By Carl J. Haddon

September 11th will forever be a solemn day of remembrance for the brave souls lost on that fateful day in New York City. We lost 343 brothers and sisters that day in the line of duty. This is not to exclude all of those who have lost their lives as a result of “911 illnesses” from serving at “the Pile.” Never Forget.

As we remember those lost this day 16 years ago, I’m also shaken by the horrific number of firefighters and other first responders who have been killed just this year while working on the highways, freeways, and roadways here in America. Please don’t think for a moment that rural firefighters are immune from these tragic events. If anything, you and I are MORE at risk working vehicle wrecks as rural firefighters than our friends in the big city are. How can that be you ask? If you think about it, we are generally fewer in number, we typically have fewer resources, and (perhaps because of the lower volume of calls) we unfortunately often lack the muscle memory that our colleagues in town have. If the last part of that last sentence offended you or made you angry, good. Read on because I don’t want you to become one of the statistics.

First and foremost, I strongly encourage you to find and take a Traffic Incident Management System (TIMS) class. And for those of you who I offended, I encourage YOU to become TIMS instructors. You can find the classes online, or those of us who are TIMS instructors will come to your department to teach the class. For those of you who have taken a TIMS class, you know that it is fairly geared toward big city stuff. That said, virtually everything contained in that program can and SHOULD be modified and applied to rural operations. Everything from APPROPRIATELY using apparatus as blockers to safe operating distances, traffic control measures, cone usage, and personal protective equipment is certainly applicable in our rural settings.

As seems to be the norm for me lately, this was not the topic that I had planned to write on for this article. The night before last, my wife and I were driving back to the ranch from town. From town to the ranch is more than 22 miles of two-lane, 65-mph country highway. The highway is bordered by the Salmon River on one side and sheer mountain on the other. There are virtually no guardrails or traffic barriers anywhere except on bridges. You will not find a single street lamp on this stretch of highway. As we headed for home after dark, we saw a cluster of emergency vehicle lights flashing in the distance. As we got closer, it was impossible to tell what was happening, or on what side of the highway it was happening on, as the number of high intensity flashing lights literally blinded us coming out of the pitch black of the night. There were no traffic cones and only a single sign warning of the event ahead of us. As we crept forward toward the first (high-profile) emergency vehicle, we saw the silhouette of a person pop out from in front of it with a stop/slow sign. All we could initially see of that person were the flashing lights bouncing off of the sign and the yellow stripes on his safety vest. When we got up to his location we could see that he was adequately outfitted in a DOT safety vest, and a hard hat that had a nice LED flashing red light on it. Turned out that the “incident” was nothing more than a big rig that had turned too sharply off of the highway and dumped the back end of its trailer into the ditch. The three tow vehicles had deployed adequate work lighting onto the scene itself as they tried to keep the trailer from tipping over, and get it back on to the side road.