What’s in a Color?

Historically, fire engines have always been red.  There are many reasons why, but my favorite explanation involved fire engines “rushin” to the scene, and everyone knows Russians are red.  Sorry, but that joke made no sense to me for years, and once I finally “got it” I knew I would never forget it. 

Then safety was sited as the reason to create more visible colors for fire engines.  After all, red was almost black at night time.  Soon there were slime yellow fire engines bursting onto the scene, seemingly erasing tradition for the sake of visibility.  It was a sad day for the die hard historians, who were convinced that firefighting as they knew it was OVER.  On the heels of this bold change of tradition came artistic creativity, and soon there were fire engines in every color of the rainbow, two-tone paint jobs, psychedelic color patterns, full length murals, and blinding reflective striping packages. 

This new age of de-standardization assured that there would never be a uniform color of fire apparatus.  The odd colors became a symbol of pride and local unity.  Firefighters would bleed the color of their fire trucks, and the loyalty created by this passionate support of the “home town colors” was an enormous character builder much like one’s support for their alma mater.  You learned to fight for your colors, live your colors, and identify with your colors.  Your colors became a part of you. 

When I had the opportunity to help merge four fire companies into one municipal department, one of the challenges we faced is selecting a color to unify the department.  The legacy colors were red, green, yellow, and blue.  To be fair to everyone, these four colors were eliminated from consideration.  The new unification needed to be NEW, and not favor any subset of the membership, for fear of alienating the remaining 75% of the members.  After all, we needed to learn to fight for our “colors”, with the key term being OUR colors!   After hours of discussion, meetings, suggestions, votes, and considerations, the department chose white, trimmed in red, black, and gray striping.  This selection incorporated the township colors, the local school district colors, and satisfied an opportunity of economic responsibility.  Using grant funding, the economy of scale, and some clever scheduling, the fleet began to take shape, and soon our new color scheme was consistently applied to all existing apparatus, and matched by the 6 units acquired after the standardization. 

Then, with an act of tradition busting that hadn’t been experienced in decades, a single vote, allowed by a thoughtless abandonment of leadership, changed the identity standard that had cost the young department over $100,000 to achieve.  Even more importantly, the unity of the membership was fissured, and the results of this one night of questionable decision-making will be painfully obvious for decades.  The breech of standardization has been felt since the day the new apparatus arrived in the station.  You can just feel it!

Please understand, I think the new color scheme is beautiful, but it is NOT us!  Black over red looks sharp, but it is not white with red striping.  While the color of the fire truck has zero impact on the effective functionality of the unit, it does have an impact on the members riding in it, or at least HALF of the members riding on it. 

What color should we bleed now?  What banner do we “fight” for?  What team are we on?  What color will the NEXT truck be?  The truth is, the fire won’t care.  I wish I didn’t!