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Smoke and MirrorsStop calling firefighters "heroes."

By Douglas Gantenbein
Posted Friday, Oct. 31, 2003, at 3:05 PM ET
A cush job, most of the time

When California Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger toured the state's catastrophic wildfires a few days ago, he uttered the phrase that now accompanies any blaze as surely as smoke: "The firefighters are the true heroes."

It's understandable why he said that. As fires go, the California blazes are scary. They are moving incredibly quickly through dried brush and chaparral that practically explode when they ignite, threatening the life of any firefighter nearby. Steven L. Rucker, a 38-year-old firefighter and paramedic for the town of Novato, was killed working to save houses. Elsewhere, thousands of firefighters have worked for hours on end in 95-degree heat, dressed in multiple layers of fire-resistant clothing, sometimes without enough food or water because of the long and shifting supply lines.

Given all that, it may seem churlish to suggest that firefighters might not deserve the lofty pedestal we so insistently place them on. We lionize them, regard them as unsullied by base motivations, see them as paragons of manliness (and very tough womanliness). They're easily our most-admired public servants, and in the public's eye probably outrank just about anyone except the most highly publicized war veterans. But the "hero" label is tossed around a little too often when the subject is firefighting. Here's why:

Firefighting is a cushy job. Firefighters may have the best work schedule in the United States—24 hours on, 48 hours off. And those 24 hours are usually not terribly onerous. While a few big-city fire stations may have four, five, six calls, or more during a shift, most aren't nearly that busy, giving firefighters time to give tours to school kids, barbecue hamburgers, wash fire engines, sleep, and pose for "The Firefighters of [Your City Here], 2004" calendars. Indeed, fire officials devote much of their time to figuring out how to cover up the fact they're not getting the hoses out very often. So we have firefighters doing ambulance work, firefighters doing search-and-rescue work, anything but Job No. 1. Meanwhile, the long days off give many firefighters a chance to start second careers. That makes it easy for them to retire after 20 years, take a pension, and start another profession. I've known firefighters who moonlighted as builders, photographers, and attorneys.

Firefighting isn't that dangerous. Of course there are hazards, and about 100 firefighters die each year. But firefighting doesn't make the Department of Labor's 2002 list of the 10 most dangerous jobs in America. Loggers top that one, followed by commercial fishermen in the No. 2 spot, and general-aviation commercial pilots (crop dusters and the like) at No. 3. Firefighting trails truck-driving (No. 10) in its risks. Pizza delivery drivers (No. 5) have more dangerous jobs than firefighters, statistically speaking. And fatalities, when they occur in firefighting, often are due to heart attacks and other lack-of-fitness problems, not fire. In those cases where firefighters die in a blaze, it's almost always because of some unbelievable screw-up in the command chain. It's been well-documented, for instance, that lousy communication was a huge reason why so many firefighters still were in the burning World Trade Center when it imploded, and well after city police and port authority police had been warned by their own commanders of an imminent collapse and cleared out.

Firefighters are adrenalin junkies. I did mountain rescue work for several years and more than once was praised as a "hero." Oh, give me a break. It was fun and exciting. Firefighting is even more of a rush. Sharon Waxman, in an excellent article in the Washington Post, interviewed firefighters in California. Every one was in a complete lather to get to the next hot spot. "It's almost a slugfest to get in there," one told Waxman. This urge to reach the fire is not entirely altruistic. It sure beats washing that damned fire truck again, for one thing. Plus a big fire is thrilling, plain and simple.

Firefighters have excellent propaganda skills. Firefighters play the hero card to its limit. Any time a big-city firefighter is killed on duty, that city will all but shut down a few days later while thousands of firefighters line the streets for a procession. In July 2001, I witnessed the tasteless spectacle of Washington state firefighters staging a massive public display to "honor" four young people killed in a forest fire (one absurd touch: hook-and-ladder rigs extended to form a huge arch over the entrance to the funeral hall). For the families of the four dead firefighters—three of whom were teens trying to make a few bucks for college—the parade, the solemn speeches, and the quasi-military trappings all were agony. "It's just the firefighters doing their thing," one bystander said to me later with a shrug.

