Fire is not a living breathing anything

One ad during the recent Super Bowl that has stirred a bit of reaction from the fire service is a 30-second spot by CBS that was promoting the new season of “Fire Country,” a procedural drama about California firefighters fighting wildfires. But the show is so unrealistic that?Cal Fire issued a statement condemning it when its first season came out.

Super Bowl Airs Ad for Firefighter TV Show Disavowed by CalFire

“Every time you suit up could be the last chance you’ll ever get to lay it all on the line,” he says, his voice [That of the actor featured in the ad] oozing drama. “To fight with the person next to you and for the person next to you. To be remembered as someone who faced the fire and never flinched.”

“That ad for the show Fire Country has me rooting for the fire,” one user?wrote?on social media.

“OK, that fire country ad also made me want to die a little,” another?posted.

The above text is from a post here on LinkedIn by my colleague at the Fire Service Psychology Association, as well as its founder and president, Dr. Kristen Wheldon. "These concepts frame the public's relationship and perception of the fire service," Dr. Wheldon continued, "Are we teaching people to expect and celebrate firefighter death? Are we creating the psychological framework for unsafe practices on the fire ground? What are your thoughts?"

My Thoughts

A good start would be to depersonalize fire. Fire is not "the red devil, a dragon, or a beast." The fires to which firefighters of all ilk respond to are out-of-control chemical reactions that originated from the proper mixture of heat, fuel, and oxygen. Plain and simple, fires are hazardous materials incidents.

But that simple fact was not known to firefighters "back in the day," like "way back in the day," hundreds of years ago when humans first tried to control something that was out of their control. When this entity could not be understood, it was personified. Why do you think the Greeks and Romans had so many gods? Don't understand something, make it a god, and give it a name.

This is why operational psychology must become a key component in the fire service--from policy development, to training, to implementation of policy and training, and completing the cycle with after action reviews.

If I read one more article or blog post that starts out with something like, “Firefighting has been and always will be a dangerous job and we accept the risks when we take the job…”, I think I’m going to “puke.”

That got your attention, right? So let me get right to my point in writing this piece several years ago, Stop Romanticizing Firefighting!

Until we stop romanticizing the job of a firefighter with “how it used to be”, we will never get the current and future generations of firefighters to understand—really understand and take it to heart—that when you look at the facts, most risks in the business of firefighting should have gone the way of the dodo bird. They should be extinct.

Read Next: 5 firefighter safety issues we shouldn’t still be talking about

I frequently hear firefighters and officers that we need to start treating structure fires more like hazardous materials incidents because of the chemicals, chemical compounds, and carcinogens present in the smoke generated by an interior structure fire.

Well, a good start to that would be to quit referring to a fire as a mythical beast that must be killed by brave knights willing to die for the cause.