An advantage of interviewing 180 Newark firefighters is the experiences & wisdom they have accumulated is passed to the interviewer.

One of the questions I ask concerns LOD deaths which are unfortunately part of our profession.

How have guys dealt w/firefighter deaths in the past? Not everyone gives a direct answer, but it is easy to read between the lines.

Some rationalize the events, over thinking the causes of the tragedy. As if an explanation will somehow assuage the pain. Others go through extreme self-criticism, taking responsibility for factors that were totally beyond their control.

There are those who accept that firefighting is a dangerous profession that will inevitably result in firefighter deaths. No one who took this track was in a command position at a fire that resulted in an LOD death.

We can beat ourselves up w/second guessing. I have seen & done it to an extreme.

Each of us is aware of our relationship to the lost firefighter.

Captains have a view & firefighters have one. Chief officers have another.

Each ties into what happened on the scene from their point of view.

There is the firefighter whose captain took his hook & sent him back to the rig to get another,

only to have the building collapse on the captain.

Or the BC who ordered all the companies in his battalion not to enter a building, only to have companies from other Battalions rush in. Both where at the same fire & felt a responsibility for what happened, but each in their own way.

Decisions are made based on the information given to us. If that information is false.

The decision is questionable, not the decision maker.

More often than not, it is the policies of the past not the action on the scene that caused the tragedy.

You cannot ask yourself, “If I had this information, would I have made the same decision?”

That is the road to insanity.

Ask instead, “With the information I had, would I have still made the same decision?”

All of this does not ease the doubts or pain. Firefighters connect w/each other in such a familial way that there is little others can say to help.

When Mike DeLane died, people from outside the fire department went to Rescue to debrief them.

They were asked politely to leave. They were strangers. Then F/F Clint Reynolds showed up.

Clint was an ordained minister. He led the company in prayer. He was family.

So, how can a captain at the Academy twist himself into feeling guilty about an LOD?

Lawrence Webb was separated from his company when they bailed out of a bad situation.

He went down, but his PASS alarm was not on. They did a head count, found he was missing, and went in after him. But his device wasn’t sounding. If it had been, they could have found him sooner & maybe he would have made it.

He was scheduled to respond to the Academy the next week for refresher training on masks & use of the PASS. I wrote the schedule & helped teach the class. If he could have been scheduled the week before, maybe he would have remembered to activate his device. Is that extreme? I can’t say. But it is a thought that I live with. “If only I had” is one of the most loaded phrases of the English language.

It will eat you alive if you let it.