Firefighting is not black and white
There is no question that Social Media has made our world a lot smaller. It has become a powerful tool for every industry in the world, and without a doubt the Fire Service is included in that. Social media has connected firefighter in ways that could have never happened before. Building relationships is what will make the brotherhood and sisterhood stronger. In my opinion, that’s something that is truly needed.
Social media has allowed us to bounce training and tactic ideas or opinions off each other. Whether it’s in the comments of a YouTube video, or in a photo on facebook, there is always information from fellow firefighters about how things should and should not be done. A lot of it is very valuable information, but a lot of it is also very negative and not conducive to building a strong bond among firefighters.
One thing I have learned in my 18 years in the fire service is that nothing about firefighting is black and white. Since the invention of social media, it is plain to see that there are many different tactics all around the world to meet our objectives in the fire service. It appears though, that a lot of us have failed to see it or accept it.
Firefighting is not black and white. What works for one fire department may not work for the next fire department. Terminology in the northeast United States may not be the same terminology that is used in Western Canada.
It is so easy to look around social media and see members of the fire service criticizing other members of the fire service based on the sole notion that the tactics used in an incident aren’t the way another would perform them. Who are we to judge?
The keyboard warriors, facebook firefighters, Monday morning quarterbacks, or whatever you want to call them, are doing no service to anybody by picking apart every single image or video that surfaces on social media. First of all, you don’t know the entire story. That fact alone should be enough to stop the bad-mouthing but you know as well as I do that it doesn’t.
Volunteer, career, fully staffed, short staffed, rural, urban, suburban, wildland interface…we all have what works for us. The fact that an understaffed volunteer fire department can overcome their lack of help to successfully extinguish a fire by using slightly different tactics, being resourceful and thinking outside the box should be applauded, not criticized.
Some of you may not like this, but we’re all doing the same job. We may be all doing it a little differently, but we’re all doing the same job. So what can you, the reader, do to reverse this trend of bringing people down? Think before you comment. Leave the facebook groups dedicated to bashing (yes, they exists). Create your own training group and training content with a positive spin. Better yourself first. Open your eyes and have an open mind to other ways.
Yes, there are some basic functions and skills that should be done uniformly across the board, but that doesn’t limit the ability for us to think outside the box and use the resources available to us.
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