An Interview with an EMT
Nottingham's problems may be a symptom of something much bigger
Through personal connections, I have interviewed an EMT willing to comment anonymously on matters brought up in the investigator’s report used to justify the terminations of the former Fire Chief and Lieutenant. This EMT does not live or work in New Hampshire. They have no connection whatsoever to the Nottingham Fire & Rescue Department or any member of that department, past or present.
The EMT was fascinated to hear the story. Their first reaction was that it was “delicious” to hear about a manager who got fired. “It was about time that some of these managers of fire departments were held accountable.”
So, tell me more, I asked.
The EMT went on to describe the rampant incompetence they’d seen with fire and rescue management. These departments routinely promote to management people who are good at their jobs but who are terrible managers. From there, they go on to stay terrible managers for decades. The EMT said that incompetence was a routine issue with the management of fire and rescue departments and gave some examples of what they’d experienced.
I then described the key allegations against the Chief. The EMT was shocked that there were no accusations of gross incompetence. The closest thing to an incompetence charge in the report was about mutual aid.
Mutual Aid
The EMT said requests for mutual aid were a problem in almost every fire department, particularly with the younger staff. They’re told in training to ask for mutual aid as if it were always immediately and abundantly available. In the real world, it is not. On the job, their requests for mutual aid are often not only wastes of resources, but they are also at times harmful to victims.
First responders routinely face situations where they face a problem they’re not fully trained to deal with or have the equipment to deal with it. Calling in for aid always takes time. “I’ve been appalled at some of the mutual aid situations I’ve been called for. It would have been better for the patient to just take them straight to the hospital instead of waiting for someone who could do the job better. Or it would have been better to meet us halfway and transfer the patient. I got called out of bed once to drive way over half an hour to a patient who could have been delivered to the emergency room in less than half the time it took us to get there.”
I provided the EMT with the examples in the report. The EMT said there was far too little detail in any of those examples to conclude anything about the situations described. The only detail that stood out was that the Chief canceled the aid while not on scene. “This is rare - shockingly rare. Usually, the boss just reams out the staff afterward, and the staff just goes on to do it again and again.”
Organizational Structure
As soon as I described NFRD as a 28-member volunteer fire department with 6 full-time non-volunteers, the EMT said, “there’s your problem. Let me guess. The full-timers are all a lot younger than the volunteers.” I said, no. On average so, but there are also young volunteers. The EMT said, “close enough. The young folks who want to do this as a career think very differently about their jobs than how the older volunteers think.”
The EMT asked, “are the full-time employees recruited from the volunteers?” I said, “I don’t think so.” They said, “oh, that’s even worse. Every department I’ve seen like that is dysfunctional. It works better to turn the volunteers into full-timers.”
Culture Clash
I mentioned the situation in the report where the Chief had a lock cut off of a locker that was put on, contrary to the convention of no one locking their lockers. The EMT responded. “Yup, that’s what dysfunctional looks like. Everything about that is dysfunctional.”
[COMMENTARY: Candidates running for state legislative office might be interested in pursuing a question that emerges here. In the training the state provides to new firefighters, is the state systematically malinstructing firefighters to maximize use of resources with disregard not only for its impact on taxpayers but even with disregard for what is best for victims?
Similarly, journalists who cover politics at the state level might also be interested in not only this question, but also the issue that there may be a wide-spread outbreak of culture clashes going on in small-town fire departments, and that news of this is flying under the radar because these culture clashes are happening in small towns.]
