Families and the Fire Service Can Honor LODDs Prior to 1981
Section on the Walk of Honor® will honor firefighters and help expand Memorial Park
A brick Walk of Honor® connects the monument, the historic Fallen Firefighters Memorial Chapel, and memorial plazas in National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Park. Each brick on the walkway bears a personal inscription. While firefighters who died in the line of duty prior to 1981 have not been officially honored and their names have not yet been added to the Memorial site, there are plans to do so when resources are available. Now, a special section on the Walk of Honor® has been added to remember these firefighters and help support the expansion of Memorial Park.
If you would like to order multiple bricks for your department’s LODDs please send a spreadsheet with the names for inscription to Donna Clark.
Guidelines for inclusion on the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial as a pre-1981 line-of-duty death shall be determined by the following standards:
- For the purpose of this Memorial the term “firefighter” means an individual whose official duties include fire suppression, fire investigation, or fire police activities and who is actively employed on a full-time, part-time, volunteer, or contract basis by a local county, state or federal agency, with or without compensation, to provide primary fire protection for an organized jurisdiction having authority.
- This definition also includes seasonal and full-time employees of USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Fish and Wildlife, the National Park Service, and the US Department of Energy and state wildland agencies; contract fire suppression personnel and pilots working under the official auspices of one of the above; prison inmates serving on fire crews; civilian firefighters working at military installations; and privately employed firefighters including trained members of industrial or institutional fire brigades; active-duty, enlisted and officer United States Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Navy, and Marine Corps military personnel assigned to fire stations who die performing emergency services in accordance with their position description.
1. The two exclusions from this policy are: (1) personnel who die fighting fire on board Navy ships where all sailors are considered firefighters, and (2) personnel who die from direct enemy action or attack.
- “Line of duty” means any activity or action which a firefighter is obligated or authorized by statute, rule, regulation, condition of employment or service, official mutual-aid agreement, or other law, or for which he or she is compensated to perform under the auspices of the fire service protection agency he or she serves, and that such agency legally recognizes that the activity or action to have been obligated or authorized at the time performed.
Additionally, the following criteria will be applied when evaluating circumstances of each death for inclusion on the National Memorial:
- Deaths directly resulting from traumatic injuries sustained during response to, at the scene of, or during return from an emergency incident including but not limited to fires, emergency medical calls, hazardous materials incidents, natural disasters, technical rescue incidents, and search and rescue missions.
- Deaths directly resulting from traumatic injuries sustained while engaged in department-authorized training drill or activity that requires participants to be engaged in physical activity.
- Deaths directly resulting from traumatic injuries sustained while engaged in a department-mandated physical exercise program administered by the agency including, but not limited to running or other types of physical exercise and annual recertification fitness or agility tests.
- Deaths directly resulting from a cardiovascular event that occurs immediately after, or within 24 hours of, returning from an emergency response or being engaged in a department-mandated physical exercise or training activity as defined above.
In all cases documentation must be provided showing a direct link from an emergency incident, or training activity, to the firefighter’s injury and subsequent death. Examples of documentation that can be submitted are: department incident or run reports, newspaper articles, notarized witness statements, hospital records, physician reports, and disability records.
In certain cases, the Firefighter will be excluded from consideration for inclusion on the Memorial. Such cases are:
- Deaths that occur while the firefighter was engaged in a non-emergency fire department duty, i.e. – station or apparatus maintenance, special-event standby assignments, parades, community service details, fundraising events, etc.
- Deaths attributed to cancer, disease or infection.
- Deaths attributed to suicide.
- Deaths attributed to alcohol or controlled substance abuse.
The criteria used for including a firefighter’s name on the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial are separate and distinct from the line-of-duty death criteria and presumptive laws used by other agencies, entities or programs to establish line-of-duty death status for other national, state and local memorials. For more information about Project Roll Call, please contact Donna Clark at [email protected].
