The Third Chief Ryman

Incredibly proud that Michael Ryman has become the third generation of Ryman's to wear the white coat and helmet of a chief officer. He is now a certified chief officer in Montgomery County, MD at Station 15-Burtonsville. Congratulations Chief 715B. Your grandfather is smiling down from heaven at you today.

The Hidden Button

The young couple lived in the house a week, a month, perhaps a year or more before making the mysterious discovery.  Inside the closet door in the master bedroom, carefully concealed, was a white circular button in a black vertical frame.  It was inside the right door where a knowing hand could reach around the casing and push it without looking.   

“Maybe it opens a hidden door to a secret room,” the woman said.  The man rolled his eyes.   

“Better would be a secret compartment filled with cash,” the man said. (Dream on, kids) 

“I’ve read about those secret safe rooms.  Wouldn’t that be cool?”  The woman watched a lot of television.   

“Maybe it sounded a buzzer in the kitchen for the wife to bring the husband a beer,” the man grinned.   

“You can dream on,” his wife said.  

The real function was far more mundane but no less crazy.  I told Dad I could hear this dialogue in my mind; the future owners of his house having this conversation in the years to come when they discovered his button.  To them, the button would likely remain a mystery forever, discussed on occasion when a new theory for the whodunit arose.  

The button, an old fashioned door bell was connected to the garage door opener for Dad’s car.  Not willing to wait the five seconds, maybe, for the door to go up once he reached the garage when responding to a fire, he installed it when the house was built.   When the Plectron went off (remember those?) he would reach into the closet as he finished dressing, hand knowing the way, and push the button.  By the time he reached the garage, the door was fully open.  Speed and efficiency out of the house didn’t happen by accident.   

“Maybe it was a panic or emergency alarm, like the buttons in a bank,” the woman would say, the mystery continuing.  

“I still like the beer idea,” the man would offer. 

 

“I told you, dream on.” 

 

A Throwback Thursday Video

The pallet plant fire. 

Chapter 16 in Fire Men:  Stories From Three Generations of a Firefighting Family

Pallet plant fire

Traditionalists Take Note

There are a lot of good things one can say about being considered a traditionalist.  Stability, solid values, and steadiness are among them.  Not all the traits ascribed to this term, however, are considered positive.   Skeptics, intellectuals, and those who think outside the box, are commonly at odds with traditionalists.  The challenge is to combine the best of these worlds. 

In the current environment when many of our communities have decided that they can and will pay only X amount for fire protection; we can do one of two things.  We can take the traditional route and rationalize that our citizens don’t care or understand our needs (it’s all about us, right?) and complain that we can’t provide adequate service and will be endangering firefighter and civilian lives.  Or, we can understand the fiscal realities and explore alternatives in delivery of service, methodologies, staffing, multi-community alliances, on down to tactical changes.  Thinking outside the conventional system to allow us to provide the best and safest services possible within the inherent financial limits imposed by our citizens may result in some positive surprises. 

We need to be open to some “unpleasant” and mind challenging alternatives.  One area is the research and testing completed and still to be conducted on the many hard fast rules of strategic and tactical operations (attack modes, ventilation priorities and methods, etc.) may upset many traditionalists.  We learned these methods through historic experience and development and “know” the correctness of them.  Examining the validity of these “known” truths using scientific and engineering principles won’t change anything; after all, we’ve been successful for years this way.  Some folks may not like these results. 

Care in evaluating the validity of the test protocols and methodology used is vitally important.  After all, a test can be designed to prove almost anything.  But when care is taken to design testing to be as free of bias as possible, we need to give attention to the results, even if they were not what we expected (or hoped) to see. 

Reading a great book about the culture of U.S. Army leadership since World War II (The Generals by Thomas Ricks) got me thinking about much of this, especially after coming across a great quote.  Colonel Paul Yingling, who unfortunately retired after battles with Army traditionalists, noted that “Intellectuals are most valued when the dominant paradigm begins to break down.  In this moment of crisis, the heretics become heroes, as they have already constructed alternative paradigms that others haven’t considered.”  He closed with “…the challenge is to keep the skeptics from becoming extinct.” 

