Welcome to 2009: Whenever I’m about to do something, I think “would an idiot do that?” and if they would, I do not do that thing.

With the slightest bit of dilly-dallying, the dawn of the new year has nearly completed its global circle. It looks like we might make it through 2008 with *only* 114* LODD's, down from 118 last year and the second-lowest since LODD criteria were changed in 2004. I'll spare you boilerplate "wear your seatbelt, don't eat so many cheeseburgers" lectures and instead remind you that, ultimately, you have to choose how much you want to live/how willing you are to die. Since the vast majority of us run EMS calls I am sure we can all agree that people who make acutely poor choices wind up dead or maimed and people who make chronically bad decisions wind up not being able to take care of themselves. We need to recognize (meaning realize AND internalize AND believe) that our actions are just as real and that we should avoid making bad decisions.

So do you want to be a bed-ridden case for the necessity of four-man staffing at public assist calls? Do you want to give your brothers and sisters years of nightmares about having to pull your ass out of a collapsed vacant business? Or do you want to lose sleep every night for the rest of your life because of your aching joints and muscles thanks to bouncing your face off the windshield?

There is nothing heroic about being dead for no good reason and there's nothing cool about living your life in pain. So let's all try to bring the level of stupidity down to an irreducible minimum this year. As Dwight Schrute said, "Whenever I’m about to do something, I think “would an idiot do that?” and if they would, I do not do that thing."

So that's my safety soapbox. This a blog about homeland security AND the fire service, but occasionally it will digress slightly into one or the other, as it has here.

*Edit- A career firefighter in Georgia was killed last night en route to a structure fire when his apparatus rolled over less than half an hour before midnight.

Threat Forecast: The next five years

The big HLS talk around Christmas has been the leak of an FOUO (For Official Use Only) report from DHS on the threat environment over the next five years. The AP ran the story, helpfully noting that these sorts of reports are usually distributed to "law enforcement, intelligence officials and the private sector."

This is illustrative of my point about the fire service failing to engage the professional community. If we are the ones who will respond for mitigation purposes, then why are we not included in the discussion about the trends we will face in the future? We talk about what the car companies will introduce in their airbags, crumple zones, and electrical systems over the next several model years and we talk about all the new and shocking ways the construction industry exposes us to danger. We need to be in on these conversations because we are the ones who will be in the thick of things at every one of these incidents, closest to the hazard and with the most pressing responsibilities. The homeland security community neglects the vital first 12 hours of response, before elaborate federal and state plans can come into play and regional and national resources can make the scene. In that interval between disaster and meaningful assistance from the guys with the big budgets (and authority), will our fire departments be able to function?

One common criticism of military strategy is that it focuses too much on "preparing for the last war." Are we preparing for 9/11 (v.2)? Or OKC2.0? Are we preparing at all?

The AP report is worth reading, as is Dr. Walid Phares's analysis. Most of the information is more important for law enforcement and the intel world, but what is salient to the fire service, very briefly, is that we should prepare for:

1. Biowarfare attacks
2. Cyberattacks

What #1 and #2 have in common, for our purposes, is that they pose existential threats to our continuity of operations. These themes will be revisited time and again here and will be taken up in greater detail in the near future.

Welcome

I am starting this blog to explore and expound upon the nexus of the fire service and homeland security. There are a lot of blogs addressing homeland security, homeland defense, public health, the fire service, security politics, and other related topics, but none of them satisfactorily explores the common ground between them. This is part of what I see as a larger failure on the part of the fire service to engage academically and professionally in areas affecting its key roles.

This blog will talk about what "homeland security" means to the fire service and what the fire service means to homeland security. We, as firefighters, are losing ground to the law enforcement community. We are losing ground to the emergency management community. We are losing ground to the politicians. Overall, we are losing our proportional slice even as the pie grows larger, not because the cops or politicians are evil, but because we have not provided a coherent and compelling argument of our own. To maintain our rightful place in the emergency response world we have to engage, academically and professionally; I sincerely hope this blog fulfills a small role in that fight.

I'll also explore some general interest stuff, the politics of homeland security, and probably get on and off a soapbox or two now and then. I hope to bring some of my associates on board to contribute some other perspectives once this gets rolling.

Finally, I wish to assure the reader that everything I write and do here is out of love and devotion to the fire service. Please talk back and let me know what you are thinking.