Firefighters are just another interest group. Firefighters use their heroic trappings to play special interest politics brilliantly. It is a heavily unionized occupation. Nothing's wrong with that, but let's not assume they're always acting in anything but their own best interests. In Seattle not long ago a squabble broke out between police and firefighters when both were called to the scene of a capsized dinghy in a lake. The firefighters put a diver in the water, a police officer on the scene ordered him out to make way for a police team, and all hell broke loose (yes, the cops were at fault, too). The dispute wasn't over public safety, it was over who got the glory. New York firefighters, admittedly deep in grief over lost co-workers, exacerbated the challenge of body recovery operations after 9/11 by insisting on elaborate removal procedures for each firefighter uncovered, an insult to others who died there. Not long before that, in Boston, a special commission released a scathing report that detailed a 1,600-member fire department up to its bunker gear in racism, sexism, and homophobia. Since then the department has bitterly resisted reform efforts.

None of this is meant to dispute that firefighters are valuable to the communities in which they work. They are. But our society is packed with unheralded heroes—small-town physicians, teachers in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, people who work in dirty, dangerous jobs like coal-mining to support a family. A firefighter plunging into a burning house to retrieve a frightened, smoke-blinded child is a hero. But let's save the encomiums for when they are truly deserved, not when they just show up to do their job.

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Douglas Gantenbein is the Seattle correspondent for the Economist.
Photograph of wildfire in Simi Valley, Calif., by Robyn Beck/Agence France Presse.
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Remarks from the Fray:

I agree with Douglas Ganterbein's statement in "Smoke and Mirrors" that the
'hero' label is tossed around a little too often when the subject is firefighting, especially since the World Trade Center disaster. Many points he makes in support of this statement are cruel and inaccurate generalizations of firefighters and their work environment.

Cushy job: City firefighters work a 42 to 56 hour workweek on a rotating shift schedule. While that may be "the best work schedule in the United States," it also means that the firefighters are working during holidays and important family events. That means many missed Christmases and children's birthday parties. It may be one of the few work schedules where the employee will be forced to remain on duty for an additional 12 hours if his/her replacement did not report for work.

Gantenbein diminishes the emergency incident workload in a 24-hour workday. His statement that "a few big city fire stations may have four, five or six calls . . . most aren't nearly that busy" is not accurate. Using 2002 statistics from the Seattle Fire Department, the AVERAGE workload for an engine company was 4.9 responses a day. Five of the engine companies handle more than 8.5 emergencies a day. Phoenix, Dallas, Chicago and New York have fire companies with double that workload. Eighteen of the 50 engine companies in Los Angeles City handle ten to 17 responses a day.

Gantenbein is correct; the frequency of fires has declined since the 1960's. His statement "fire officials devote much of their time to figuring out how to cover up the fact that there are not getting the hoses out very often" is both cruel and false. Expanding the role of firefighters into emergency medical services, hazardous materials response/abatement, public education/outreach and other non-hose handling duties has been a core and high profile activity in developing an all-hazards emergency service.

As a local government agency, the fire department responds to the community needs. The Seattle Fire Department took a 1970 experimental paramedic program that started with the Harborview Medical Center and University of Washington. The fire department built the Medic 1 program into an internationally recognized program with an enviable heart attack resuscitation rate.

Most big city fire departments are the prime provider of paramedic first responder and ambulance service. Responding to medical emergencies and accidents represents 40 to 80% of a fire department's emergency response workload. The first responders show up on fire trucks.

Dangerous: Gantenbein is correct, 40 of the 100 firefighters who die in the line of duty every year are due to cardiac related problems. Most of those are over-40, smoke and are outta-shape. But not all. Some are young firefighters who, like college athletes, have an unrecognized defect found during the autopsy. Others are the sixty-to-eighty year olds that continue to volunteer their services in the community. They are part of the one million volunteer firefighters that serve their community.

In 1997, the International Association of Fire Fighters (union) and the International Association of Fire Chiefs developed a Wellness-Fitness Initiative to address the need for holistic and non-punitive approach to wellness and fitness. Ten fire departments, including Seattle and New York, developed and delivered a candidate physical aptitude test (CPAT) for pre-employment testing. The fitness level for many of the 250,000
career firefighters is improving.

