BY BOBBY HALTON
There are two very clear trends on which we must continually focus if we are to make an impact on our profession. One trend is the rate of firefighter deaths during interior structural firefighting, where we face incredibly complex dynamics. Tragically, a much less complicated and more behaviorally influenced trend is our motor vehicle accident death rate; the rate of occurrence has remained virtually unchanged for 30 years.
A recent National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) study from 1997 to 2007 identified 148 deaths of on-duty firefighters that occurred in 133 motor vehicle accidents. The report showed that more than two-thirds of the victims, 101 firefighters, were volunteer firefighters; 22 were career firefighters; and the remaining 25 were various types of fire contractors. Investigating the 133 crashes, the NFPA discovered that 106 of the crashes, accounting for 119 of the deaths, occurred responding to or returning from alarms; the other 27 crashes were not related to emergency responses. According to the statistics, almost all the crashes were single-fatality incidents. Of the 133 crashes, one-third, resulting in 50 of the deaths, were firefighters in personal vehicles.
On this one issue, we might be able to learn something useful from the pachyderm communitythat’s right, from elephants. My most recent experience with good folks responding in personal vehicles, albeit for all the right reasons, makes me want to offer a few thoughts and these sobering statistics.
Recently, I was heading out of my residential street to secure a pizza, which, by the way, is the only known nutritionally complete entrée encompassing the entire food pyramid. I was traveling down a narrow two-lane street when I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw a white pickup closing in on me at a very high rate of speed. The speed limit on this street is posted at 40 mph, and this truck, piloted by a 20-something male, was doing near 80 mph. I moved onto the soft shoulder and let him pass. The pickup lingered left long enough to scare a soccer Mom and kids in a minivan onto the other soft shoulder. I pulled up and asked if they were OK. Mom said yes, adding, “But what the heck is wrong with that idiot?” pointing at the pickup.
Continuing to the intersection, the white pickup blew through the stop sign, swerved among four lanes of traffic, and spun into a gravel parking lot of a volunteer fire station and stopped. This was about a quarter-mile from where he passed me and soccer Mom. I was curious as to what kind of call the department must have had to make anyone drive that intensely. I pulled up on the side street to see where Dale Earnhart Jr. might have been going. I started scanning the horizon for a thermal column.
When the apparatus bay door opened, a 1950s military conversion tender truck rolled out with the former NASCAR driver now restricted by design to doing about 35 mph. After about a mile and a half, we arrived at the call, a very much extinguished quarter-acre grass fire. Driving by, I counted two brush units and a type one pumper, whose crews were already mopping up.
Now to the elephants. There is an interesting story from the KwaZulu-Natal’s Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park in Africa. Hluhluwe-Umfolozi is a giant park extending over hundreds of miles of savanna and includes a wide range of plant and animal species. A few years back, there was a mysterious rash of rhinoceros murders and rapes in the park.
The park police did some investigating and found that “gangs” of young male elephants were responsible for the crimes. This is not normal elephant behavior. The park officals discovered that this had happened before in South Africa’s Pilanesberg National Park. In Pilanesberg, young bull elephants committed similar acts while suffering from premature musth. Musth is a state of heightened aggression that happens when elephants go into heat. These elephants were having premature musths, and they were lasting much longer than normal in adult elephants. The aggressive behavior also was far more violent and destructive than anything previously observed.
What had happened in both these parks may be helpful for raising good firefighters. The elephants of Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park were young male orphaned elephants reintroduced from Kruger Park. As a consequence, there were no “older bulls” in Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park. The orphan boy elephants were confused by the aggressive feelings of musth. Unsure of how to channel their aggression, they began displaying sexually deviant and extremely violent behavior. Lacking old bulls for role models, the young elephants formed gangs and started raping and killing rhinos.
The park reintroduced 10 “old bulls,” and the gangs quickly disappeared; the “hypersexual” activity stopped, and so did the killings. The “old bulls” were role models that the younger bulls intuitively knew to emulate. The “old bulls” taught what was acceptable, productive, and normal behavior for elephants. They mentored the younger bulls to become experienced in dealing with the consequences of musth.
I understand that we are not elephants, but I remember being mentored by “old bulls.” We can shout slogans and teach all the classes in the world, but the answer to this one is really being someone whom the young firefighters can emulate. Behavior is rarely affected by slogans; it is changed when we have role models who are respected. We must reintroduce the senior firefighter back into our systems. The “old bulls” need to step up. When they do, the herd will follow.
