It seems that not only Congress and the Senate can divide a unity, but when your administration and the county governments are beginning to really clash, You begin to question which one is going to win and what outcome may derive from it. Me, personally, I've dealt with one hostile takeover in my "career" already, I don't really want to have to deal with another one. Watching the battle royale go down between my administration and the County administration is kind of like watching a debate between Republicans and Democrats. You know that the two sides are going to dig their nails in until the other one gives, both are gonna stay really pissed off, and until things are resolved...it's only going to get bad for your people. Personally, I see it as a relationship. Even though it's simply a professional business relationship, there are still two sides to the argument that need to come to a desired ending in favor of the people. With any relationship, there's always some sort of sacrifice to be made, I think that a compromise on both ends would be ideal in this situation to come to a happy medium so that we can all get back to doing our jobs.
Thinking back on something that happened this weekend made me remember a story of a call I went on a few years ago. It was in the late evening hours on a weekday, My girlfriend at the time and I were returning from somewhere we had gone down the road. We were getting ready for bed when I realized that my radio had been off the entire time it took us to walk from the truck to the apartment. I immediately turned it on, just knowing that there was a call I had missed and that everyone was returning to the station. Quite the contrary, in fact. My department had been called to a house fire and the central end of the area that we occupied (The larger portion of what our area is now). They had not yet arrived on scene, so I had a working fire that I was able to go to. Getting out of city limits, when you can't run lights, is a pain in the ass. The fire didn't consume too much of the house, but the heat damage that was done to the inside was enough to make it uninhabitable for the rest of the night at least. Conducting overhaul on this house prove to be a difficult task because of the materials that the walls were made out of. The person who had renovated this house placed sheet rock over the existing plywood walls on the interior. This was made quite apparent of the ceiling as well when one of the firefighters nearly popped his shoulder out of place trying to pull ceiling down. The floor, however, wasn't as structurally sound as the walls and ceiling were. This was found out the hard way.
I was helping out with overhaul, which was going about as well as a snail race in the winter. Someone had already made a nice hole in the floor near the front door because of the aging material and high heat of the fire that had already been put out. We were told, as we were coming in, to avoid the hole that had already been made. We listened. The next thing I know, I am waist deep in the floor looking up at my other two firemen that I had brought in with me...wondering how the hell I got there. No big deal though, I wasn't hurt and neither was anyone else. I'm guessing that one of the firemen heard the wood break behind him and realized that I had fallen through floor, because he turned around and frantically came over to me almost hollering "are you okay are you okay?" Yeah, dude, I'm fine... chill, just help me the hell out of the floor. You could tell that he hadn't been in the fire service all that long from his reaction. Had that been anyone else that I normally worked with, they would've had to pick themselves up off the floor and quit laughing before they were able to help me out.
This past weekend, we responded to a medical call near my house. Everything was going like it pretty much normally goes on a medical call where the patient can walk to the ambulance on their own. I positioned myself outside, on the porch, in order to assist the paramedic with his escort of the patient to stretcher. I felt part of the porch give under my weight when I stepped in between two of the porch frame boards. Figuring that it would give even more to add weight to the already aged wood, I took a step sideways to keep so much weight from one certain area. Escorted by the paramedic, the patient stepped out onto the porch, heading for the stretcher. 2 steps from the front door, I felt confident that the porch itself was going to hold up to the weight, at least for the short time that we were going to be on it. I was wrong. Without warning, the half of the porch on my end separated from the house. Keep in mind, we are about 5 feet off the ground. My side of the porch dropped about a foot and a half, hanging on by a thread at the other end. In a situation like that, you can't really prepare yourself to take evasive action unless you hear the wood break from under you beforehand. You just have to roll with the punches and pray to God that the ground is soft.
When it looks like things are taking a turn for the worse in your organization, you must remain a team. Without teamwork, we may not be able to complete the objectives as effectively as we would if we were operating normally. Teamwork is key in the fire service. You have to know beyond a shadow of the doubt that the man that you is going to have your back. Keep this in mind when things seem to be going downhill for your organization, or for a particular set of firefighters inside the organization. Look at it like that porch. If built right, if things are held together tight enough, the structure will be sound against weight. If the structure begins to lose its integrity, if things begin to separate....the structure will collapse under enough weight. Just as that porch caved under ours.
Until next time, Keep fighting the good fight.
-Lt Will
No comments:
Post a Comment