b'The Fire Chief: It is the responsibility of the Fire Chief to be the communitys chief advocate for fire safety. The waning availability of civil service protections for career fire chiefs makes this advocacy role more difficult. The executive skill set of the Fire Chief will to a large part define the success of the organization. Interoperability: The ability of the emergency response system to react to a major disaster, whether manmade or natural, depends on the day-to-day working relationships between responders that are established before the disaster. Systems such as communications, command, and equipment compatibility that make day-to-day responses more efficient will make responses to disasters more effective. Homeland security efforts and funding priorities must recognize this reality. Fire Service Unity: The effectiveness of the nations fire service on the national level depends on cooperation between and among the major fire organizations. Fire service organizational leaders must commit to working together for the common good, rather than competing for individual interests. Our lack of a unified voice has been a major stumbling block to political support and funding on the Federal level. Regionalization: Trends toward interagency cooperation, automatic mutual aid, and regionalization have been observed in the volunteer, combination, and career fire service and have served as a model for other interagency coordination work. These efforts trend to bring better services to the customer, more effective fire service operations, and the opportunity to reduce overall costs. Fire Prevention and Public Education: All aspects of fire prevention have become core components of effective fire service delivery. All fire departments, regardless of size, should value and strive to provide the full range of fire prevention and life safety education services. Increasingly, fire departments are being expected to take on all-hazard/all-risk messaging in addition to traditional fire safety efforts. Labor and Management: Fire service labor and management leaders must work together on the local, state, and national level to advance fire safety causes. The past decade has shown many examples of the positive impacts30'