Deaf Firefighter’s Blog

The title comes from Walt Kelly’s comic strip Pogo and it references our tendency to be our own worst enemy.

Courtesy of this blog, I received the following communique from another deaf firefighter.  Identifying details have been removed to protect the innocent & guilty alike:

“I’m from a volunteer station.  Since they found out for sure that I have a hearing ‘disability’ its just pure insensitivity, almost like they are trying to test me to be able to say I can’t do the job.  They will turn their backs when talking, make me have to have them repeat themselves, which they give me a look, or lately if i ask if they can repeat it they yell “never mind I’ll just do it”.  Its like “Um I can do it.”

I went to the toughest firefighter classes around here to prove to myself that I can handle the job, and the guys I did the classes with all agree that they would bring me in over A LOT of guys in their depts, not to sound conceited, but I know I can pull my weight.

I just recently took and completed a RIT (ed note: RIT is Rapid Intervention Team: trained to rescue fellow firefighters)  course in which the guys in the other depts were actually mad at how my dept treated me…the first day everyone kinda looked at me funny, which I’m used to, but than I showed them what I could do and they were a lot more willing to help me out, ie making sure I can see their lips if just talking in a group, using the sense of touch a ton more in a search. “

This sort of stuff just pisses me off.   I know there are people out there who believe deaf and hard of hearing people have no place in the fire service.   But hello, common decency anyone?   It’s this sort of infantile behavior that reinforces the notion that emergency responders are a good ol’ boy network.  I’m fortunate that I haven’t seen this in my current department.

This applies to both firefighters and deaf people alike.  Even if you don’t agree with what a person represents, treating them in a way less than you would treat your own neighbor only serves to dehumanize you.

… and admittedly, I haven’t. That doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy lately. Here’s a brief recap along with what I did at those fires.

12/16/07: Single Family Dwelling Kitchen Fire: Arriving on the Ladder truck, I started to open up all exterior doors as requested by the officer of Ladder 18. By that time, the fire had been extinguished for the most part and they need to ventilate the smoke.  Most of my work was geared toward overhaul.

___________

12/23/07: Townhome Fire: Again, arriving on Ladder 18. While enroute, we were advised that there was heavy fire and smoke and no entrapment. Upon arrival, I followed officer of Ladder 18 into the house with a can and hook. After doing a cursory search, I reported conditions back to officer and then was tasked with monitoring the side B and D exposures until additional manpower arrived. The fire was knocked fairly quickly but damage was very severe.

___________

1/28/08: Fully involved house fire. This was THE biggest fire I’ve been to in the 4 years I’ve been a firefighter. Originally dispatched to a kitchen fire, we were en-route when the neighboring chief said the fire was through the roof. Ladder 18 officer immediately started giving fireground tasks and we were ordered to take out windows on the second floor to reduce the potential for an explosion. We were also ordered not to enter the building.

We found out why shortly after. After we laddered the 1st floor roof and took out windows, the place basically went up in flames. Live ammo started exploding and that basically was the reason no interior attack took place (all residents got out safely). We started to set up for an exterior attack with a 2 1/2 inch line on side ‘D’ when the wall started to collapse giving us some initial excitement.  We were there for about 5 hours total just putting water on the fire.

___________

So yes, Virginia: Deaf firefighters can do it.  We take on different roles that contribute to the larger effort, and are (relatively) safe for us and our brother firefighters.
On a more somber note, this has been a deadly week for firefighters. Head over to Firefighter Close Calls or Firegeezer to get more information. Then take a hike over to Firegeezer’s take on how the building and construction trade is trading residents and firefighters lives in the name of greater profits. It’s compelling stuff.

I usually have to travel a fair bit for my work as Program Director for CEPIN. Usually, most of those travels deal with administrative things or find me attending/speaking at conferences.

Wednesday was no different. I was scheduled to attend a Summit on Emergency Preparedness and Special Needs Populations and then a gala reception later that evening for the American Association for People with Disabilities. Sounds nice, but usually my function is to show up, make a few salient points, and wonder why I didn’t just stay home.

Wednesday actually was different.

