America Burning: Review

While all three of the documents listed numerous similarities between them, they also went into depth about some issues that the others did not. Among the similarities noted all three of the documents mentioned fire prevention & education, training, and being accountable. These documents listed the ways that we can educated the public, both young and old on how to prevent fires, in and around the home, school, and office. They stressed the need for fire drills, educational seminars, and site safety programs. At some point all of the documents addressed the need for sprinkles in buildings, both large and small, or wherever you will have a congregation of people. Since these documents have been made public, many communities across the United States have taken a stand and created public safety campaigns, school safety programs, and other means to educate the public on how to prevent fires. The National Fire Protection Association has even established the second week in October of every year as Fire Prevention Week. During this week fire prevention is stressed in almost every community across the US for both the young and old.

The documents also listed the need for training for everyone, from firefighters and school teachers to administrators and family members. Your fire knowledge can only be as good as the training or education that you have received. Firefighters are Americas first line of defense to almost all hazards/ emergencies, yet they lack training across the board. As with anything else, training can cost money, which most rural departments cant afford. There are grants, seminars, and others means for obtaining training or money for training.

Accountability. I think that you can create all of the documents in the world, do all of the studies that you want, conduct all of the surveys and compile statistics that you want, but what good are they if there is nothing done about them. Yea sure it takes money to solve most of our problems in the fire service, but apparently there was enough money for some propeller head to say to his or her committee, hey lets get an outfit in here, pay �em lots of money so that they can tell us that we don’t have a good fire prevention program, we don’t do enough training, we don’t have enough staffing, and all of our equipment is outdated. Agreed that you can make data say anything that you want, but if your not preventing fires, if you not training, if you don’t have enough staffing and if your not getting the latest and greatest fire equipment you know it! These things need to be pushed from the fire chief, city or town mayor, county Board of Supervisors, or whom ever is in charge. Be proactive instead of reactive with all of the knee jerk reactions. All three of these reports listed a number figure that fires took away from us,