By Thomas Bradley
In the fire service, we tend to focus on our mistakes and the things that went wrong. These can be important learning lessons, but we seldom point out the things that we did well. This is unfortunate because revealing the positive things we did reinforces them in our day-to-day operations.
The city of Warwick, Rhode Island, has a population of approximately 83,000 (2010 census) and an area of 50 square miles. It features an airport, a rail line, and an interstate highway. The Warwick (RI) Fire Department (WFD) has nine fire stations. It operates nine engines (an officer, two firefighters), three ladders (an officer, one firefighter), one special hazards (heavy rescue) vehicle (an officer, two firefighters), two battalion chiefs, and four ambulances [advanced life support (ALS) with one officer and one firefighter]. Total on-duty staffing is 46 firefighters. The fire department responded to 16,109 total calls in 2015.
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