Arizona Fire and Burn Educators Association

    Virtual CRR Original Post Most fire departments believe their CRR program is further along than it actually is. This is not a criticism. It is a predictable consequence of the way CRR progress tends to be measured — in activities rather than outcomes, in effort rather than impact, in the presence of programs rather than the depth of organizational integration. A department that is doing things feels like a department that has built something. Sometimes it has. Often it is further from maturity than the activity level suggests. This article offers something the CRR space has been missing — an honest CRR program benchmark. Not a national standard reference or a best practice checklist, but a frank description of what each stage of CRR program development actually looks like in practice, what separates one stage from the next, and a self-assessment framework that helps a chief see clearly where their program actually stands rather than where they would like it to stand. The g...

  Original Post Most CRR programs do not fail dramatically. They do not collapse under the weight of a bad decision or a public failure or a budget cut so severe that the program simply disappears overnight. They fade. Gradually, quietly, in ways that are easy to rationalize at each individual step and almost impossible to reverse once enough steps have accumulated. The smoke alarm program that ran twice a year starts running once. Then it gets postponed. Then it gets replaced by something more urgent. The home safety assessment data that was supposed to inform prevention strategy never quite gets analyzed. The company officer who was genuinely engaged with CRR gets promoted and the person who replaces them was never brought into the culture. The partnership with the Area Agency on Aging that was going to extend the department’s reach into isolated elderly residents never gets past the initial meeting. Nobody decided to let the program fail. Nobody woke up one morning and chose to ...