When I heard this phrase on drill night I thought it was too good to pass up. My temptation toward philosophical analogies got the better of me. I had to unwrap this fire fighting strategy in order to take it to a different place, nonetheless as applicable. When I first heard it I asked Ted, who made the presentation, “Can you give me an example of a scenario when you have jump out the window?”
Ted was very wise. While not giving me a 100% strategic dogma, he expounded on the scenario of someone checking the grounds of a fire with much difficulty because of the smoke and flames, which also continued their rapid devouring holocaust. He also made a point that sometimes you do have to do it in order to check for life. The latter exception aside, the original scenario is a very good idea not only for fire fighting but also for community issues. A few months ago I attended a lecture by Tiger Shmitterndoorf’. But he was talking about the need to extinguish the “fires” in the fire house. At the time I wrote an article connecting that principle with what happened to Nicole Mittendorff, a 31-year-old Fairfax County firefighter. Virginia State Police officers discovered her body in Shenandoah National Park along with a suicide note. Somehow something happened at the station and the fire, while maybe addressed, was not put out first which caused Nicole to ‘jump out’. We fight many problems/fires in our lives. In fact, fighting problems/fires is something everybody does, from the people in government to our own family at dinner table. We often try to find the cause of the problem/fire, or even pin the blame on someone, while everything is smokey, hot and confused. While we do that, the problem/fire continues raging in our homes and lives. Maybe this is after all also a good life strategy. If we put out the fire right in the first place, not only we will be able to clearly fix the problem, find the responsible elements, and no-one will have to ‘jump out the window’. I wonder what it looks like to ‘put out the fire right in the first place, so someone doesn’t have to jump out the window’. It probably looks different every time, but it is a very good advice.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
If you appreciate these articles, support their upcoming publication in a book called, "REFLECTIONS OF A FIRE CHAPLAIN"
|