I don’t believe the fire service has reached that point, and hopefully never will.  Abandoning our past and traditions simply for the sake of change is a bad idea, but we all could take a lesson from this and try to remain open and intellectually curious.   Our fellow firefighters and the citizens we protect deserve nothing less. 

A Great Concept Doesn't Equal Success

Some equipment looks great in the catalog, has an awesome concept behind it, and works like shit in the real world.  A piece of equipment I worked with that met this definition was the build-a-board.  A take off on the scoop stretcher, it was a four piece replacement for the short board.  In theory, each of the four pieces would slip under or behind the victim, snap together and lock in place, and provide a quick and safe method for immobilizing possible back and neck injury patients in auto accidents.  

After we received ours, we practiced and trained and trained and practiced with it.  The literature made it sound like it should be as easy as, well, any analogy you could think of.   It wasn’t.  Oh, we got rather proficient with it in our personal vehicles in the parking lot and chairs in the squad room, but it was never as simple as the brochure made it look.   

Finally a few days after putting it in service, we responded on a wreck with a victim in the passenger seat needing immobilization.   With the old fashioned short board and long board combo, we’d have gotten her out in less than ten minutes.  With our marvelous new build-a-board, we finally got everything lined up,  connected, and snapped together after forty minutes; not an auspicious beginning.   

I had seen all I needed, and after that forgot about it’s presence in the drivers side compartment.  The short board wasn’t broken; no need to fix it.  It was a great lesson.  A terrific concept did not necessarily guarantee real world success. 

Fireballs: Tools of the Old Days

These were the most common fire glove in use—at least in our area, when I joined the fire department.  I’ve heard a few call them red balls, but they were really more orange than red, a flexible plastic coated material that made them water proof, and if worn with cloth liner gloves, warm in the winter.  The coating was also their worst characteristic, as it could and did melt in fires, and resulted in some nasty burns.  They didn’t smell great or at least your hands didn’t after wearing them for a while.  The sweat build up was absorbed by the inner layer and never went away.  They were in the process of being replaced with heavy lined cowhide gloves that gave better protection from fire, but soaked through quickly—their downside. 

My department resolved this inherent conflict by issuing everyone a pair of each; fireballs and the new leather gloves.  We wore the leathers for the fire attack and the fireballs for cleaning up, rolling and loading hose, and the ever important washing of the rigs when we returned.  I still see a pair around once in a while, inevitably used now only for this last purpose. 

Fireballs and three-quarter boots; tools of the old days.

From the mouths of babes—come Chiefs

Walking in for a visit with a friend of mine, I saw the assistant chief’s buggy outside the building. 

“So, you put a white hat back on?” I asked him.  My friend had been the department chief a number of years ago.

“No, I took a captain’s spot.  That’s his,” he said pointing at a young—well young to me—man who he then introduced me to.  My friend then went on to tell me that the young man’s father had been a captain when he had been chief years before and he knew the now assistant chief since he had been quite young. 

My friend told how the boy had enjoyed his trips to the fire house, looking at the equipment and asking questions.  One day, when he was about five years old, he noticed my friend’s turn out gear in the back of the chief’s car. 

“What’s that for?” He asked. 

“Well, when I get to the fire, I put my gear one,” my friend answered. 

“Really?  My daddy says you just go to the fire and yell at everybody.” 

Backyard “Training” or What the Burn Barrel Can Teach

The ubiquitous burn barrel isn’t just the source of springtime brush fires when oblivious residents decide to light them when the wind is gusting at forty—so much so that it probably took them five matches to get the stuff going.  It can actually be an opportunity to turn the mundane task of burning trash into a learning experience. 

