FREE ESSAY ON THE UNITSED ATES FIE FIGHTER TODAY

THE UNITSED ATES FIE FIGHTER TODAY

THE UNITED STATES
FIREFIGHTER TODAY
By
Paul Newhook
Firefighting is one of the world's most honored but hazardous occupations. It is the duty
of every fire department to practice life safety, incident stabilization, and property
conservation. 
Whenever and wherever an emergency arises, the fire department is one of the first called
and to respond. In today's fire service the fire department has an expanded roll that
involves more than just fires. The emergencies involve accidents, aircraft crashes, water
rescues, hazardous materials, civil disturbances, explosions, and medical emergencies.
The list is never ending and always expanding. Firefighters are involved with all types
of people and are appreciated by some and scorned by others. They are expected to calmly
evaluate the problem and bring it to a successful conclusion. Firefighters are not
extraordinary- they are ordinary people places in extraordinary situations. Bringing any
emergency situation to a safe conclusion requires knowledge, ability, and skill. Because
of this fire fighters need to be trained to a higher standard today than they did in
years past. 
Fire fighters enter into three categories: Career, Paid on call, or Volunteer. Career
personnel are persons who are salaried. Paid-on-call firefighters receive reimbursement
for each call they attend. Volunteer fire departments and their firefighters greatly
outnumber career departments and their firefighters. Canandaigua Fire department is a
hybrid between Career and Volunteer fire Fighters, and it has a very successful
combination.
Today almost a quarter of the United States population live in rural communities. For
many of these Americans, fire protection is inadequate. Suburban communities such as
Canandaigua whose political institutions and community services have not kept pace with
the rapid population, Commercial and industrial growth. Rural and suburban areas often
have many problems: insufficient water supply, lack of codes, to few inspectors to
enforce them, insufficient funds to pay and hire firefighters and replace equipment. Even
with strong volunteer fire departments, such as Canandaigua, they still have a delay for
manpower to the scene and during the workday have a shortage of firefighters.
According to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the fire fatality rate for
Americans in non-metropolitan areas if half again as great as the rate for Americans in
metropolitan areas. Even the best fire equipment, properly placed, cannot function with
out well-trained firefighters. While Canandaigua Fire department receives excellent
training and is held to high standards we are the exception not the rule.
There are other duties to firefighting that do not involve emergencies and that involve
fire prevention and education. Deuel Richardson stated," A significant factor in
contributing to the cause and spread of fire is human failure- failure to recognize
hazards and take adequate preventive measures, failure to act intelligently at the
outbreak of the fire, failure to take action which would limit damage. " These failures
can only be limited through education. Day in and day out firefighters out see the
evidence of human failure. The prevention of fires due to human carelessness in not all
that fire safety education can hope to accomplish. Many fires cased by faulty equipment
rather than carelessness could be prevented if people were educated in how to recognize
the hazards.
Now the overview of the inherently dangerous job of firefighting is a broad spectrum, but
how do you measure success. What is a successful fire department? What makes it
successful? And what can be changed to make a fire department more successful. These are
all obligatory questions asked by many town and city council members, but how do you
measure fire protection. When does a fire department become most important to you, when
you call 911. Most people assume that when they call 911 that they will no matter what
the time have the "highest trained" firefighters and paramedics show up to their
emergency. Well in most cases that is not true. Sit and listen to the scanner and you
will here calls go unanswered during the day and calls get repeated. In Canandaigua we
have a luxury of having firefighter/ EMT's that are in house most shifts and at the
beginning of the year every shift. But does that make us successful as a fire department?

Today's firefighter has to be better educated than yesterday. The fires and emergencies
are different and require greater skill and training to be successful. Now what does this
all mean, today's firefighter needs to be better educated, be able to look at data and
community response and interpret the data and see if we are doing a good job. We also
need to be community spokes people with education and prevention discussions trying to
prevent fires and tragedies.