Tag Archives: thought leadership

I'm confident that the issue of fire prevention has been discussed at length as it should be: if no fire occurs or it's extinguished by an installed fire sprinkler no firefighter need be injured or killed in the line-of-duty. So here's my blog repost for your and those folks at Tampa 2 on "get away day", Children Don’t Cause Fires, Adults Do

We focus on the young likely because its easy. But, what we Fire Prevention Demoprovide in education is often lost in an overriding effort to entertain them. Further, without reinforcement of the fire safe/prevention message in their home environment, any value is soon lost to the parent's daily example/attitudes towards fire safety.

The behaviors of adults in the USA account for 78 percent of the preventable residential fires. So why do the vast majority of fire prevention educations that Fire and EMS departments deliver each year target children? If we’re looking to significantly reduce the following types of fires, why don’t our programs focus on adult behaviors?

Regardless if the changes arise from our people (generational differences) or new technologies or new information that changes the way we view strategy and tactics, it all comes back to how we lead and manage, doesn’t it?

Over the course of the last year, I’ve attempted to provide you—the readers of this blog—with a wide variety of subjects for you consideration and thought. So here are the ten most viewed posts for 2013.

In response my previous post, What’s Your Plan for an Inclusive and Diverse Department to Increase Service and Safety?, I received a lengthy letter from a fire service colleague that posed several thought-provoking questions. Below are the contents of that letter. (WK is the letter writer; RPA is me).

It’s like the weather: everyone talks about it. “It” is the culture of the fire service in the United States of America. We hear it, we see it (in print and on-line), and we talk about it. Lately, what’s most prominent in this communication is: We need to change the fire service culture.

Was wondering if you could do me a favor and list what you believe to be the most significant changes/trends in the past 10 years of the fire service.

I'm not saying that a more educated officer corps will prevent those kinds of things from happening in a department, but I am saying that I believe that it will reduce the organizational risk to a large degree.

Why EFOP? Don’t get me wrong, my course work in both of my degree programs provided me with the opportunity to acquire a vast amount of knowledge in a wide variety of subjects pertinent to Fire and EMS...It was during my four-year pursuit of that EFOP certification, however, that I acquired the skills and abilities that had a phenomenal impact on my growth as a fire officer.