There is nothing truer than the fact that firefighters and first responders have opinions and they aren’t afraid to share them. The Alarm Box Blog is intended to present some thoughts that cause folks to think about and discuss current events and fire topics.
Accepted Perception Of Homeless May Not Fit
People in the know estimated that there were 600,000 homeless people nationwide just six years ago. Now the numbers are in the millions. The potential to encounter homelessness has now become standard for all people in all communities.
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Trauma Is Experienced By Children Witnessing a Fire or Medical Emergency
They sit quietly in the garage with only the occasional blast on the horn or short siren wale, when showing off for youngsters from the local school or a young friend of the family who has stopped by the firehouse. On occasion, their parents have pulled over to accommodate the passing of apparatus or ambo on the way to a call. Generally, any encounter a youngster has with a fire truck may be a little bit intimidating but very much under control and friendly.
Now, put yourself in that same youngster’s shoes as one or more of those big trucks suddenly comes down their street code 3 with lights and sirens blaring. To say nothing of the organized chaos that follows when the trucks stops in front of a neighbor’s home. Whether a medical emergency or a fire, the complexity of the relationship between a child and the fire department changes dramatically.
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When all is said and done, people become volunteer fire fighters because they get satisfaction out of doing something others can’t or won’t do. They become 1st responders for the self-satisfaction. Changing personal value motivations and the demands of time are requiring fundamental changes toward more family-oriented community volunteering activities.
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A firefighter was shot and killed. Is his life more important than a police officer, a journalist or a school child? No certainly not. But in the grand scheme of things, it seems another line has been crossed. The morals of society have sunk to yet another low.
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Doing and experiencing the job of a first responder creates an environment that fosters stress, PTSD, negative family issues, and at it’s worst, suicide. Couple that with internal department politics and the fact that your every move is documented by and displayed on social media it is amazing that anyone comes out of the job mentally in one piece, if any do.
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Certainly, gender and ethnicity should not bar anyone from becoming part of our family, but gender and ethnicity should not override the qualities necessary to do the job safely and efficiently.
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Across the country, it is reported that recruiting and retaining fire fighters is becoming more difficult. While this decline initially impacted volunteer departments, full time paid departments are beginning to see their waiting lists shrink to nil. Even more challenging is the fact that paid departments are experiencing difficulties with retaining fire fighters that are trained and experienced. There are now two market segments to be addressed when recruiting individuals for the fire service.
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Generation Y’ers are task-orientated, but the task instructions must be detailed. Their structured upbringing requires of them to only do exactly as asked and outlined.
If for example, a new Gen Y firefighter when given the assignment to clean up the day room will set about doing just that. Should the kitchen area be included in the day room area, the dirty dishes in the sink may go untouched. Nobody said anything about doing the dishes.
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With more frequency, fire department officers are complaining that many probationary firefighters lack some of the critical attitudes and motivational skills needed to excel in the fire service.
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We are experiencing a society where truth is no longer considered a virtue. A society where manufactured news goes beyond being managed to fit a view point but one where news defies all logic and critical thinking.
The danger for the fire service and first responders is that civility too has apparently crashed and burned. Unlike the police, firefighters and EMTs have been rarely exposed to hostile actions while performing their property and life-saving tasks. That may begin to change.
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