WHEN WE COME FOR YOU

A single, five-word declaration:

“We will come for you” 

It’s an incredibly popular statement in today’s fire service. We see it on the side of fire engines, back of ladder trucks, printed on flags hanging from the rafters of apparatus bays, across a multitude of social media platforms and often on helmet stickers strategically placed on any surface a firefighter deems necessary, as a way of showing their passion and dedication for the craft and to those we serve.

To the public, it means just that- We will come for you. We will be there when you need us. We will show up, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Through rain, sleet or snow and regardless of your race, gender, religious affiliation, political views or socioeconomic status. We will come for you. 

But to many firefighters, this sentiment resonates much deeper than its face value and holds a much more incisive meaning than it does to the public we serve.

To the elite firefighters, this statement means:

We will prepare every shift to ensure an efficient and timely response to protect life and property, when we come for you. 

It means owning our failures in training and working hard to correct them, so we don’t make those same mistakes on the fire ground, when we come for you.

It means hitting the gym after a night with little to no sleep or during our days off, so we remain physically fit and able to perform some of the most demanding tasks a human will engage in through, often, formidable conditions, when we come for you. 

It means acknowledging the terms of our job and having a deep understanding  and acceptance that, we may risk our own lives at a moment’s notice should conditions rapidly deteriorate, when we come for you.

It means making decisions both on and off-duty that are in the best interest of those around us and ensuring we uphold the public’s perception and expectation of who we are as firefighters, when we come for you.

It means seeking training outside our four walls to improve our knowledge and skill of the craft and then sharing it with our peers at the firehouse, so we have the latest data and decision-making tools at our disposal, when we come for you.

It means building a bond with our brothers and sisters that is unmatched by nearly any other profession. One that pushes firefighters to put the needs of our peers above our own to ensure their safety and trust. To consistently and relentlessly work as a group to become a well-oiled machine that can perform at the highest level possible, when we come for you.

It means understanding that we are at a much higher risk of heart disease, cancer and other serious medical conditions as secondary threats of our profession, but consciously putting those thoughts in the deepest pockets of our brain, to focus on the tasks at hand, when we come for you.

It means building an emotional and mental toughness that allows us to make life altering decisions on the fly, often with limited information and in dangerous situations, when we come for you.

It means finding a cache of mentors to confide in and having the ability to listen to the things we would rather not hear and the poise to give that advice the thoughtfulness and focus it deserves to ensure we are becoming better today than we were yesterday, when we come for you.

It means having hobbies outside of the fire service as an outlet to take our minds off the inevitable trauma this profession exposes us to and to allow for revitalization of body and mind, so we are mentally rested and restored, when we come for you. 

Most importantly, it means finding balance between the best job in the world and your family. To ensure you are the husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister, aunt or uncle your family deserves. This will ultimately translate to a heightened level of compassion and understanding for our citizens and treating THEM as we do our own, when we come for you.

This profession truly is a calling that comes with an incredible amount of both personal and professional responsibility. A responsibility to maintain a state of physical, emotional and mental readiness. A state of preparedness that begins long before we walk through the door for shift and follows us when we leave the firehouse. What we do every single day, every single shift and how we choose to mold and shape each other and who we are as individuals has a direct impact on how we will perform on shift and more importantly when we are called upon to perform.

Firefighting is a team sport. I implore you to dig deep and find what motivates not only you, but those in your firehouse to be the elite firefighter your citizens deserve. Find your why and use it as fuel and motivation to ensure we are the very best firefighters we can be… 

When we come for THEM!