In spite of the lack of funds, flash floods, victim drowning, trench collapses and structure collapses will always occur. Monies dry up, organizational support shifts to the new topic, training priorities get over-ridden and personnel are assigned more 'significant' tasks. While these trends do a great job of driving the creation of services, it seems that the support for these programs seems to disappear as soon as the next political or buzz word comes around. For the first decade of the new century, WMD is the hot topic. Hazmat was the buzz word for the 1980s, before being replaced in the 1990s by Technical Rescue. They run through departments from coast to coast like wildfire and tend to wax and wane, each soon to be replaced by another new, hot or necessary trend.

Photo Mike Meadows Los Angeles firefighters operate at the scene of a collapsed trench at a construction site in May, which left two men trapped.Īs anyone who has spent more than a decade in it can tell you, the fire service has topics that are driven by national trends.

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