January 25, 2013
As a Battalion Chief at Lady’s Island – St. Helena Fire District, I always feel like I am giving the citizens a higher level of service when I am familiar with the structure that is on fire. My firefighters are safer when I have done my homework and have studied the location of potential hazards, egress points, and layout of the building. It is sometimes problematic because I do not have the ability to predict in which building the next incident will take place. That is the difference between an incident and an event. Events are predictable and you have time to prepare. Sometimes you have ten minutes or sometimes you have years to prepare and plan. Legislative Day is an event that will occur at 10am on March 6, 2013. I need you to pre-plan for this event. If you are reading this blog you are a proactive member of our association. A very small percentage of our membership have even logged on to our website. This blog will not be worth the space it occupies on this website unless you will become an advocate for my committee. I thank you for taking the time to read this and hope that you will embrace this responsibility. I do not measure success of the Legislative Committee by the amount of legislation that gets passed or not. There are far too many variables and things that we have no influence over to use that as the measuring stick. I do however, think the success of my committee is based on the relationships the fire service has with representatives at the local level. There are 170 members of the S.C. General Assembly. Simple math: we have 100 members for each member in General Assembly. There is no reason why any one of them should go unescorted on our Legislative Day. To do this we have to start planning now. We need to be inviting these representatives to our firehouses. They need to know who we are and what we do. Relationships and money are the way things get done at the state house, so that leaves the fire service with relationships. Here are your marching orders. Make sure your Senator and Representatives have an escort for Legislative Day. When you have someone assigned to be an escort give Ashley a call at the office. We do not want duplication of effort. If we make sure that everyone is escorted it will be the start we need to make a difference for the future fire service of South Carolina.
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