By

Regardless of a department’s size or type, the training program for it is the cornerstone of both safety and operational efficiency. Just as how an individual’s success in training can be the difference between life and death, a department’s overall training program can affect...

Have you ever been on a call where three Chiefs, two engine companies, and a truck company all arrive on scene at the same time? And without any organized plan of attack, everyone just looks at one another to see what’s actually going on. Situations like this can cause a lot of...

We often fall into the trap of assuming the citizens within our protection area only need us when there is an emergency. The reality is that in today’s fire service, we can offer far more to the public than just jumping on the truck when the tones go off. Sometimes these...

Rural water supply encompasses more than just the challenges of bringing water to the location of the fire. The available water on hand, coupled with the immediate availability of water on the next arriving engines, often drives initial fire attack strategy in a rural setting....

Writing department guidelines we will hold our members accountable to and expect them to follow is not an easy task and sometimes requires a little bit of trial and error to get it right. It’s a challenging, labor intensive, and mind numbing job that in today’s fire service is a...

We have established where the water supply point will be and determined the need for additional resources on the call. Our next major challenge is determining the best attack strategy — based on the water we have on hand and how soon we can have additional water on scene....

Leadership Tip #3 – Be Supportive & Appreciative As leaders in the volunteer fire service we have the unique challenge of managing our community of volunteers to do a job most people would never consider doing. We ask them to leave family functions, make training, and...

Consistency is a very important of solid functional leadership. However, without good solid communication nobody will know if we are being consistent or not, and even if we are the membership may be getting the wrong message. #2 – Communicate Communicate, and communicate...

The success or failure of leadership boils down to how functional that leadership is. Crews on career fire departments may rarely interact on a personal or professional level with anybody above the rank of Battalion Chief. On volunteer departments, the Chief is very likely to be...

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Forestry Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and many state agencies offer fire service grants for everything from apparatus to station buildings to bunker gear. In many cases, we are competing for funding with hundreds...