Quotes About Firefighting

I have a notion that, at big fires, a moment of extreme suspense can sometimes occur, when the jets of water slacken off, the firemen no longer climb, no one moves a muscle. Without a sound, a high black wall of masonry cants over up above, the fire blazing behind it, and, without a sound, leans, about to topple. Everyone stands waiting, shoulders tensed, faces drawn in around their eyes, for the terrible crash. That is how the silence is here.

When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting.

I'm just an everyday kind of hero. If the everyday kind saves babies from burning buildings and looks hotter than hell in bunker gear.

A long term vision is about prevention and planning while a short term vision is for cure and firefighting

I'm developing some new kinds of robotic firefighting vehicles to help with the massive forest fires we're dealing with in the West.

When you fight fires for a few seasons, you know what to expect. Your heart doesn't race as much as it did.

I fought fires in the summer, and then I went back and did it again when I went to graduate school.

I'd rather fight 100 structure fires than a wildfire. With a structure fire you know where your flames are, but in the woods it can move anywhere; it can come right up behind you.

President Obama has a good sense not just of the economic requisites for financial crisis firefighting but also how you build political support for moving forward on reforming the financial system, making sure that the banks are carrying enough capital.

Firemen have the coolest toys ever!

Mike Cabral's task force came to believe that John Orr was responsible for the vast majority of all the arsons they were studying, and by way of unverifiable proof, they pointed to the astounding statistic that showed a 90 percent drop in brush-fire activity since his arrest. In the county foothill area, brush fires had averaged sixty-seven a year clear back to 1981. After his arrest the average had dropped to one per year.

The U.S. army confirmed that it gave a lucrative fire fighting contract in Iraq to the firm once run by the Vice President Dick Cheney without any competitive bidding. When asked if this could be conceived as Cheney's friends profiting from the war, the spokesman said 'Yes.'

We're often asked how frequently a value stream should be improved. The answer is continuously. We understand that's a tall order for many organizations, but continuous improvement is your only way out of a culture of reactive firefighting, which prevents your organization from excelling on all levels.

This was what a lot of us, mainly young men, did in the summers in northern Arizona. This is how I put myself through college. I fought fires in the summer, and then I went back and did it again when I went to graduate school.

Unplanned work has another side effect. When you spend all your time firefighting, there's little time or energy left for planning. When all you do is react, there's not enough time to do the hard mental work of figuring out whether you can accept new work. So,

All the firefighting displaced all the planned work, both projects and changes

She's a smokejumper who's afraid of fire. He's the partner who can't forgive himself for loving her. Now they must face the flames together if they hope to survive the Summer of Fire.

Organizations talk about spending their lives firefighting - dealing with the next problem without having the bandwidth to deal with what is down the pipeline. I think most of the poor have that problem.

Put on a fireman's uniform and walk past the fire because it's your lunch break, and you are dead. Grab a bucket and start throwing water over the blaze and you are seen to be God's little helper.

When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished. What he does after that is all in the line of work.

In 1949 the Smokejumpers were still so young that they referred affectionately to all fires they jumped on as "ten o'clock fires," as if they already had them under control before they jumped. They were still so young they hadn't learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy.

He hung up and stood there, his mind spinning. Uncle Benny's words whispered in his head. We'll do what we always do. What they always did. Fight fires. Save people's lives. Yes, that's what they'd do now. The FDNY was the biggest fire department in the world. They were the best. And they would do what they always did.

Sometimes I liken the comedian's lifestyle a little bit to a firefighter's in the sense that there's a lot of waiting and a lot of nothingness. And then there are moments of urgent firefighting.

Becoming a healthy organization takes a little time. Unfortunately, many of the leaders I've worked with suffer from a chronic case of adrenaline addiction, seemingly hooked on the daily rush of activity and firefighting within their organizations. It's as though they're afraid to slow down and deal with issues that are critical but don't seem particularly urgent. As