The danger of dying in a burning building - a rate that has remained the same for decades 888 is compounded with the dangers of work-related infection of Hepatitis C and, to a much lower extent, AIDS. Public safety folks, police-EMS-fire, are the front line canaries on any potential chemical, biological, or radioactive incident.

Ganterbein's statement "In those cases where firefighters die in a blaze, it's almost always because of some unbelievable screw-up in the command chain," is another cruel and inaccurate generalization. Multiple independent and federal agencies with subject matter experts conduct formal investigations after a firefighter dies in a fire. One federal agency
Is the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; another is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The National Fire Protection Association and the International Association of Fire Fighters may also conduct investigations. Screw-ups occur, but Ganterbein's sweeping assertion is not supported by the structural firefighter fatality reports. Most of the line-of-duty investigations are public documents.

Propaganda skills: I acknowledge that Gantenbein felt that the line-of-duty funeral he observed was tasteless. Paid or volunteer, firefighters work within a rich tradition that includes some ceremonies and activities that may seem excessive. I feel bad if the ceremony was agony for the parents and friends of the dead teenaged wild land firefighters. Most communities ask the next of kin if they want a fire department funeral or a private service.

I have never read or heard about a firefighter funeral that will shut a city down for a few days, it is more like a few hours. Big turnouts, pageantry and long processions are a common feature of all public safety line-of-duty deaths. I do not think the funeral ceremony was designed or planned to serve as a propaganda scheme. I find that concept offensive.

Interest group: Turf wars between different public safety agencies, like the Seattle water rescue example, are common. It is not pretty, professional or heroic. Firefighters are passionate, action-oriented people that are a little compulsive. They look at things as right or wrong, dead or alive. As Gantenbein discovered, some of the 1.3 million
firefighters can quickly become a thuggish on-line mob.

The first of over 100 posts to the Slate.com discussion site showed up within a minute of the piece's posting on the web site on Friday. I appreciate Ganterbein's tenacity, staying on the Slate discussion board from Sunday night until early Monday morning. He was providing almost 50 responses to angry firefighter posts.

A post by Gantenbein by Sunday evening summarized the content of most of the firefighter responses:

"This has become painfully obvious: You people are crazy. The bullying, the intimidation, the obscenities, posting personal information and inciting people to "go get him," the effort here to "get even" by harassing people who had nothing to do with this -- all of this says far more about the "profession" of firefighting than anything I could have said or written. Children who have gotten their way too long are what you are.
Children."

A few minutes later, he provided a bulleted list of what he learned from this experience:

"Firefighters cannot tolerate criticism. Firefighters will bully, threaten and intimidate in an effort to "get their way." Firefighters believe getting even is a perfectly appropriate way to express displeasure. Firefighters speak mainly in obscenities. Firefighters cannot spell."

Firefighters are a passionate lot, they self-select into this lifestyle. They had a severe reaction to the cruel statements posted in this opinion piece. Six and a half hours after the children post, Gantenbein posted:

"Am sitting here in wide-awake amazement at the world of firefighting. A few reasonable people, plus a bunch o' nuts."

Unfortunately, the worst nuts were the angry firefighters that posted personal information about Gantenbein and his family, including home address and phone number. Some went so far as to call his house and threaten to burn it down. That behavior is inexcusable, and probably a felony in Washington State.

Gantenbein has a right to express his opinion in any way he sees fit. I agree with his primary point that the 'hero' label is tossed around a little too often when the subject is firefighting. The label should be reserved for those who do heroic work, including coal-miners, small town physicians and inner-city schoolteachers.

In *my* opinion he used cruel and inaccurate generalizations of firefighters and their work environment. I appreciated your permission to use the article as a reading for my leadership and supervision classes. It is a point-of-view that I wanted my students to hear and consider.

Michael J. Ward. MS, MIFireE
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine
The George Washington University
http://www.gwumc.edu/ems/ward.html
Fire Science Program Head
Northern Virginia Community College
Annandale, VA

Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, 1975 - 2000.

(To respond, click here)

(11/06)

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