Features
Volunteer Vision: Pressures on the job

The pressure you experience being a firefighter in your community can be immense at times.  

As I wrote this column, I reflected on the pressures I’ve experienced over the years as the chief of a composite department serving a small town of 14,000. I’ll admit that there are some days I wonder how I made it this far with my pride and love of the fire service still intact. Happily, it is still there.

I constantly feel added pressure not only from my position as fire chief, but from the leadership roles that I’ve volunteered for, and been elected to, within the Canadian fire service over my career. Adding those roles to the normal challenges we all experience in our daily, family and personal lives quickly becomes a tall order to ask of a volunteer. 

I love my job and I’m holding fast to the admiration and pride I’ve felt towards the fire service since I was a wee child. The amount of pressure experienced in my daily life can often go above and beyond normal levels, and I wonder what toll this will take on my mental health and wellbeing.

Your life as a member of our fire service is no different. Pressure is applied to you daily, and you have simply volunteered to take it on. We call that dedication, and it is, but it is also our motivation to do what we do. We respond to pressure. 

Pressure is not always a bad thing. For a fire stream to be effective, it requires the proper amount of water pressure. Many times the required pressure is greater than what the normal water system of a community provides. So, we become trained to use tools, pumps and techniques to get the right pressure at the nozzle and be effective in fighting the fire. 

Applying too much pressure to the hose stream can cause it to become an out of control and dangerous mess, causing the stream to become ineffective or lost. Also, fire streams lacking enough pressure are inadequate and only provide the illusion that fire fighting is effective. The right amount of pressure is an important balance. 

I think the same holds true for the mental pressure forced upon you when you are called to perform as a firefighter responding to an emergency. As officers, you are required to perform under added pressure to lead during an emergency and make decisions. 

Going further up the chain of command, the pressures of the chief and leadership team of the fire department is even greater and come from multiple angles. Administration of a fire department is an ever-growing challenge. Politically astute, modern, well managed, and virtuous operations don’t happen by accident. It takes a solid team dealing across various levels with the increased pressures of the fire service. 

Like a fire hose, pressure is a good thing. I have belief that pressure to perform to the demands of fire fighting is what motivates us.  Motivation is the added pressure we need to move forward at the right speed and effectiveness.  As we climb the ranks in our departments it is pressure that sharpens our minds and actions to step up and perform the duties in the first place. 

I’m not aware of many occupations in a community that place more pressure on individuals than operations within emergency services. Whether it is fire, law enforcement, or EMS and health care, our people are under immense and constant pressure to properly perform because lives are literally on the line.

Society is realizing that the value from emergency services is increasing as we seem to rely on our first responders now more than ever. Challenges including climate, generational and technological change have only added to the pressures impacting our profession.

Yet you still volunteer to be a firefighter.

Yet you still volunteer to accept the obligation placed on you in training.

Yet you still volunteer to remain constantly vigilant 24 hours a day.

Yet you still volunteer to respond to the community in its most vulnerable times.

Yet you still volunteer to accept rank promotions and shoulder even more pressure as an officer.

Yet you still volunteer to apply pressure to our citizens to learn fire safety through public education.

The list goes on.

I’ll admit the pressures can get overwhelming in our lives. Being a volunteer firefighter can place a tremendous burden on your family as they cope with the realities of the job, and for that we are eternally grateful. For it is them who experience pressures we might not see ourselves.  

Keeping pressure at bay is not an easy task and, like a fire hose, pressure can exert itself equally in all directions. Be aware of it and be ready to turn the throttle down a little when it gets to be too much. 

I even feel pressure while writing these regular columns for Fire Fighting in Canada and the deadlines we as writers are under. And now, I feel the pressure lessen. Motivation fulfilled for this edition!

Vince MacKenzie is the fire chief in Grand Falls-Windsor, N.L. He is an executive member of the CAFC and current president of the Maritime Fire Chiefs Association.
Email Vince at firechief@townofgfw.com