The conference was hosted by Booz Allen Hamilton, a well-known government consultancy. They put forth their concept of a “Megacommunity” as a way of resolving the problems that are too big for any one entity to solve. Years ago, we came to expect the government to solve all of our problems. After 9/11 and Katrina, we realized that this isn’t possible.

The Megacommunity concept basically says that the public sector (government), private sector (corporations), and civil sector (non-profits and other Non-Governmental Organizations) should band together to apply their resources to a fairly specific set of problems.

To use an example from their documents: After Hurricane Andrew practically flattened parts of South Florida, the state government at that time realized that they couldn’t possibly single-handedly prepare and recover the entire state on their own. What they did instead was bring all groups of stakeholders to the table and basically said, “We can do this together. What can you bring to the table? How can we keep this from happening again?”

Well, there hasn’t been a category 5 hurricane in that area since, they did have 5 hurricanes hitting the state in 2004. We did not see the same level of human suffering that we did in Andrew because building codes had been strengthened, awareness and preparedness efforts were improved, and nonprofits were ready to help their constituents. I won’t say everything was hunky-dory but when you compare that to Katrina, it certainly was a much better result.

While at the AAPD Leadership Gala, they recognized Eric Rosenthal of the Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) for his work in exposing the horrible conditions that people with mental disabilities are exposed to in countries around the world and his work toward getting the United Nations to recognize basic human rights for people with disabilities worldwide.

An emaciated and dehydrated little girl, suffering from life-threatening diarrhea, tied into a crib at Kulina. Photo Marc Schneider 2007 (c - MDRI)

I’m sure deaf people worldwide are subjected to the exact same conditions and we don’t know about it. Or is it because we don’t care? We’re so caught up in the relatively petty squabbles about Pepsi ads, and deficit thinking that we’ve lost sight of some of the very real problems that exist out there in the world.

There are countries that lock up deaf people because they’re deaf.

There are countries that lack any type of telecommunications access for their deaf citizens.

There are countries that don’t provide hearing aids or other basic hearing services

There are countries that actively repress signed languages.

So what are you doing about it? For my part, I just made a donation to MDRI. But for the deaf community to actively attack this problem, we need to start working together with people we never thought we’d ever share the same room with. That means sitting at the table with NAD, AGBell, HLAA, the VRS companies, government agencies, etc. .

We need to start by identifying what the problem is. We need to start by saying “This is the problem that we all share.” Each entity at the table doesn’t need to “give up” or compromise on their core beliefs but they can say, “This is what we can do to help.”

We can apply this to whatever problem we have and achieve a long-standing resolution to the problems that face us rather than wasting our breath on insignificant, trivial issues.

So what will you do today?

“Check your six” started out as a cry from pilot-to-pilot to have them take a look behind and see if they had any enemy fighters on their tail.

I think most of us who work for deaf agencies use email.  I would say 99% of us who do, also use a signature at the tail-end of the email to list contact information.

For some reason, I always had problems trying to send emails to several of my colleagues and kept getting rejected by their spam filters.  We both tried to figure it out but to no avail.

My good friend Rob over at  seerobcode.com, a programmer in his own right, figured out the problem and posted the solution over there.  If you’ve had problems with emails being deflected by spam filters, Rob says to change (or remove) the dynamic IP address.

As a former info security guy, I can give you a pretty good guess as to why spam filters are doing that: they don’t want people being redirected to phishing websites.

-Neil

I know many of us deaf parents have funny stories relating to their hearing kids. Heck, all you gotta do is watch the Olson Brothers to see the other side of that equation.

So in the comments section below (or your own blog posting), why don’t you share your funny stories where deaf parents and hearing kids create hilarious stories that are told every time the “kid stories” come out.

In the interest of breaking the ice:

One of my favorite musicians is Eric Clapton and many of his older songs can be found on my iPod and the CD in my car. When my oldest son was about 4 and his brother was 2, I was playing a mix CD in the car. Generally, I’m pretty aware of what song is playing and when one particular song came on, I’d just skip that song or jump to the next one.

This day, I wasn’t really paying attention and I let the song play for a good 2 minutes before I realized it was on. So I went ahead and pressed the “next” button on the radio. My older son immediately started waving and let me know he wasn’t happy with my decision to change the song upon which hilarity ensued.

