for NASA and the FAA? They know as much about safety as anyone on the face of the earth, and they told us that it just did not make sense that we, the firefighters of America, were suffering the same approximate number of line -of-duty-fatalities year after year, and not only that, but that it is a number that - and this is important - is so consistent that it can predictably be reduced. Here were the safety pros telling us that we can, without a doubt, reduce our fatalities, we can save the lives of our firefighters who are potentially going to die on every run.  How, was the question we all asked, though we had a sense of the answer? We know how well the mandatory reporting of near miss incidents has worked for the pilots and air passengers in our country. We know how NASA mitigated upon their injury and death statistics by near-miss reporting. And, so, why shouldn't it work for the fire service? Of course, why shouldn't it work?  You will see in our presentation and seminars how it can work, but only with your cooperation. You have to buy into this system to reduce the number of fatalities among firefighters. And, you have to convince your chiefs that you want it. Put your arms around it and make it work for you. There is nothing to be against or concerned about. It is a completely safe and confidential system that protects every level of operations. We should care about who, but we must care about what. What happened. How did someone nearly get killed or injured. What information can we share that will be seen to be part of a trend, or new and particular hazards to be faced. The system is easy to use. It can work with you in meeting the goals of your own safety officers in the locals. What does it take?  It takes what it always takes in firefighting to carry us through. The courage that we see every day in the eyes of every firefighter, the courage to say "It is about time we make ourselves born again in the name of determination - the commitment to save the lives of our brothers and sisters." There is a real program here, it is not talk and ideas, but something on the table that has worked demonstrably in the airline and space industry. We can make it work here too.  We will reduce the waves in our sea of grief, we will, because we know it is the right thing to do.  I truly believe that if someone finds it within himself to lend kindness in another person's trouble, that kind person will always find courage. And not only that, he will sense that courage is perhaps god's greatest gift, for it is unequalled when it happens, and it sustains, and comforts, and warms when it is remembered. What we do here today will be long remembered among our firefighters as the actions of a group of caring and courageous delegates to the John Redmond Symposium.  PART 2 I worked for many years in a fire company in the South Bronx, Engine Co. 82, where we responded to more than forty alarms every day. About a third of those alarms were false alarms, about a third for emergencies like a drug overdose or a shooting, and a third for actual fires. We were a busy fire company, busier than the bartender at a firemen's dance. Or even busier than the mop boy at a Parisian bawdy house. But you have seen the same things I saw in those days - acts of heroism and caring that can never be forgotten. Yes, we had our romantic attachments to firefighting. There was a time in my life when I thought it was a good thing to dance around the edge of life. We accepted injury the way a boxer accepts a bruised eye - it comes with the territory. We responded to those alarms, and the objective of each alarm was to be there fast, to be out front, not only to accept the challenges found in a burning building, but to seek them out, even to bathe and take pleasure in them. To many of us even today firefighting is a continuous battle that roars on as we believe we are fearless, as we believe that we had more bravado than a division of United States marines. We love the sirens and the waving flags and the company logos, and we yearned for the challenges of the job But, also, we have a deep and serious side to what we think about ourselves - and you would not be here if it were not so. We know that what we do has to be trained for, that what we do is dangerous, and that inherent danger is the price that we pay for being in the job. But then danger is a fickle thing. I've been in hundreds of fires, and yet it was not in a fire when I felt most unsafe in my life. Someone asked me not long ago what was the most dangerous situation I've ever been in, and my answer went over with a surprise that was something like a beer can in a collection plate. But, the only time I felt truly endangered was one day riding in a canoe in the middle of the whitewater rapids on the Delaware River. My canoe went over in very high rapids and I was dragged down beneath the water for a long time, and I thought the current would never relinquish me. My point in telling you this is that we all know how dangerous firefighting is, and we simply accept it as if somehow we specially get asked to play a part in god's master plan. Of course, we are all in this plan all of the time, but we have the power of independent thought and action. We don't have to allow the idea of inevitable injury and possible death to exist in our firehouses. We are given free will, and we have choices. And we must make that choice now to grasp our own hearts hearts and make them pulse with a new kind of concern for our brothers and sisters. PART 3 As the poets Yeats said, "no law nor duty bade me fight, nor public men, nor cheering crowds." No, firefighters are at the center of need, simply because they have courage, and they have courage because they have faith. Faith is fundamental to the elevation of men and women, and every man and woman is worthy of our care, worthy of our courage, because every man and every woman and child is sacred as Walt Whitman said, if anything is sacred the human body is sacred. And just as he said that every leaf of grass is the journey work of the stars, every human body is the journey work of the creator, and so merits our full attention and our full commitment. The impulse of a firefighter to help is not a lonely impulse, but it is shared and agreed upon in every firehouse conversation, every shared meal, every training drill, and every company meeting. There is only one reason to wear the uniforms of our departments, and that is to be there when we are needed. To get a better wage and better benefits are important reasons for you to come together in union, but to do something positive with your election to office in reducing the line of duty deaths of firefighters is an even greater calling. Still, there is no greater calling than to put your life on the line for someone else, and our families pay dearly for this ideal. We can repay them a little and honor those we have lost by saving some in the future who might learn about a near-miss incident, remember it, and be prepared the next time. And we have been left a legacy, as each firefighter we have lost has given us another star in the night sky. We now can begin reaching out to help each other in their memory. Reaching out is what we do better than we do anything, as long as we see the need, a mother screaming, a figure in a smokey window, an injured child. Firefighters are great at reaching out to help. This is what decency is, the basis of civilization. This is the stuff of good men, and good women. We have much to be proud of today in the John Redmond Fund, and the staff of the IAFF. They are helping us to reach out. I once heard President General Harold Shaitberger quote Mother Theresa at a memorial service, and I want to repeat Mother Theresa's words now so that you can lodge them in your hearts and bring them to the kitchen of your firehouses. "A life not lived for others," she said, "is not a life."  And now, we can all look about us, and see the vitality in the work done around us, and each of you can say that you have done good work in making your members safer. I feel privileged to be among you, for I admire your work. You are the leaders, and you work hard. There is much yet to do.