Pieces of the Puzzle

The great debate between truckie and engine work will never end! Personally, I enjoy both. They require a variety of skills, but both are obviously extremely important to the incident.

Sometimes, I'll hear someone say how they are a "truck" or "engine" guy and don't prefer the the other, or even scoff at it. However, these operations do go hand in hand for the operations overall. Worse, if these operations do not work well together, the results could be disastrous or fatal. In the volunteer world, I don't understand how some can scoff at either. I highly doubt you have the leisure of picking your assignments. Sometimes, you might be dispatched as one job as per the preset run cards, but the amount and capabilities of the manpower at hand might result in different jobs being required or assigned to you.

I wrote about how deploying RIT requires a wide variety of skills, which can help in other aspects of firefighting. They are all pieces of the puzzle.

Think about it: You might be on the line, but someone on your crew might be the on having to force the door. Or you are setting up the ladder so the line can get to the window. Before you vent a window, you bet you better make sure you know where suppression is and how venting the roof or window could affect the fire. As well, horizontal ventilation can help the engine crew attack the fire. Of course, the fire may vent itself.

By not working together and drilling together, the results can do the opposite of our goals-to protect life and sustain property. If you do see yourself as an engine or truck guy, take some time and work on the opposite side for a bit. It is vital to understand all operations of the fire ground to see what they you can learn from it.

We never know what the next fire is going to bring us. This is what makes training so significant, along with learning from the past and what we can do better. Feedback after a fire is not necessarily criticism; it can be a game changer.

Learning never ends for a firefighter. I belong to a slow company, and it does not help that I am away at college and am missing out. However, that is where personal accountability comes in. I keep to a lifting regime at school and try to keep up to date on firefighting information.It's all readily available.

With that, I think my next few blog posts will be focused more on the individual and how they can help change the fire service. Health, personal accountability, and leadership are just  a few examples of what I am thinking of covering.

Training never ends. I guess that's why when I saw, online, the back of a T-shirt that said, "If you can read this you must be on the engine," my first thought was "If I'm on the engine, and you're on the truck, I better not see the back of your shirt, just the back of your coat." Maybe I'm just a killjoy. But on the fireground, we're all one team against the same thing: The fire. That's it.

It's a pretty complex puzzle. But let's see how an individual can affect it.

Stay safe.