My contribution of "sunshine" today is to post this "round up", if you will, of posts from this blog along with other sources that I've encountered over the past couple of months as I've become more informed and educated about firefighter mental health challenges.

The necessary changes in the way that fire departments operate to reduce firefighter deaths and injuries continues to move at a "glacial pace." How long before we really change our safety behaviors?

By: Nathalie Michaud After I received the diagnosis of my PTSD in late Summer 2014, I was partly relieved because now I knew why I felt and thought the way I did. It didn’t make it any easier to accept, but now that there was a name for it, a bit of the “ET” syndrome went away. I had choices: ...

We're not "carrying the day" with effective public fire and life safety programs that provide the factual information about residential fire sprinklers. We're allowing the builders and developers to promulgate the "half-truths" and myths.

Fire departments should make greater use of social media to promote the success of fire and life safety education efforts such as when the residents of a home fire safely escape because they had working smoke detectors and a Home Fire Escape Plan that they had practiced.

Without a residential fire sprinkler system, this fire quickly grew to a size and magnitude that engulfed the majority of the structure before the first firefighters even arrived on scene. Those firefighters were faced with an overwhelming situation from the very beginning.

A powerful piece of prose about one firefighter's "come to Jesus" moment with firefighters and cancer. An equally powerful message about how everyone in the fire service needs to "get on the bus" concerning firefighting and the dramatically increased risk of developing cancer we--and our families--face.

Let me introduce you to the “sacred cow” in the North American fire service: interior firefighting. Once again we hear the same tired arguments against changing our default tactics for combating structure fires...

One issue that may ultimately shift the perspective of builders towards residential fire sprinklers is legal liability. Regardless of whether a state or locality chooses to amend fire sprinkler requirements out of the IRC, courts may well hold that it is incumbent upon builders to follow established standards of care for fire safety when they construct a new home.

Having trouble finding the validation errors? That’s your software. If your report says it’s valid, yet you receive critical errors upon uploading to the state, that’s your software. If you can’t see the full wording of a code, that’s your software. None of these are caused by NFIRS.