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My wife of 40+ years, Wilma Lester Avsec, died last Saturday, October 31, 2020 at CAMC Memorial Hospital here in Charleston, WV. I'd taken her there on Monday, October 26th, because she'd been taking medicine and breathing treatments for bronchitis since the previous Thursday, however by Monday morning she was not getting better.

The key difference between mentors and sponsors is that mentors are “one-way streets”, giving their chosen mentee a gift of wisdom, time, and advice. Sponsorship requires reciprocity and commitment; sponsors serve as champions.

When two individuals who are equally qualified for a promotion, one from the majority group and the other from the minority group, and you still pick the majority group member when you have zero members of the minority group “at the table,” that’s your Majority Group Bias Showing.

When you respond to any emergency, you’re first task is doing a good size-up: What has happened, what’s currently happening, and what will continue to happen without intervention? Every firefighter learns that starting in their entry-level training and it’s a basic part of most training for the rest of your career. But nobody taught you how to ask those same questions of yourself when YOU are the emergency, right? Or what interventions you need to take when you’re under the influence of stress. Well, we’re going to see about rectifying that in this article.

By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer In the online publishing world, my editors use the term evergreen to describe a past article, that with a bit of tweaking (updating), is still highly relevant enough to use again. In the past few months, as I was tasked with tweaking a couple of my past articles for new posting, I started looking ...

And all fire and EMS departments enforce this, and empower their COs, by giving them visible symbols of their new authority that are understood by everyone from the newest probie firefighter to the Fire Chief (e.g., collar insignia, different color uniform shirts, different color helmets, or different helmet shields).

By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer Photo Source: nfpa.org National Fire Prevention Week for 2020 begins October 4th and continues through October 10th. And it’s going to be much different than NFPW 2019 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The traditional open houses at fire stations and fire halls across the U.S. and Canada won’t be happening. The public displays (e.g., ...

Don the mask. Like Spiderman and Batman and all the other masked superheroes! So, when it came to wearing a face mask against the coronavirus, it means the same to me. I put the mask on because it protects other people.

Many people are still unaware of the potential threat of asbestos exposure. The toxic fibers are regulated in the U.S., but they still aren’t banned. Firefighters, especially, need to be aware of these risks.

When I received my first promotion to the rank of company officer, it was made truly clear to me by my organization, the Chesterfield (Va.) Fire and EMS Department, that as an officer the organization would expect more from me. And that expectation was reaffirmed with each subsequent promotion to captain and then to battalion chief.