Accepting the Burden of Community and Governmental Education

Two years ago, I listened to Tom Olshanski, external affairs specialist for the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), speak at a fire and life safety seminar in Michigan. He spoke for several hours, but my biggest takeaway was how we summed up the difference between police and fire: “When people are bothered by people, they call the police. When people are bothered by things, they call the fire department.”

He’s entirely right. Just think about it, we respond to car accidents, people with their heads stuck through banisters, attacks from evil snow-blowers and, yes, fire.

It's important we never forget how intrinsically and creatively difficult our jobs can be. We must leave the station with some sort of general answer to all the problems caused by “things.” We have to do it quickly, and we have to leave with the outcome better than when we got there.

It's why we must adapt this consistent and creative problem-solving to our dealings with city government officials. It's normal for us to come up with a plan and solution when [insert off-the-wall incident] happens, but when city council, township boards or village councils take a look at the workings of the department, we as an industry get very defensive.

When these elected officials begin looking at ways to save money, it's no surprise the fire department is on the list. When that time comes, our normal course of action is to monger fear within residents and condemn officials—the same officials who are charged with cutting the budget.

There is 100 percent validity to the dangers of laying off firefighters and closing fire stations, but I believe there's much more that could be done before the rhetoric changes, picketing starts and Facebook posts begin lighting up social media.

We as a fire service have to yet again take an uncommon burden: educating citizens and government officials about our industry, beyond the norm. We have to do a better job of educating our upset residents as to why their taxes are the way they are and educating our elected officials as to why we need our staffing numbers to remain as is or even increase.

Last year, our department held a water shuttle exercise demonstrating the challenges and varying degrees of difficulty between tanker shuttles, draft sites and fire hydrants. All members of our governing bodies attended as well as government officials from neighboring communities.

What came out of the after-action review (AAR) was pretty telling as to what city officials around this country may believe in regards to the job of a firefighter. A township supervisor from a neighboring community who attended our demonstration had a pretty strong takeaway in regards to fighting fire. At the AAR, he spoke up and said, "I was surprised to learn it takes more than 2,500 gallons of water to fight a house fire because when I'm sitting in my home, 2,500 gallons is a lot of water to me."

This made 40 firefighters laugh and snicker, but I don't blame him for having that naivety. It actually speaks to our lack of education directed to our elected officials, and I don't believe this is an isolated thought process. If we spend years learning this job and spend decades moving through the ranks, how can we expect an elected official to immediately understand the rigors and requirements of our job?

The days of getting approved funding from local government under the blind word of the fire chief are long gone. We must invest our existing personnel and resources into expanding our education toward local government and voting residents. We do a great job of getting into schools and hosting station open houses, but we need to take an equal approach to the aforementioned groups, with the same patience and creativity.

Involvement

We need to begin active biannual training demonstrations for our elected officials. We need to get these individuals up close and personal in a controlled environment that accurately depicts our job duties. We should try to get them on the truck, have them in a jump seat responding to a "fire," have them stretch on a structure, pack up and advance a hoseline. It's these situations where we may deal with a prima-donna politician who doesn't want to get sweaty, has a last minute "heart condition” or gives some other cop-out answer. Our job is to anticipate those responses and redirect them to another position that is more observatory in nature. Assign them to a pump operator who can go over the intricacies of water supply or during a search and rescue drill, or assign them to a firefighter so they can observe through a thermal imager.

But we need to think beyond fires and get them involved in as many aspects as our job demands. Get them up to speed with the potentials of hazardous materials, involve them in rigging up a Stokes. Contact a local towing company for a vehicle donation and have the politicians handle the hydraulic equipment or get them involved in a water/ice rescue drills.

If we're going to argue the need for personnel or the importance of keeping stations open, we can no longer operate in anonymity of elected officials, only to then come into the light when we need to spend money or complain when their decision-making would make a negative impact. The fire service preaches proactivity in dealing with incidents, and we need to take that same approach with elected leadership. We need to create political muscle memory for local government, have them remember their "training,” so that those budgetary decisions stand a better chance of supporting the fire department.

Social media

The fire service has a love/hate relationship with social media. Just as quickly as we can be praised for a rescue or an act of kindness, we're demonized for taking the truck to the grocery store or taking too long to respond. In today's world, we're always in the public's eye, but even more so, we're consistently being evaluated as to the nature of our very existence. As such, it's our responsibility to use social media as a tool to bring the positive, to show the nice and to reveal the heartwarming situations that have made our industry a United States standard for nearly three centuries.

How do we expect local and state officials to know how busy and important we are to the community if we're not sharing the information? How can we be upset with tax-savvy citizens who believe our job is important but questions if it's worth his or her money? How do we convey to all of our citizens that a tax increase is justified or a large purchase for an apparatus is necessary?

We need to accept the burden of information dissemination, just as we need to accept the burden of proactive governmental involvement. We need to show how busy we are, we need to show how important our existence is and, most importantly, we need to reaffirm and cement our positive appeal in the eyes of the public.

Social media is a perfect low-cost platform to promote the great aspects of the fire service. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are great platforms for showing both elected officials and our voting public what the fire service is all about.

We have the coolest company cars and equipment and a dangerous job that's called upon daily to improve someone's life. And when we read between the lines, the potential for information sharing is limitless.

Beyond responding to a fire, beyond car accidents and CPRs, the public has such a disconnect with our job that we need bridge that gap. We need to humanize our departments and create posts that connect our firefighters with our citizens. We need to share the heartfelt, human side of our job that will strike a chord with everyone who sees it. We need to share when a firefighter gets married, graduates from college or has their first child. We need to share, through photo and video, that we helped change a tire for a citizen and gave them a jump start. Sharing that we help with things other than when people call 9-1-1 will undoubtedly speak volumes that the fire department exists to help with anything, not just fires.

And I think we need that. As public scrutiny grows over government spending, we should create and use these social media platforms as resources. We can use Facebook as a way to tell in-depth stories of positivity, we can use Instagram as way to show the unique side our department and the equipment we carry through photo and video sharing, and we can use Twitter as a way to get immediate information out quickly to the public in the event of a mass incident, road closure or water main break, for example.

Effective management of these platforms is required. We'll need tech-savvy firefighters to not only promote the department  but also to manage the public posts made to the page, negative or untrue statements made by citizens, and respond to direct messages sent to the account.

Let's not give anyone a chance to think that the fire department doesn't need to exist.