BY BOBBY HALTON
After every significant fire—especially those that result in a tragedy—we always hear folks say that we must learn from this event so that it never happens again. Unfortunately, those of us who've been around for a while know that tragedy does happen again—maybe not quite exactly the same way but, sure enough, it does happen. Unfortunately, learning from the experiences of others is not quite as straightforward or as simplistic as it sounds. To begin with, every fire, literally every fire, has unique characteristics and unique circumstances. Both may compel it to behave in radically different ways than fires that we had encountered previously that appear on the surface to be similar.
It is the same with community issues affecting the fire service: We hear a lot of language today about social issues like collectivism and the common good. It's the same language that folks speaking about public programs and the fire department have been using for the past 50 years. We see a lot of well-intentioned people trying to create environments that they feel are more appropriate or more correct in their own world view. Many of them, albeit well-intentioned people, have no way to truly know what effect their actions to correct what they see as "wrongs" will have on the fire service.
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