The saying " Everyone Goes Home " is gaining more and more credability in the fire service and rightly so, we all want to go home at the end of the day. I know that when we go out on a call i feel confident that everything will go well but there is that voice in the back of your mind that is reminding you not to take anything for granted. And i am glad that voice is there asking me," Does everyone have there PPE on ?" "Do we have the proper equipment to do the work ? " "Is everyone trained to do the work at hand ? " And through out the scene you are constantly making sure everyone is safe. And you constantly preach to your crews that they are responsible for each other as well, Safety is everyones responsibility. I wish i could tell you that "no one will ever get hurt on my watch " but i cannot because i would be lying. I would say that, knowing that someone will get hurt someday is my greatest worry as being Chief. Not because of any lawsuits or media attention or investigations, but because if someone does get hurt it will be someone I love as a friend or as a family member and that alone would be difficult to overcome. What can be done to lessen that from ever happening ? Well, one thing comes to mind and that is training, training, training! I wish I could say that at Jarret we ALL train every Wed. night at the station, but the truth is we do train every Wed night its just that not everyone shows up for a variety of legitimate reasons. Being a Volunteer service it is very hard to get everyone together at one place at one time! I am not making excuses for anyone, there is no room to be complacent and ignore training. EVERYONE must make the effort to attend training when they can, and also make the effort to go to training classes, to take advantage of this oppurtunity and learn.

With that said, i will say that Jarret VFD has some of the best trained people in our area, most are dedicated young individuals with some very good credentials and the residents of Von Ormy and ESD 5 area are very fortunate to have them as volunteers. And i will go even further, the other departments in our ESD also have stepped up in the past few years to improve the quality of training in their departments. Even now our ESD commisioners have done their part in providing funding for the next fiscal year 08 to go to training.

Training never stops it keeps on going, changing with new techniques and equipment, we must train and keep up with the changes, because if we dont we get left behind and we may not get to"go home".