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Flashpoint blog: Sept. 2009 |
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Written by Peter Sells
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Sept. 23, 2009 - A few years ago in Indianapolis I had the honour of
being included in a panel discussion on reducing firefighter injuries and
fatalities on the fireground.
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Flashpoint blog |
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Written by Peter Sells
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July 21, 2009,
I remember the booklet that used to sit in a box behind the captain and driver in every truck when I first came on the job. It was a set of procedures to be followed in the event of an actual or pending nuclear attack on the city. We used to joke about it periodically. One of the strategies recommended was to evacuate the apparatus and all related equipment out of the city to a specified parking lot of a shopping mall about 45 minutes north. That way the apparatus and crew would survive the blast and remain intact to respond back into the smoking ruin that used to be Toronto.
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Editor's blog |
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Written by Laura King
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July 16, 2009
Having just come back from the Maritime fire chiefs
conference in Nova Scotia where coverage of the Toronto city workers strike was
sparse, at best, I missed the first stories on the Toronto ambulance that
allegedly took more than half an hour to arrive at an apartment building where a
man died while waiting for paramedics, and the ensuing debate and media
coverage.
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Flashpoint blog |
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Written by Peter Sells
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Last year in my column about emotional intelligence I wrote about how a firefighter, especially
in a command role, would benefit from the ability to manage emotions in an
inherently chaotic situation. The key point was that our objective is to bring
rationality to a chaotic situation, to be part of the solution by avoiding
becoming part of the problem. This past weekend I saw why it is so important
that we achieve that objective.
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Flashpoint blog |
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Written by Peter Sells
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Earlier this year I wrote about the attempt made by
the Retail, Wholesale and
Department Store Union (RWDSU) to organize the volunteer firefighters of the
Sudbury Fire Department. I drew a comparison between the situation faced by
volunteer firefighters in many parts of Canada and the schtick of the late,
great Rodney Dangerfield. Essentially, volunteers do not get the respect they
deserve. Within their communities, yes, they
are the heroes and leaders that are looked up to in exactly the same way as
their brothers and sisters in career departments. But when it comes to recognition within the
greater fire service, volunteers are often unfairly regarded as second-class
citizens.
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Flashpoint blog |
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Written by Peter Sells
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In my previous blog, I discussed how the Canadian
government does nothing to level the playing field among communities that can
afford top-notch fire protection and those that cannot. My thanks to those who
kept the discussion going. This time I would like to recognize that there are
fire service organizations across Canada that aren’t willing to simply accept
the status quo – organizations that pull themselves up by the bootstraps and
strive to meet their challenges despite having little or no budget and, in some
cases, no fire protection infrastructure.
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Flashpoint blog |
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Written by Peter Sells
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March 18, 2009,
A quick look at the sports culture in the U.S. and Canada:
Baseball – played on a field featuring a mound of
dirt;
NASCAR – races are run on tracks with steep banks;
Football – the field is slightly crowned to allow
drainage;
Golf – don’t we all wish that the greens were
perfectly flat?
Soccer – see football, above.
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Flashpoint blog |
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Written by Peter Sells
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Feb. 18, 2009
In one of those weird coincidences of history, like
Harry Houdini dying on Halloween, we were reminded a few days ago, Feb. 12 to
be exact, that both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were celebrating their
200th birthdays. What were the chances that two of the pivotal minds
of the nineteenth century would have been born on the same day? Don’t get me
started, or I will calculate the actual chances of that – it’s just an
expression, OK?
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