BobbieOnFire

If you’re reading this, I hope you know that our society is at a crossroads. We’re at a point that the largest wildland firefighting force… the US Forest Service is hemorrhaging firefighters right now. And they may be about to lose many more. Did you know that our federal firefighters are some of the lowest paid firefighters in the country. Yes, that’s right. The firefighters on those federal fire engines and hotshots crews and smokejumpers and rappellers… yea they normally make less than most of the other personnel assigned to a wildfire. And that includes everyone in a support role back in camp. Listen in to this episode and do what you can to support your federal wildland firefighters. Join Grassroots Wildland Fire Fighters and be an advocate. Or if you’re an employee, also join the union. It’s going to be a rough ride ahead.

Going to a fallen firefighter memorial ceremony is always an emotional event. There’s no way it can’t be. But what should a memorial look like? I recently attended the re-dedication of the Dude Fire Memorial not far from Payson Arizona. It made me think hard about memorial ceremonies I’d been to over my long career. Even though it was a re-dedication, there was never an original dedication. There had been no funerals with bagpipes. No procession of engines. No rows of firefighters standing in their dress uniforms. I have some strong opinions about the firefighter memorials that we have for our fallen brothers and sisters. Please listen in and let me know what you think.

Have you gotten used to being in risky situations? Maybe things that seemed risky when you were less experienced, don’t seem so bad anymore. Is that because now you’re more knowledgable and are aware of the mitigations being taken for your safety? Or maybe it’s because you’ve done something so many times that it just doesn’t seem scarey anymore. Listen in to this podcast and think about how your thinking has changed over the years. Let’s not just be students of fire. Let’s be students of our own thinking. Thanks for listening.

Have you ever had a problem with your reputation? I have. I had long and successful career in the fire service and yet I’ve had plenty of times when people spread rumors about me. Some of those negative stories were true. But some of them were absolutely false. What should I have done about it? What should you do about it when it happens to you. Because you know it will. I left an entire agency for many years in part due to false stories being told about me. I’ve heard plenty of experiences from young firefighters who’ve had similar experiences. And it’s not just young firefighters who this can happen to. I know a competetent Chief 1 who struggled with this same thing. Listen in to this story to get some perspective about how we might deal with a negative narrative being told about us.

Sometimes, we as leaders think an employees question is a threat to our authority. They may be trying to learn, but their curiosity can be squashed by how we respond. Our body language and the words we use are critical. You might not realize it but you have a direct impact on your organizations learning culture. How we react can filter down through the entire organization effecting how everyone responds to simple questions or providing perspective and input. The culture we create is critical for the learning environment that our employees and co-workers are living and working in.

Listen in to this story and decide for yourselves – what you think about it.

For many of you, risk management is a common phrase that you’ve hear a thousand times a summer. But in the wildland fire service, it hasn’t been that long that we’ve even used that term. We didn’t start talking about risk management until about 2008 in the US Forest Service. We understood the concept but we weren’t all speaking the same language. Listen in today as Curtis Heaton and I talk about risk management in the wildland fire service.

Have you ever felt like a failure? How about just having failed from time to time? In this episode, we talk about what it means to fail versus what it means to merely make a mistake. The difference may be our ability to learn from our mistakes. But how do we learn from our mistakes? Is it easy to do? I think our attitude is everything. Listen in today and get some insights from a couple old firefighters about how we learn from our mistakes and succeed.

If you’re a firefighter, have you ever felt isolated from those friends and family members who aren’t firefighters? I never realized how different I was until I retired and wasn’t around as many firefighters. I would anxiously wait until some of my firefighter friends showed up for a visit. Being around my firefighter friends made me feel “normal” again. Otherwise I was around people my age who were retired but had led very different lives than me. This story is about how we cope, how we survive and how we thrive… and as I’ve often said, this job is not for everyone. Be safe.

Why do we have accidents? Sure, we have a dangerous profession. But are accidents just the inevitable results of a perilous environment? I hope you don’t think so. We can and should look for ways to avoid injuries and worse for our personnel. In this story, Curtis Heaton and I talk about a couple issues on three historical fatality fires. I hope you listen and then think about what you might do in a similar circumstance. Remember we can’t improve performance if we don’t study and make changes.

Thanks for listening but don’t forget to read my memoir, Both Sides Of The Fire Line, available at your favorite bookstore.

Todays podcast is an interview with Riva Duncan, the Vice President of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters Organization. She’ll talk about the Presidents proposed 2024 budget and all that it might mean for our federal wildland firefighters as well as the promised permanent changes in pay grades and job classifications. Tune in and hear the latest that could have long lasting impacts on all of the firefighting community.