The song? Clapton’s “Cocaine”.

My son’s comment? “Daddy, I want more Cocaine!”

———————

Just so everyone understands: the song was intended to be a anti-drug song (see the linked wikipedia article) but I usually skipped it over because I had visions in my head of the kid singing “cocaine” at school.

Anyway: Deafread is so damn serious these days and needs some lightning up. So let’s see what your funny stories are and share them in the comments (or create your own blog entry and trackback to this one).

Thanks, Karen for a great article: http://deafhhcareers.blogspot.com/2008/01/neil-mcdevitt-firefighter.html

Also: In my previous entry, I talked about “Whammo” moments. That article was published last Thursday by the City Paper. You can read it here: http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2008/01/31/buzz-worthy

As much as my job requires me to have a fairly decent grasp of English and putting words together to coherently express a thought I may be having, I still have those moments of “Aww, I shoulda said…”

You know those moments?  Moments when you’re just doing something completely different and WHAMMO!  The PERFECT response hits you like a ton of bricks?   Let’s call those the WHAMMO moments, shall we?

Here’s my personal WHAMMO moment that I feel compelled to blog about.

In the coming weeks (perhaps as early as tomorrow?), Philadelphia’s City Paper will do an article about the changes at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf.  For some reason, I was recommended by some folks as being knowledgeable about the deaf community and deaf culture.  I tried to tell the guy that a) Those people are too kind, and b) There are others who could be better sources than I.  I guess when you’re on a deadline you run with what you have. I gotta hand it to this guy though. He asked really good questions and showed an better understanding of deaf culture than most reporters tend to.

He asked me the following question:

“How does Deaf culture couple the need to develop a strong deaf community with the need to integrate deaf students into the broader community at large?”

Good question.  It took most of my lunch and a few minutes while typing to really think my answer through. I was never really satisfied with how I ended the answer:

There are people within the community who think that the broader community should be integrating into US rather than vice versa.   In other words, we’ve spent 100+years trying to “integrate”, “mainstream”, etc. and where has it gotten us collectively?   Since that’s a failure, maybe we should focus solely on OUR culture, OUR language and OUR community before we think about everyone else’s.

There are others who think that we need to be constantly engaged with the larger society (read: hearing people) and may perceive efforts to maintain a distinct “culture” or “language” as being futile or a distraction from this goal.

I think there are a lot of Deaf people, myself included,  who fall in between the two.  They recognize and value their cultural and linguistic background but they recognize the reality where they may have to spend 8-10 hours a day integrating into the larger society for work and just being involved in the community they live in.  I do enjoy talking with my hearing neighbors but does that make me less of a deaf person?  By the same token, when I head out to the local watering hole, I usually bring deaf friends with me.

So back to my WHAMMO moment.  I was driving back from the store after getting milk and bread (how suburban) when I thought back to this exchange and realized how it should have ended:

The most successful deaf people are the ones who reject all of the above, decide their own path, and get it done. 

Take a look at our deaf “superstars” of today and you’ll see this repeating itself in their life stories. Yeh, Davila, Hawk, (god help me) Ridor’s early years, or <insert your role model here> and you’ll see that they’re not following some cultural playbook or following some preconcieved notion on what they should be doing.  They simply decided: This is what I want to do (and did it).

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I love music and my iPod. One of the interesting trends I’ve noticed for myself recently, is how I usually hate a song at first but after hearing it a few times on the iPod’s shuffle feature, I really start to like it.

One of these songs is U2’s “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out of” from their album “All That You Can’t Leave Behind”. When I first heard it, it was really incomprehensible. After playing it a few times on my ipod, looking up the lyrics and then looking up the history of the song, it really came together for me.

Originally, the song was written after the suicide of Bono’s friend Michael Hutchence of INXS fame and it was characterized as an argument between friends. Click here for more on the genesis of the song and its meaning for Bono.

