Somebody’s Watchin’

As a firefighter, you’re always on display

Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched? Whether you do or don’t, you should. Because you are, no matter where you go or what you do.

Around Thanksgiving last year, a friend of mine—we’ll call him Dave—approached me and said he saw something that he thought was really cool. Dave was driving down the freeway in a big city and noticed what he thought was a police car pulled over on the side of the road, helping a lady change her tire.

When Dave passed, he noticed the police car was actually a squad (or a chief’s car, or whatever you call it where you’re from) from a fire department. Dave thought it was really cool that the fire department would stop to help someone, especially in a city 200 miles away from the city the squad was from.

That single instance made a lasting impression on Dave, and it changed his view of the fire service. He, like a bunch of our fellow citizens (me included), grew up in a time where it was perceived—right or wrong—that if you saw a fire truck, it was at a fire. And if you saw firefighters who weren’t at a fire, they were in the apparatus bay throwing dominoes.

The moral of Dave’s story: Wherever you are, if you can be identified in any way with a fire department—you’re driving a department vehicle, wearing a department shirt, flashing your badge, or simply sporting a department decal on your POV—you are representing the fire service, not just your department. Right or wrong, your attitude and actions will reflect on both yourself and the fire service.

Note: Dave sends a shout out to the Sweetwater (Texas) Fire Department for its personnel’s actions in helping that lady and changing his views.

As a side note: My conversation with Dave prompted me to recall a lesson from a Gordon Graham seminar. A fire crew returning from a call noticed a car on the side of the road that wasn’t there when they’d traveled the same road on the way to the call. The company officer “had a feeling” and asked the engineer to stop so they could check it out. Sure enough, the driver of the car was slumped in the driver’s seat. That officer’s decision to stop, and his crew’s actions, saved the driver of that vehicle. From that day forward, it became department policy to stop at all vehicles on the side of the road unless they were already identified by law enforcement as abandoned.

Remember: Your actions do make a difference, in people’s opinions of the fire department and sometimes, in their lives.

Scott Cook is the former chief of the Granbury (Texas) Volunteer Fire Department and a fire service instructor. He’s also a member of FireRescue’s editorial board.