Several years ago, I was having conversation with a friend
of mine who is a seasoned Company Officer from an agency I use to work
with. I was inquiring on how he always
seemed to be calm, cool, and collective on incident scenes. I was always impressed by his demeanor and
command presence on any incident, but especially on those significant
ones. His was reply was simply I’m a “Duck
on Water.” I looked at him with a blank
stare and said what does that mean? He
said I make myself stay calm on the top, but often my mind is racing like a
duck paddling his feet under the water.
That was another of my many “Ah Ha” moments. I have always kept that little nugget in the
back of my head when I am working an incident. This seasoned officer said the tone of
incident is set by the initial person in charge. If you get excited so will everyone else.
Fast forward 14 years, my Engine Company is called to assist
on a significant traffic accident with critical patients, parties trapped, and
a vehicle on fire. The initial on-scene
report describes a very dynamic and complicated incident, this is done in
a cool, calm and professional manner. It sounded exactly as if we were participating
in a training exercise. As we arrived
and obtained our assignments what I witnessed was pure orchestrated professionalism. Every firefighter on-scene was operating like
a flock of ducks on water. The fire was extinguished,
extrication quickly completed, and all patients transported in under fifteen
minutes from dispatch. I was proud to be
a part of and witness this professionalism in action.
Situations like one described occur every single day in the
fire service. This orchestrated professionalism
does not happen by accident. It occurs because
we train for these “events.” That is
right I said “events.” We are responding
to someone else’s emergency not ours.
For us these are planned events that we have trained for. The minute we make it our emergency is the
minute we began to lose our composure and decrease our level of
professionalism. The citizens we serve
expect us to come and take care of their emergency and have the knowledge,
skill, and ability to mitigate it in a fast, effective, and efficient manner.
Ask yourself a couple of questions. Are you a “Duck on Water” when you are
operating at an event? Have you properly
prepared yourself or those around you to handle our citizens’ emergencies? Aside from ensuring our skills are up to par,
we also need time to train our minds on how to maintain our composure when
things are moving a mile a minute. An excellent
book by Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman called “On Combat”, describes some excellent
techniques to control your psychological responses to stress. This book speaks a lot to the military and
law enforcement environment, but many of the lessons transfer to our
profession.
BE SMART out there and keep paddling.
