Not long ago and just the other day, there were suspicious packages found in the Midcoast. A lunch bag by a trash receptacle in Rockland and a paper tube in a mailbox in Warren. Fortunately, neither incident had a serious outcome. Unfortunately, when things like this happen, the criticizers come out in full force. The online reporting is great for getting news as it happens and it’s also an easy way to comment on news items. The challenge is that the commentators have more information than the responders.

When I was in the fire service, we would always have a debriefing of serious events in order to learn what we could have done better. The biggest challenge in those meetings was to examine the information decision makers had at hand during the event, not during our follow-up meeting.

It’s the same thing with online comments. People comment that it’s over-reaction. They ask why law enforcement shut the street and why so many fire engines and police cars were at the scene when an incident amounted nothing? Well, we know that it’s nothing now, but the responders didn’t know that then.

Back in 1971, I was serving in the Seabees on the island of Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean and an equipment operator,Lincoln Hayes, served with me. He was always picking on the less experienced truck drivers. One day, a younger driver had enough. He jumped out of truck and said, “Hayes, if you’re so smart, you do it!” Lincoln responded coolly: “I don’t do nothing. What I do is criticize.”

Life has taught me that there are a lot of Lincoln Hayes in the world.

It’s easy to criticize sitting at your keyboard, but what if it was up to you?

What if you were the one that had to make the decision?

You don’t have any of the facts that you have after an incident becomes news, you only have the initial call information and what you may have been able to determine after arriving at the scene.

People are depending upon you to keep them safe. You will have to live with your decision.

There often is a gut feeling that “it’s nothing” but can you take the chance?

Suppose you’re the officer who saw the lunch bag by the trash receptacle in Rockland and decided that it was nothing and you did nothing. Then the bag blows up when someone picks it up and seriously injures or kills several people. Is that protecting the public? Maybe you decide that the item in the mailbox in Warren is nothing, but when the mail delivery person opens the box, it blows their hand off. It’s only easy when you get to look at the event after the fact.

When I was assistant fire chief in Union, the owners of B.M. Clark decided to sell the trailers that lined Route 17 for the metal.

When the scrap people came to get the trailers, there was something in one of them that caused concern. This trailer was a military surplus that had been purchased many years ago for who knows what reason.

Inside the trailer was some form of nitroglycerin. Because it was so old, it was now unstable. What to do? Without a doubt, today, we would have called out the cavalry. Back then, we weighed our options.

The professionals said that as long as it wasn’t disturbed, it should be fine and in a short time it was going to be removed.

We decided to keep it a secret. Right or wrong, that was the decision. Just mentioning a trailer load of nitroglycerin would have put the county into a complete panic that may or may not have been justified.

We conducted a preplan of a fire at B.M.Clark. What would we do? Where would mutual aid report? What sort of traffic control would we need?

We prepared for the worst and hoped for the best, but never let on why we were doing the preplan. Since there are no trailers alongside Route 17 and there was no explosion, you know it turned out OK.

I have to tell you that there were several sleepless nights knowing what was over there and knowing that nobody else knew. It was not pleasant. In hindsight, I don’t know that we made the correct decision, but we made a decision based on the information we had at the time and a decision needed to be made. That’s the other piece of these events. You can’t sit back and see what happens. You need to take control of the situation and be responsible for a positive outcome.

I think it’s awesome that we can get news almost as it happens and it’s pretty cool that we can comment right after we read a news article. Before you jump on the negative, over-reactive bandwagon, put yourself in the position of the decision maker. It’s all up to you, now. People could live or die based on your decision.

Are you going to worry about someone having to go out of their way to reach their destination and being inconvenienced?

Are you going to worry that businesses have to shut down for a time until the situation is resolved?

If you are, you’re probably a Lincoln Hayes; “I don’t do nothing. What I do is criticize.”