EGH Illinois

Benjamin Franklin once defined insanity as “repeating the same thing over and over, expecting different results.” Over the last century there has been little change in the ways that we are injuring and killing firefighters. Firefighters are still dying by being involved in apparatus crashes, becoming disoriented and running out of air, being caught in structural collapse, or becoming trapped by rapidly changing fire conditions. Based on 2,000,000 fires in  [ Read More ]

The 14th Life Safety Initiative states: “Provide public education more resources and champion it as a critical fire and life safety program.” When you think of public education in the fire service we think of stop drop and roll and open houses. While both are valuable programs let me challenge you to broaden the definition of public education. You receive a report of smoke showing in a four-story office building  [ Read More ]

I was recently asked to talk to a group of young people that were graduating from a firefighter academy. In preparing my address, which was expected to be centered on the Everyone Goes Home program, I couldn’t help but think about the message delivered in the Courage to be Safe program. Not wanting to take away from anything that was taught in the academy with regards to the young firefighters  [ Read More ]

In a recent posting by the International Association of Fire Chiefs, an article by David H. Fischler said this… “Mental health is just as important as a firefighter’s physical condition, and can just as easily impact job performance. We have created critical incident stress management programs to address issues after a major call, and hot-lines have been established for firefighters in need of mental health assistance. Yet 91 percent of  [ Read More ]