Tag Archives: policy

People--especially those who enter the fire service--generally want to be successful and feel like they are making a contribution to the organization. Lack of clarity from their organizational leaders, and especially their first-line supervisor, in the form of clear expectations can be a significant "roadblock" to their success.

Wildfire experts are telling us that fires are burning hotter and faster and being feed by fuels—trees and vegetation—that in most western states have been ravaged by drought and insect infestation. Yet people still build in the WUI, fail to take appropriate measures when building their homes and maintaining their property and then expect firefighters to come to the rescue when wildfires strike

On August 29, 2015 we will mark the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina coming ashore with catastrophic results20150825_severe storm damage for the populations of Louisiana and Mississippi. How ready are your department and community to manage the consequences of severe weather when it comes to town?

So how can we in the Fire & EMS profession more proactively “capture” such knowledge before it “walks out the door” with the next retiree? Let’s take a closer look at some of our “old and reliable” information management tools: policy, procedure, and processes. Frequently, we use these terms interchangeably, but they are not synonymous at all. However, if we understand how the “fit” together, we will find that they can serve as powerful tools to help transfer organizational knowledge from one generation of members to another.

Reducing firefighter deaths and injuries is, or should be, a top priority for all fire departments in the USA in 2014. The 16 Lifesafety Initiatives from Everyone Goes Home provide the framework for a department to develop strategies for making the job of a firefighter safer, more effective, and more efficient. This article takes a closer look.

So how can we in the Fire & EMS profession more proactively “capture” such knowledge before it “walks out the door” with the next retiree? Let’s take a closer look at some of our “old and reliable” information management tools: policy, procedure, and processes.

One thing that I do believe is that cases like this are to Fire and EMS leadership and management what the "a canary dying in a coal mine" meant to coal miners underground.

By:  Robert Avsec I opened my e-mail yesterday to view the latest FireRescue1.com newsletter and this is one of the leads: Pregnant firefighter placed on unpaid leave by Conn. department City officials are investigating saying the department may be violating state and federal laws by placing her on unrequested, unpaid leave because she’s pregnant. The next thing I did was ...

Am I “jumping the gun” on this one? We don’t know all the facts of the case, that’s for sure, but I know one thing from my career in the municipal fire service: You don’t conduct an extensive investigation of an incident, and produce a 200-page report that documents that investigation, because you didn’t have anything better to do.

However, the more I look at news stories involving FEMS organizations that have been “ripped from today’s headlines”, through this “lens”—that of the organizational leader as a curator of organizational culture—I can’t help but feel…something must have been missing from their system of “law and order”.