Comment by Georgelemental
10 hours ago
Here in America, EMS personnel generally wear tall, reinforced boots; they are considered protective/safety equipment. We would never take them off just to enter a home
10 hours ago
Here in America, EMS personnel generally wear tall, reinforced boots; they are considered protective/safety equipment. We would never take them off just to enter a home
As firefighters we enter homes in our full turnout gear with fire boots, even for simple calls like automatic fire alarms. The reason being 1/100 automatic alarms are real fires, so we don't want to be caught with our pants down.
Throughout my fire and EMS training I was taught to anticipate possible violence from the residents. I personally know folks who have entered buildings and been shot at or found booby traps. One guy I know responded to an arson house fire where the resident had cut out holes in the floor under every window and door and covered the holes with rugs, Home Alone style.
The US has a serious drug and mental health crisis. First responders often have to deal with people who probably would be in state care if we didn't spend all our tax money on bombs and tax cuts for the wealthy. Or at least they would have caretakers who visit and help them take medications and escalate when they start setting up booby traps to defend against the voices.
Probably the same in most Western countries. It's self reinforcing though; if you were expecting to take them off you'd never pick those shoes by default, rather leave them in the back of the car (which presumably/hopefully is what they do in Japan, in case they *do* need them? idk…)
if you do need them you're not going to have time to go get them as an Emergency Responder. I think the pragmatic course then is to disregard etiquette and tradition for safety and practicality in a general sense.
Everyone except the driver has ample time to swap boots during the drive to the location. (In cases where not, I'd also default to robust safety boots.)
Depending on the boots, you might not want to wear them while "idle"¹ in any case, though that's mostly a non-concern with modern safety shoes.
¹ mandatory note: most emergency responders have tons of work while "idle", I just mean "not actively responding"
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It also seems quite dangerous to take them off- depending on the home. Some hoarders, drug addicted situations have needles, glass shards and razor blades in the debris on the floor. How do they handle hoarders in japan?
Obviously, it depends on the context once the front door opens to you
But - the context changes from room to room? Clean shared flat- messy druggy room with collapsed overdose person in it? This.. this whole situation makes no sense.. Have helper boots with a "condom-wrapper" if you are afraid of cleanliness - but keep the boots on at all times.