Think about the significance of the beginning of the new year. Isn't it filled with great excitement and anxiety? It seems to me that the perspective of the future at this point holds promise, opportunity, challenge and doubt. Now multiply those feelings by 100 times and I think that is what entering the year 2000 will represent.
To help get the fire-rescue service to jump into tomorrow, I would like to make some predictions and forecasts. This article will share my personal views and beliefs where our business will be in 2025. Let me warn the reader, this information is not based on scientific fact or research. It is based solely on my own collection of experiences.
After weeks of pondering this assignment, I keep coming back to the same position. I wanted to write an incredibly insightful and witty piece of literature that would be very positive about our future. Perhaps I should discuss a new extinguishment technique, maybe critical vibration for instance. A 2025-model pumper might look like the standard front-end of one of our loveable "BRTs" (big red trucks) with the hose body replaced by a larger-than-life tuning fork. What would the complete removal of all fire hose mean to our profession? The daily workload and emergency operations would change tremendously! I can hear the shift-change chatter now - "I want to be the gong person today!" "No way, Mary, you were on the gong on the last shift!"
Maybe, I thought, that I would explore just what managed care will mean to us in the future. Can we hold off the privatization of the American fire-rescue service or will we lose out to the profit-and-loss sheets? As the emergency medical care field continues to grow, so will the pressure to keep costs as low as achievable. Managed care will affect how we do business in the future; there is not much debate about that. What a great topic one or both of these issues would be to explore in this article. However, my crystal ball keeps revealing a much darker concern. One that is developing now and should be addressed or maybe there won't be a fire-rescue service as we know it in the year 2025.
Competing for funds
Before we look into our future, let's take a little trip into the past. As the world will recall, the "Cold War" was coming to an abrupt ending. As an outward symbol of this tremendous occasion, the Berlin Wall was hammered down in front of dozens of news cameras. People from all over our planet cheered and cried and cheered some more on that historic day. The fear that the communists were going to eliminate our nation (and beyond) by nuclear destruction was finally over.
What a wonderful event, but like all paradigm shifts, the players all go back to zero (everyone starts over). Our armed forces were now confronted with a "shrinking mission" and budgets that continue to shrink as well.
Without the communist threat to lash out in the middle of the night and harm America, defense spending (inappropriately, I might add) has seen great reductions, with no apparent end in sight. The search for the new missions seems to be the current military emphasis and goal to fill the void.
Before I go on, let me say that I fully, completely and unquestionably support all aspects of our military. They are the world's best at what they do, when it comes to defending our nation against foreign and domestic enemies. I firmly believe that a strong U.S. military is the basis for peace on earth. However, it seems to me that there is quite a move afoot to redeploy our military machine to handle fire-rescue-type problems within America's borders. This speculation has captured my interest and has me a little nervous and concerned about the future.
To illustrate the redirection of our military, the U.S. Marine Corps has developed an emergency medical response team to be deployed during a large-scale terrorist attack in which chemical agents are released on civilian populations. I know that we will need their help, no question, but shouldn't some (maybe the lion's share) of the funding for training and equipment be directed to America's first responders, the fire-rescue service? Currently, we are the nation's emergency medical agency of choice. Shouldn't we get a chance to perform this type of service for our communities, using the military as support?
Next, National Guard units are now engaged in a tremendous amount of firefighter, incident command and hazardous materials response training. Again, I ask, shouldn't we reap some of the benefits of the funding for this training effort? I don't believe that the 10 National Guard Home Units are taking this training to just keep the soldiers busy. Could it be that they are eyeballing yet another aspect of our job as part of the new mission in the post-Cold War era?
If you have paid attention at the large-scale fire-rescue shows, there is always a few three or four vendor booths hosted by various military agencies. The Army Reserve, Coast Guard and the National Guard seem to make every show that I attend. Their message is, we can help you during all phases of response and recovery. Further, I noticed, at last year's Congressional Fire Services Institute (CFSI) annual dinner that there were about dozen or so colonels in attendance. I found that to be more than interesting or coincidental. I wonder how many military shows or national-level military events the fire-rescue service gets to attend.
When a large-scale regional disaster occurs, I see fire departments leaving very early in the operational process. The military forces get firmly planted before our people can return to quarters. In fact, by the time the media are set up, the fire guys and gals are history. The perception is that the military crews performed all of the response work without the fire-rescue forces ever being called for help. In some of the most recent cases, the military's action has been described as search and rescue for trapped and missing people. Sure sounds like what I am sworn to do in my own community.
Now that I have rambled on about the military's quiet invasion into America's fire-rescue service, I believe that there is room for all of us. However, we need to re-stake our claim, so to speak. Rules of engagement should be developed and distributed as to which agencies are going to play what roles when the big ones hit.
On a national level, the fire-rescue service needs to interact with our armed forces and clearly identify responsibilities. We need to get congressional leadership from the CFSI and from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on this issue to ensure that we remain the "domestic protectors" for all types of civilian fire-rescue and disaster responses.
Rather than having to compete with yet another agency, we should work on partnering with them. The "financial pie" for preparation, response and recovery from disasters needs to be increased to include all of the major players. A unified voice needs to be heard from our service, that we are not willing to give up any of our mission to anyone. I know that a common fire-rescue vision is nearly impossible to achieve, but this issue seems to me to demand it for survival and longevity sake.
Just like moving from the backstep to the jumpseats, we need to change to succeed. To close, I will draw an old "Yogi Berra-ism": "The future ain't going to be like it use to be."
Dennis L. Rubin, a Firehouse® contributing editor, is chief of the Dothan, AL, Fire Department.