(For some reason, I can’t embed the captioned video I made.. help is appreciated)  Click here for the link: http://www.bubbleply.com/player.aspx?pid=3c098c84-c788-4e86-af1d-1556f3c77552

But one of the great things about really good songwriting is that you can apply it to practically any situation. When I was driving to DC for a recent conference and this song came on, I had been thinking about deafread and the deaf community in general.

It occured to me that we often think of deaf history as “moments” spread out through history.  Examples of these can include:

• Laurent Clerc’s arrival in America in 1816
• Gallaudet (or rather, Columbia Institution’s) charter by Congress - 1857
• Milan Conference - 1880
• George Veditz’s movies and efforts to preserve ASL - 1903
• Passage of PL 94-142 (now called IDEA act) - 1975
• Gallaudet DPN protest - 1988
• Passage of ADA - 1990
• Jordan/Fernandes/Davila brouhaha - 2007

And like the song says, a lot of people get stuck in moments that they can’t get out of.  Many moments are positive, but folks seem to get hung up on the negative moments and, again, like the song says their way “falters.”

It doesn’t have to me major moments like those listed above.  Perhaps it might be treatment received at the hands of smug ASL-ists / oralists?  Perhaps it might be an act of discrimination at a job or restaurant?  Maybe someone looked at your ASL and decided you were less of a person for having used it?

For me, it’s been seeing other firefighters that don’t know me calling my abilities, my sanity (and that of my department) into question. Being called a “liability” sometimes bugs me to no end.

Do those moments serve to dehumanize you?  You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t feel put down.  What matters is how we respond to these moments, both individually and collectively.  I’ve talked about some bloggers that seem to get stuck fairly often.

I’ve been reading, with utter fascination, the advocacy efforts that stem out of comments made by Jack O’Connell, the State’s Superintendent for Public Instruction, on a radio program regarding The Governator’s budget for education in California.   More to the point, I’m thrilled to see what seems to be a fairly comprehensive advocacy approach being brought to bear against short-sighted government cuts and seeing that detailed at the “Deaf Children Are Precious” blog.

It would have been easy to do any number of things to protest this decision but the advocates haven’t allowed themselves to get “stuck in the moment” and have kept moving forward, changing the targets of their action as the situation has changed.  It’s a fascinating process to watch from 3k miles away.

My good friend, Sandman, tagged me the other day as being a “Thinking Blogger”. I’m sure my wife would disagree with that notion that I am capable of “thinking” but I certainly do appreciate the honor.

Apparently, part of the rules require me to tag 5 other people as “thinking bloggers”. I’m a strong believer in not repeating what other people have already said and Sandman kind of stole my thunder.

But one of the things that struck me was what qualifies as a “thinking blogger”? It seems to me that lately, plenty of people are doing a lot of signing/typing but no one is really doing any critical thinking. If I named names, I’d be strung up faster than a piece of yarn at a “Stitch and Bitch” session, so I’ll let my omissions speak for themselves.

I define critical thinking as trying to look at all sides of an issue and coming to a conclusion while remaining open to the possibility that that conclusion is wrong.

Sounds wishy-washy, huh? Think of it this way: How many times do you know what a person will write about and their position on the issue before you even click the link? If you look at many of the deaf blogosphere entries today, you probably know what I’m talking about. For example, I can type in a certain Hawaiian dude’s URL and have a pretty good idea that it’ll either be:
a) deficit thinking related
b) Some mythical creature that uses ASL
c) some other hot-issue-of-the-day
d) all of the above.

Likewise, while I have a lot of respect for a fellow firefighter who also blogs, I also know that he’s going to be very focused on his own narrow subset of issues. That’s not to say he’s narrow-minded but it just means I have a pretty good idea of what I’m going to read before I go there.

So let’s get started, shall we?

1) A shoutout to Sandman. While some of his entries can, ahem, put Dostoevsky to shame, he does a much better job explaining and arriving at his conclusions than your average blogger.

2) Meryl over at Bionic Ear Blog sometimes seems to do a better job separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of finding interesting stuff that is actually relevant to many of us. I know a lot of people got worked up over deafbunny.com but her post re: the challenges of HDTV and how advocates are working on the issue are a heck of a lot more important to deaf people (may not be as visually interesting than deafbunny.com, granted).