The backyard burn barrel can be a firefighter’s small scale research lab for fire behavior.  Vertical and horizontal spread and smoke development can all be “studied” in an admittedly limited but still beneficial way while completing a line on the honey-do list.  Try to extrapolate in your mind how these materials, put in a room, would similarly react to this small ignition source.  Notice how the physical configuration; vertical or horizontal, affects the speed of development.  The differences observed from ordinary combustibles when the occasional piece of plastic sneaks into the barrel by “accident” is telling as well. 

An unusual method?  Maybe, but don’t waste a single opportunity to learn from a fire.  The routine job of disposing of papers and boxes can be your own mini training session on fire behavior. 

Heredity Versus Environment: Or Why Does Junior Like Fire Trucks?

Heredity versus environment; the debate has gone on for years.  Now why in the world would this be of interest to the fire service?  Primarily because there are so many multi-generational members in the “family” business.  It is an easier question to examine from the desk than from the jumpseat or chief’s car. 

The premise is based on the theory (I don’t think it’s a theory.  I think its damn well a fact) that only a limited number of people in the population possess the innate ability to go into burning buildings.  Accepting that, why then, are so many of them from the same families?

Exposure to the business through visits to the fire station as a kid can certainly enhance the interest level.  That alone doesn’t provide the ability necessary to make the push through the door. 

I’ve seen many second or third generation firefighters—at least they start out to be one—that were total disasters.  So it isn’t something that is automatically passed from generation to generation.  However, the number of times it does happen argues for more than statistical anomaly.

One of the messages from this is that we should look not just externally, but internally as well for recruiting.  Having my son become a firefighter kept me active many more years than I likely would have been otherwise, so it works for retention as well. 

So the answer to the original question of heredity versus environment is…..don’t know—but it is fun to think about.   

 

Oh Where Oh Where Should My Red Light Be...

Warning lights in the 1960s weren’t the high efficiency LED’s or strobes we see today.  A single bulb “Vitalite” was the norm.  Back then, West Corners had a whopping two traffic lights, both of which were relatively new.  Heavy traffic for emergency responders was not a major problem. 

Mom was not a fan of lights on the roof of cars.  She felt they detracted from the looks.  Further, she didn’t even like them on the front dash, arguing they obstructed her vision. 

None of this was much of an issue when Dad was a firefighter, lieutenant, or captain.  We lived less than a mile from the station; one stop sign and two turns away.  When he made Assistant Chief and had to start responding to the scene, things changed. 

A mobile radio—with tubes—was installed in the car.  A miniature manual siren was bolted under the hood.  Neither of these was a problem; it was the red light that was in dispute.   Locating it on the roof was out of the question and her objections regarding the front dash were continued.  The light ended up on the rear deck in the back window of the old Dodge. 

This location was one step above useless.  When parked at a scene, it could be useful, but did little to expedite actually getting there. 

All this changed one fortuitous day when Mom and I happened to be in the car with Dad when a fire call was received.  Dad called out as responding and activated the light on the rear deck and the dinky siren, and attempted to weave his way through what passed as traffic in our little town.   In the front seat, Mom was astounded at the difficulty he experienced. 

“Why won’t these people pull over?” She asked, incredulous over this lack of cooperation, her hands braced o the dash board against the bobbing and weaving of the car.

“Because nobody can see the damn light,” Dad said.  Mom knew better than to continue the conversation while we were enroute to the call.  Meanwhile, I was having a blast in the back seat; seeing the flashes of red bounce in and out of the car and looking for smoke in the sky in front of us. 

Mom and I watched from the car while the incident, nothing serious if memory serves, was handled.  When the fire apparatus was repacked and returning to the station, Dad got back in the car.  Mom had apparently been giving some thought to the ride we took to the scene and her previous position on the location of the red light in the car.  Before Dad had barely settled in to start the ignition, she revealed her decision.

“Rich, put the damn light wherever you want it.” 

Dad didn’t say anything, but before the day was out, the center of the roof was graced with the old single bulb red light.