Your webmaster, on observing an usafe act, has been known to point and say, "If you look up 'stupid' in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of that guy."

Well, the chickens have come home to roost.

If you look up "Fire Department Rehab" on Wikipedia.org, you'll find this web site.

No, we're not the leading authority on care for responders at emergency scenes. But we do try to stay on top of best practices and we're developing some of our own.

In addition to on-scene care of the responders, we find that in some cases we are agents of change and change is sometimes strongly resisted.

Not everyone "believes" in Rehab. You can try not believing in gravity and see what it gets you.

Most Chiefs believe. There's an NFPA standard, NFPA 1584. You know what a "standard" is. A standard is "hot on the left, cold on the right". You reach for the faucet. You know what to expect. You deviate from a standard at your own risk.

The Chiefs know that if you ignore standards on the fireground or in training you can have liability.

But, there are the CAVE people. You have probably met them. CAVE is the "Committee Against Virtually Everything". They think, "We didn't think of it, so we're not interested."

They resisted and some are still resisting SCBA, not being able to ride on the tailboard, accountability tags, wearing ppe at MVCs, ICS, physical fitness and healthy diets.

And the CAVE people are resisting rehab. I have been told that there is at least one department whose members have said that if they are called for mutual aid and are required to participate in formal rehab, they're not coming. (You know who you are.)

I hope they stay home. I don't want them getting hurt and I especially don't want them getting hurt at my scene.

So, do you try to win over the CAVE people, or do you ignore them?