Tradition in the fire service
Well, it is now August and somehow it doesn’t seem I have gotten all the things done I wanted to in April when I was planning what to do this summer. Of course, now I’m winding up from fire school in June. Sometimes it never seems to end. But then isn’t that the way everything goes.
The other day I heard someone talk about traditions. Made me think about some traditions in the fire service. It seems that many of the fire service traditions are slipping away. For the first time I can remember in attending over thirty fire schools, there were no evolutions this year. We had water fights and those seem to be the new “tradition”. There’s nothing wrong with new traditions. We need them.
Think where we would be if we had never changed the tradition of stuffing your beard in your mouth to breathe. What about horse’s being replaced by trucks. Keeping traditions doesn’t mean we never change but remember today’s fire service was built on yesterday’s traditions. Someday, the new traditions we have will be considered old, outdated, and a whole new “gang” of firefighters will look back and say boy that was an old way of doing things.
Thank goodness we move forward. Where would we be if we hadn’t. We would have one phone in our house, that you actually asked the operator to get your party. We would have a black and white tv, and not all the other nice things we have today.
As we head into the late summer season, remember there will be lots of hot days ahead and for some parts of the State, lots of moisture and I’m sure lots of growth in the fuels. So please take some time when responding to calls, make sure you get to the fire hall safely, drive to the call with extra care for the motoring public and most importantly, look around and make sure you know what the fire is doing before jumping in.
The SD Firefighters Assn. Fall Conference is just around the corner, Sept. 29 & 30, with the Fallen Firefighters Memorial on Sunday, Oct. 1 at 2 p.m. at Capital Lake. Registration for the Conference may be open when you read this, so make those plans to attend another great conference. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.
I’ll make this month’s thoughts short, ok I hear the cheering now, and let you get back to other important things. That way, maybe I will be able to check off one more item on my “to do list”.
Remember, train hard and work hard.
Denny Gorton,
SDFA Past President