3) Like Sandman, I’ve never been a fan of “personal” blogs but I do appreciate it when they try to connect bigger issues to their own personal lives. Karen over at Deaf Mom’s World brings a really interesting perspective on how she tries to balance what-should-be-there vs. what is realistic.

4) Like many people, I get a lot of solicited spam from VRS companies. By that, I mean when I registered for their site, I said I wanted to receive emails from them. Usually, I delete them without much thought. However, when I see “Trudy Suggs” name on the i711.com emails, I immediately go in and read them. I don’t know if she could be considered a “blogger” but her stuff always gets my neurons firing.

And that’s basically it. As I mentioned in an earlier post, many blogs have become “bandwagon jumpers-on” where they’re jumping on the topic-du-jour without either contributing critical insights or even coming up with innovative posts on their own to spark discussions.

I would’ve added Drolz Uncensored but Sandman already grabbed that one. Grr..

Now, to be fair, I’m sure Amy Cohen Efron’s vlogs have always inspired discussions and debates but I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never really caught on with the vlogs. I certainly hope a fellow-taggee (?) will highlight Thinking Vloggers that I can watch and enjoy.

Among my other blogging favorites, you can find:

* Dave Statter of WUSA*9 (Washington DC). As a former first responder, he’s maintained an interest in firefighters and other first responders.

* Firegeezer has done some really great reporting on firefighter safety and one of the more bizarre stories that come out of the fire/rescue world

Agree? Disagree? Post it in the comments and let me know.

There’s been a lot of excitement surrounding the recent unveiling of Viable’s VPAD wireless VRS device. Right now, there’s a lot of questions that people have that need to be answered. The best questions I’ve seen so far are from Amy Cohen Efron who does a great job recognizing Viable for their achievement but doesn’t let them get away with the usual marketing hype by asking very pointed questions. –> Link <—

I would add a two more questions to that excellent list:

1. Is the device truly interoperable?

2. What communication protocols is it using in making the call?

If you remember a few years ago, the big issue was interoperability. Many VRS providers railed against a particular company’s virtual lock-up on the market in which it prevented their videophones from calling other VRS providers. After a concerted effort involving VRS providers and advocacy groups (see below for disclosure), the FCC released clarification that videophones must be openly accessible to all VRS providers.

What resulted from that ruling was a boon in competition but a virtual stranglehold in R&D. In other words, the FCC’s ruling essentially locked in the antiquated H.323 protocol as the standard du jour since that standard was used by the aforementioned company. Any new videophones that come out have to be able to accommodate their new standard with the old H.323 standard.

Since the FCC’s ruling in 2006, there has been virtually no new developments in R&D with the exception of SnapVRS’s Ojo (which I have). I know from that the Ojo doesn’t natively support the H.323 protocol (it currently uses the SIP protocol) but the company had to purchase a “translation” service to convert those calls.

One of the biggest selling points for any SIP provider for me is the ability to have multiple videophones behind one router. Currently, the H.323 protocol only allows you to have one videophone behind each IP address. This means you have to basically call your ISP, get additional IP addresses, etc. etc. while SIP protocol is literally a plug-and-play affair. Right now, we have two ojos in our household which is great since I work from home, my wife and I can make calls without having to bother the other person.

Back to my point: the FCC’s interoperability mandate has given us a great deal of competition in the marketplace but it’s also had the effect of stifling the development of newer and better technologies. In other words, many of the vendors are simply content to piggyback on the current H.323 protocol. I’m thrilled to see Viable, HOVRS, and SNAP! bucking this trend but I have to wonder what the price is for this innovation?

Would we be better served by changing the approach the FCC takes in regards to the question of interoperability? Should we allow companies who develop new technologies that aren’t fully interoperable to apply for NECA reimbursements at a reduced rates while companies that have fully-interoperable solutions can benefit from the current full reimbursement rate? This would enable companies to begin to recoup their investments while giving consumers new and improved videophone devices and at the same time, holding the promise for increased reward if they make the effort to become fully interoperable with previous devices.

(Full disclosure: I work for Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc.. My opinion and statements do not reflect those of my employer.)