Editor’s note: This interview is paraphrased rather than a verbatum transcript.
By Rick Markley
At last month’s Fire-Rescue International conference, Chief William Metcalf’s term as president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs came to a close. Fire Chief caught up with Chief Metcalf at FRI and talked with him about life after the presidency and the challenges that lie ahead for the fire service.
Your IAFC presidency was extremely busy with a lot of traveling. What surprised you about the fire service?
How much we are all the same. When you talk with a fire chief from an urban department and one from a small department, fire chiefs deal with the same issues. Fire chiefs wrestle with budgets, limited resources, safety and human resource issues. One of those issues may be more important today than yesterday, but eventually, the same problems keep crossing a fire chief’s desk.
Also, many state and national leaders talk about the fire problem as if it is the same from community to community, regional and state. There is not one definition of the fire problem. In the West it is the wildland/urban interface. Urban areas deal with a variety of fire problems including high-rises, poverty, high-crime areas that impact fire response, and in the Northeast it’s the older construction.
There is not a single fire problem and can’t be solved with a broad brush. It also can’t be solved with national legislation or a single standard. This country is very diverse, which is one of our great strengths but also requires an innovative and creative approach to problems.
I also found it very interesting to see how poorly the United States compares to other first-world countries in a variety of statistics. We spend a tremendous amount of resources on our fire problem with results that are not quantified. We spend more per capita on the delivery of fire protection services than other countries, yet our problems are not being mitigated.
We all recognize that our line of duty death rate is high, but we can’t seem to convince our firefighters to risk less for less return. We put ourselves out in the forefront around the world as the model to be followed, but we do that emotionally without reliable and verifiable data to proven our point.
What is the most significant challenge the fire service faces in the next five years?
Ten years ago the fire service was riding a public relations high because of 9/11. The economy was going strong and all in all the fire service was perceived in a very positive way. Then the economic downturn happened and the firefighter like other public employees became, according to some in the public, a big part of the problem.
The economy is starting to turn around, budgets are beginning to come back, staffing levels may be increasing at a very slow rate.
The challenge is, are we going to do the same thing we have always done?
The fire service must become aggressive in promoting the value of the varied services we provide. The fire service needs to quantify the services we deliver. We to need to look at how we spend our money and where can get a return on the investment for the public’s tax dollars.
Fire chiefs are going to have to clean off their desk to be able to look past tomorrow and look down the road 12, 24, 36 months. This will be a huge effort for fire chiefs, as in most cases our desks are full of problems that we believe need our immediate attention and action.
Creating our own future will require forward thinking. It may also require regional approach to examining the problems and developing solutions that are more regional in manner.
Were you satisfied with the performance of FRI?
Dallas was a different kind of conference. The program planning committee did a great job making the hard changes. Classes had a lot of students in almost every room. Attendance was up 20 percent.
There was energy throughout the conference including the exhibit hall. Of course, the heat in Dallas may have contributed to our attendees not venturing out of the convention center.
The feedback from the exhibitors is that this was one of best-attended exhibits. There was a schedule change that shortened the conference and exhibits, and I believe that helped. There seemed to be a lot of younger leaders in attendance — a lot of new faces walking the halls and sitting in the classroom.
How is the fire service’s relationship with the political leadership in Washington D.C.?
We have a very good relationship with Congress. Both groups have become more comfortable with each over time. The elected leadership in Congress and their staff understand the needs of the fire service and especially the Assistance to Firefighters Grant and SAFER grant programs.
That familiarity doesn’t get us everything we want, but it at least gets us to the table. Vice President Biden is a strong supporter as he was when he was a senator.
The leadership at FEMA supports the fire service especially in the disaster response program. U.S. Fire Administrator Ernie Mitchell works relentlessly to ensure the visibility of the fire service in the expansive bureaucracy of the federal government. I have exceptional confidence in the direction Chief Mitchell is trying to take the fire service and the leadership he is providing.
The president and the administration staff, on the other hand, are puzzling on most days and on other days there is no relationship.
The Secretary at the Department of Transportation, in a recent meeting I attended, did not seem to have a clue about the challenges in the transportation industry as it relates to fire protection and safety issues — and did not really seem to care.
What is IAFC doing to help local fire chiefs be in front of EMS delivery issues?
The fire-based EMS has made changes to keep up with the competition, but we have probably not made enough changes to sustain our competitive advantage in the future.
Some in the fire service still feel that EMS is not a necessary part of our public safety delivery model. If we are going to be good at delivering EMS, we need to embrace it as part of what we are as an organization and who we are as a public-delivery system.
The local leadership is going to have to fully integrate EMS with the same passion that we embrace the new information on fire behavior.
EMS is a complicated part of our business and the successful fire chief is going to have to spend significant time learning. This is not a one-day or eight-hour class. To learn the EMS system, we are going to have to study the various local, state and federal regulations.
If leaders are not fully supportive of EMS being a key component of the public-safety delivery model, we will lose the service. And the loss of EMS will have a significant negative impact on fire protection services delivery.
EMS should be talked about in a positive, proactive manner and the value it brings to the public and the return on investment local taxpayers are receiving with the fire department delivering EMS to their door.
Now that you are back home, what’s it like being in the office every day at the fire department?
The fire department staff is beginning to worry about all of those notes I made and the ideas I received from so many sources and that I might actually want to implement all of them.
There are a lot of things happening in the fire district and I am really please to be back in the drivers seat helping to guide this fire department in meeting the needs of its residents. I am a fire chief at heart and glad to be back home helping to do the right things for the community.
This experience will help me at the fire department because I have a better understanding of the legislative process and what it takes to pass the bills in Congress. I have a more intimate knowledge of the various grant programs that are available to all fire department; I will try to use this experience to help my community obtain some of those grant funds.
