What's New 2025
NEW CLASSES! In Their Own Words!
Take Care of YOU This Holiday Season
Take Care of YOU This Holiday Season
While the news oftentimes focuses of major events in our largest metropolises, each year an even larger number of smaller towns deal with incidents that push their resources to the limit. Oftentimes these disasters go unnoticed as they are overshadowed by events in larger communities. Peshtigo Wisconsin was virtually wiped from the amp by an all-consuming wildfire, but drew little notice as it corresponded with the kicking over of a lantern in Chicago by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow!
If you work in a small down, it doesn’t make you immune from major disasters. In fact, in many cases it increases the impact and potential of someone you know – even a member of your family – being directly impacted, or your home or workplace being directly involved. All this is compromised by a lack of resources when compared to big cities, and the reality for help being miles away. Worse yet, your spread-thin resources can be further compromised by the loss of critical infrastructure and transportation.
If this sounds like your situation, then Small Town – BIG Problems is for you! Based on the real-life experiences of communities from 300 to 27,000 it details lesson learned from events that made national news. More importantly, this dynamic content is based upon the words of telecommunicators who handled these emergencies first hand.
Contact us to bring this training to your agency. Be ready when the really BIG ONE comes!
Take Care of YOU This Holiday Season
Take Care of YOU This Holiday Season
Take Care of YOU This Holiday Season
So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun
John & Yoko
Well, it’s no longer technically Christmas, or not yet, depending upon your faith, but using my childhood as a reference, this whole season is Christmas, so here goes. I hope Santa was good. Or will be good for those who celebrate a later date. Rozhdestvo Khristovo to those who worship accordingly.
As I sit here ensconced in my suburban four walls my mind wanders back to the names and places I encountered as a younger man and active fire officer. The ghosts of Christmases past, indeed. Not all calls happen around the holidays, but the ones that do are more easily remembered. Those somber situations perpetually intermix with seasons that are expected to be permanently associated only with joy. While my life, like those who preceded me, has been dedicated to public safety, as a younger man a 25 year slice of it involved service in the field. The memories of both my time as a fire officer as well as a 9-1-1 director contain some at this time of year that I could have seriously done without.
It's the day after Halloween and I am late for work and taking the back way due to traffic. A call comes in at a neighboring department for a child trapped. House fire! A little after 8 AM and a child is trapped? Makes no sense, but seeing as this is close to my alternate route I’ll check it out. Yep. It’s true. Dad got out but the 3-year old is still inside. WTF? They find him. I start mouth to mouth. He vomits. He’s transported. He dies. I have no words. Forty-five years ago and I cry typing this. All helmets are way too small to hold anything close to God. Can’t win ‘em all, buddy.
The week before Christmas. Neighboring department. Older Chevvy drives under lumber truck. Flips truck over. Cuts top off of car. Takes top of driver’s head with it. Lands in pot of clam chowder in back seat. Steam rises from the evacuated skull cavity as well as the soup. Warned not to approach due to vicious dog. Turns out to be Benji not Cujo. Poor thing is scared to death. Who will feed me and play ball now? Get cleaned up and arrive late at wife’s employers party where I am served hors d'oeuvres and constant questions. How can I eat after all I have seen? Well, because I’m not the one who’s dead, and I’m pretty damned hungry. Next question? Pass the shrimp please!
New Year’s morning. House fire, in district. Stretch entire hose load. Through the roof upon arrival. Residents luckily down the street at a party. If they were home they would likely have been asleep forever. Faulty Christmas lights. Second Assistant Chief slept through alarm. Awakened by phone call from Chief later in the incident and told to get his ass out of bed. Nobody died, although sleepy assistant killed a few years later while walking a picket line. Another sad story, indeed.
On to Valentines Day. Young nurse on her way home from 4-12s. Drunk in a big old Caddy crosses the line and takes her life. Freaking Caddy built like a tank. Not a mark on her. Or the Caddy. She’s still warm as I do compressions on the front seat while the guys work behind me with the Hurst tool. As my dad bags her though the open passenger window, I catch site of an empty car seat in the back. How do you explain to a child that there is no longer a mommy?
Decades later, in another state, miles and miles away. Out of the field now and in an office. Stop into the 9-1-1 center to say “hi” to the troops pulling duty. Dad picks up kids for Christmas visitation then jumps off a bridge into the freezing waters of the Tennessee. I had no words then. I have no words now. Life makes no sense to anyone in public safety.
And, yep. There’s more. Lots more. But even in the darkest times there is no compulsion to share. If you know, you know. If you don’t, you are blessed. We all bear our scars. Some, like burns, are easier to see. And for those of you who ask; I am fine. This occasional venting is my therapy. Much more effective and less costly than spilling my guts to a nodding head that my insurance doesn’t cover anyway. And maybe – just maybe – somebody will read this and realize that they are really OK after all.
So, thanks for the listen. Happy New Year to you and yours. Hold them close. And for every one you couldn’t save along the way, be sure to save yourself. The journey has just begun.
We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to time
Reliving in our eloquence
Another auld lang syne
Dan Fogelberg.
No matter what time of year you are reading this, or what side of the microphone you work, you are not alone, However YOU feel is right for YOU! I am satisfied with an occasional vent, and time has tempered all my experiences. If YOUR soul still bleeds - REACH OUT! Help is out there.
Our Reviews
Feedback is important both as an instructor and as an agency that is trying to get the best bang for their buck when scheduling training. We can work with you both in terms of content and methods of delivery in order to get your students what they need in a manner that works.
Here is some unedited feedback from sessions provided at major national conferences:
One for the telecommunicator! I'm going to take what I learned today and put it to use tomorrow.
Easily the most enjoyable session I attended during the entire conference!
Barry is an absolute HOOT! I loved the presentation and would love to see more. Someone said it's like church and I agree. Amen. Barry is preaching!
Best content all week. I appreciated this class so much.
Hands down the most entertaining, engaging and honest speaker from the whole convention.!!! MY favorite presenter.
This was one of the best sessions I have ever attended.
Awesome instructor!
Another Fire Service Lifesaver
Saving Firefighter Ryan is a day long learning experience for those entrusted with the lives and safety of our firefighters. It is specifically designed by the fire service for the fire service and contains meaningful content and life saving tips that can help improve fireground safety. Using real life experience and multiple case studies this class covers a wide spectrum of actionable items that dispatchers can perform to improve safety on the fireground. Barry Furey served as a fire officer in three states, a 9-1-1 director in four, and helped develop standards that impacted the well being of firefighters everywhere.