By:  Robert Avsec The vast majority of fires that Fire & EMS department personnel will experience during their fire service career will involve fires in residential occupancies: single and multi-family dwellings.  Fires in commercial and industrial properties, aka, “big box” occupancies are what Gordon Graham, a noted subject matter expert in risk management for emergency services, refers to as, “high ...

Power saws have been an important part of the firefighter's tool cadre for many years. Today, most departments carry a variety of power saws including, but not limited to circular or rotary saws, chainsaws, and reciprocating saws.

In these days of budget reductions and inadequate staffing, the best use of RIC is the non-deployment of RIC because our proactive fireground behaviors ensured that they were never needed.

We are all together in recognizing and addressing the significant unmanaged risks posed by Fire & EMS personnel suffering from fatigue. The dots are out there. We just need to start connecting them before, once again, someone else does it for us.

I think we can all agree that SCBA is one of the most critical components of the firefighter's protective ensemble. It is also the most sophisticated — and becoming more so every year — and it's the only piece of the protective ensemble that we don't issue to the individual.

I’ve got a huge sign under the lid on my washer machine that tells me at least 10 things that I should not do when using the machine, e.g., don’t put gasoline or oil soaked clothing in the machine as this can create an explosion hazard. Shouldn’t we at least require such labeling on occupancies not protected with fire sprinkler-based suppression systems?

Recently, one of my fire service and LinkedIn colleagues, Chief Cheryl Horvath, wrote about the continuing struggle that women face trying to become a part of the Fire and EMS world in the USA. I would challenge you to read both pieces—keeping in mind that the sexual misconduct and crimes at APG surfaced in 1996—and ask yourself, “How come we’ve not gotten past this kind of behavior?”

By choosing to use social media tools to engage the stakeholders in its community in developing the Community Risk Reduction plan, Cutting Edge County is giving those same stakeholders an opportunity to become skilled and practiced in their use.

I received the following comments in response to my recent piece, The Slow Death of the 24-Hour Tour? The comments, however, were posted by LinkedIn colleagues in response to my posting of the article on the Fire Engineering Group in LinkedIn.

They are cheap, compact and disposable; these quick medic kits are simple to build and carry on every apparatus.