When called to a car accident, we often disconnect the battery. Why? At an oil burner emer-gency, we shut the power to the burner and then we shut down the fuel supply, too. Why do we do that? These and many other tasks we routinely perform and the precautions we take are done with good reason. Years of firefighting experience gave us rules to follow. They help us get the job done safely and efficiently. We repeat certain actions so frequently that often we do not think about why we do them. As we instruct our newer firefighters in what to do at fires and emergencies, do we explain why they are taking a specific action, or do we simply tell them what to do and how to do it? If we fail to explain the why of what we do, these young eager smoke eaters will not be equipped to make intelligent independent decisions at future incidents. Soon enough, they will be the senior members of tomorrow and if not told the why, they will not be able to pass this vital information on to the new firefighters.
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