First post - S.O.P. #1

Purpose - This blog is intended to serve as a forum for me to share some of the things that I have witnessed, learned and done during my career in the fire service. I also hope to have meaningful discussion of some of the issues that face the fire service and the people in it. The blog is for both firefighters and civilians. I will try to write the posts in a non-technical way so that civilians may understand it. I encourage feedback and communication and I understand that we may not always be in agreement. Please feel free to comment on any post or ask me anything on the subjects that are related to the fire service or to other subjects I bring up.

Scope - Portions of this policy apply to me, others apply to readers.

Policy - It is the policy of this blog to provde information, observations, thoughts and opinions on the subjects I feel are relevant to the fire service and to subjects that I feel are interesting.

To keep this interesting, it will sometimes be necessary to post on subjects that are controversial or on events that have happened. In order to protect my customers, my co-workers, my agency, my family and myself, I am reserving the right to change names, locations and dates to protect the innocent. The events that I describe will have happened, but will be altered just enough so that identification of the players will not be possible. You can call me out on this if you wish, but this is the way it has to be.

As this blog is available for everyone to read, I will keep the language mostly clean and the subject matter no worse than PG or PG13. This also applies to comments that are posted by readers. I can be a little profane at times, but will restrain myself here. I am not oppsed to a B.S. here or there, but will delete excessive profanity or obscene material.

No hating. We all have opinions, but I don't want any blatant hating going on. It is counter-productive, almost always unfounded and just not smart. We can disagree on religion, politics, race relations, gender issues, policies or whatever and as long as we can express our opinion without being disresptectful, it will be OK. Who gets to determine what is acceptable ? I do. I am the captain. I get to talk on the radio, blow the air horn, control the siren and control this blog.

I reserve the right to change the focus of the blog if I feel that it is veering off of its initial intent.

I apologize in advance if I offend anyone, that is not my intent.

I will try to post every few days. Current events as they come up, war stories as needed and always to answer any questions that come up.

Please cut me some slack, as I can't type very well. I will do my best to write in a manner that is readable, but after all, I am just a fireman.

Thanks for reading, Joe