Opinion

Last week, Chicago was the heartbeat of the nation’s fire service. With the International Association of Women in Fire & Emergency Services hosting its conference and the International Association of Fire Chiefs holding Fire-Rescue International here, it was a week filled with education, information and networking opportunities. After a show, I always review my notes from general sessions, meetings and conversations, looking for quotes that are worth repeating. Here are some from last week: “Everyone here has the potential to make something happen,” said Div. Chief Cheryl Horvath, outgoing iWomen president, at that organization’s conference. “It’s no longer about women in the fire service; it’s about the value that we bring to the fire service. Now it’s up to each of you to make a difference.” “In firefighting and in police you have this tension because interpersonal bonds and close associations between and among firefighters are really important, essential components of the professional culture,” said iWomen keynote speaker Laura A. Liswood, author of The Loudest Duck , a business guide on workplace diversity. A senior advisor at Goldman Sachs, she became a reserved police officer in D.C. after 9/11. “The close personal, fraternal bond, keeps them strong, keeps them safe it keeps them physically, mentally and emotionally healthy, but there’s a tension in that because some people are included in that fraternal bond and some people are potentially excluded from those fraternal bonds based on the unconsciousness we bring to the workplace. So there’s a constant tension — constant tension — with the desire to have these fraternal bonds, but then to have people assume that you don’t belong or you don’t belong.” “Dee Armstrong also lost her husband to cancer. Cancer has my attention and it is one of our priorities to begin an 18,000-member, longitudinal study,” said Acting U.S. Fire Administrator Glenn Gaines said about Armstrong, a female firefighter from his former Fairfax Fire Department who recently died from cancer. “We want to prove the association between cancer and firefighters because you are fully immersed in toxins.” “One of the problems with people in the fire service is what they learn they don’t pass it on and that’s sad — that’s why we lose lives,” said host-city Fire Commissioner Robert Hoff. “Money is an issue, but if we stick to the core of the fire service, which is fire, EMS, public education, prevention, we’ll get our jobs done whether there’s money or not. We have to do our jobs — that’s what it’s all about. …The day you stop learning on this job is the day you should retire.” “When there is a disaster, citizens don’t call DHS or FEMA — they call you ,” said DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano during FRI’s opening session. “Homeland security begins with hometown security — and with the men and women on the frontlines who dedicate themselves to keeping our communities safe every day.” Napolitano went totally off script, according to her staff, and her passion was evident. “She loves the fire service,” said one woman about Napolitano’s extended 25- minute presentation. “On 70% to 80% of your calls, the victim deals with the junior person on your rig,” noted Dr. Richard Gist, moderator of the NFFF’s “Firefighter Life Safety Initiative 13, Behavioral Health.” Gist also shared information the U.S. military’s efforts to address post-traumatic stress disorder and offered the trauma screening questionnaire and After Deployment Web site . “Chiefs can change the rules; only peers can change the culture,” he said. And there indeed were signs of cultural change. Some of the programs for the 2010 IAFC Fire-Rescue International carried the traditional leadership for chiefs and officers, but the majority of the programs would not have been on the IAFC program 20 or even 10 years ago. Now that’s progress.

Read the original here:
Change the Rules, Change the Culture