The Heat of the Moment

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this , I thought the ideas and concepts introduced around the world of critical thinking and intuition were captivating. However I feel 99% of all the characters (real or not) were downplayed in order to make the author look like the most capable person in the room, hindsight being 2020 it’s easy to see how someone else could be seen to make a mistake or not be in total control of the situation. There were moments in the book where I had to stop and think “this feels very condescending to the other firefighters” as if they all had at least one trait that made them lesser than the author herself.

As a serving Fire Service senior officer I broadly recognised most of the FRS narrative and found many of the concepts interesting. On the whole though, I found the book read as an extended exercise in self-promotion. I offer this as an observation and not as an intended criticism. Firstly, the foreword gives rise to particular elements being distorted in the interests of anonymity, etc. Thereafter, chapter after chapter outlines hypothetical operational incidents in which the author is repeatedly both the Incident Commander and the all-seeing-eye. Whilst this may appear mightily impressive to the non-FRS reader, no such individual exists in my own experience and therein lies my difficulty with the book. Curiously, It appears the author has rarely occupied any other functional role within the Incident Command System other than overall IC. Certainly, the ethos of ‘Team’ and the ‘Culture of Decision Making’ which are crucial at larger FRS incidents are rarely acknowledged. Weaving these elements into the narrative would’ve been simple enough but would’ve perhaps required a wider distribution of focus and acknowledgement beyond the author. Regardless, the lack of these elements renders the narrative less than authentic purely based on my own experience.