Learning

I'm learning more and more, with each incident that I manage, just how frightening incident command can be when you're doing it on your own. Accidents, Car fires and woods fires are different, those come easy to me. Accidents are a gathering of information and deploying resources. Sometimes tht information takes a bit to gather. Car fires are relatively easy depending on the type of vehicle. Woods fires get a little complex when they start to grow in size and get away from you. They will begin to involve houses, businesses, and major roadways if not caught in time. Sometimes, this is unavoidable. You just have to deploy your resources as best as you can and wait. Any type of structure fire, however, is where it can get scary. You've got lives in your hands, lives that you cannot see all the time. Conditions can change within minutes and you have to be able to change your strategy with it. What's scary is that you don't always know exactly what these guys are looking at. You put trust in their skill and knowledge, hoping that all goes to plan. 

Typically, a company officer's duties as incident commander are only for the initial set up of the incident. After a captain or battalion chief arrives, the company officer can form his team and tend to his duties inside. Sometimes, he may be able to hang out outside with the other officer, leaving the very capable firemen inside to tackle the objective. The company officer trusts the team and their judgement when handling these duties while he is not present. I try to remember that my job isn't always to run the scene; but to lead a team into an incident, handle the assignments, and bring them all back out. Sometimes, however, there's not a more experienced officer around to handle a scene or I'm the first one that arrives. These times, it all falls in my hands. Not to toot my own horn, but I've looked back on some of my most recent commanding on incidents, and I've been somewhat proud of myself for the distance I've come in 5 years. I'm slowly getting better by the day. 

I've noticed that the chief will sometimes gear up and fight fire, leaving me in charge. I've often wondered why he does this. Talking with one of the paid firemen the other day (one that used to be an officer), we spoke of incidents such as these. We talked about chiefs in other areas and how you will rarely see a city white helmet actually suit up and fight fire. You are even less likely to see the fire chief or deputy chiefs, themselves, on a fire unless something had gone wrong. The white helmets job is generally command. It made me realize that, ultimately, if he trusts my judgement and leadership, he feels comfortable with letting me handle situations and will go play in the fire some. It feels good knowing my judgement is trusted. 

As I had predicted, my girl from the beach has took off again. No warning, no conversation, no pissy text messages or Facebook posts....just gone. Not like I'm surprised though, I figured it would turn out this way again. Probably why I didn't hold my breath on her actually being serious with me. She'll more than likely be back, but if not, then maybe this back and forth thing we've had for years will be done. Can't say it doesn't suck though, I have always looked forward to what our future would look like. So I've gone back to being able to do whatever I want again. 

It's summertime in the south. Kids are out of school, weather is warmer, the beaches are filling up, and the water feels good. This also means that people are out in their yards and properties, cleaning up and clearing off. Alot of calls are generated from someone doing some type of work. And this isn't just woods fires and general complaints, this will happen with structure fires too. This also means he related emergencies. I've encountered at least five patients that would have probably not needed a hospital trip had they taken the time to consume more water. It's getting easier to motivate our crew to drink more water, because I am needing to do the same thing. I already don't drink enough water during the day, so when I get done fighting a fire, I find myself trying to make up for the water I didn't take in earlier while replacing what I just lost doing the work. I am a work in progress, I can't have it right all the time or even right away. I can, however, continue to work on my skills and keep them sharpened as much as possible. 

Never stop learning.