I just wanted to point out the similarities between The Philosophy Statement of the Oklahoma City Fire Department and The Philosophy Statement of the Woodlands Fire Department. For those that are unaware, The Woodlands Fire Department’s current fire chief, Chief Benson, was formerly employed in Oklahoma City as their fire chief.
Both statements consist of 8,000+ words contained in approximately 80 paragraphs. A comparison of these paragraphs reveals that over 90% of the paragraphs contain more than 90% identical wording. Actually, if one would take the Oklahoma City (OKC) document and replace every instance of ‘Oklahoma City Fire Department’ with ‘The Woodlands Fire Department’ and replace every instance of the word ‘citizen’ with the word ‘resident’, one would essentially have The Woodlands Fire Department Philosophy Statement.
The main difference in the two documents can be found in the conclusion. The conclusion of the OKC document includes one full paragraph explaining that the document originated from the firefighters themselves. The following is a quote from that paragraph:
“Twenty-one people ranging in rank from Corporal to Battalion Chief were selected from this list and placed on a committee that was assigned to one of the five major themes presented here. The committees then met together to prepare the final version of the Oklahoma City Standard. It is their voice that is presented here.”
Conversely, in the opening paragraph of the conclusion section of The Philosophy Statement of The Woodlands Fire Department it states,
“When I embarked on writing The Philosophy Statement of The Woodlands Fire Department…..”
I am a bit confused. If the paragraph from the OKC document is correct in saying that the firefighters in the form of committees wrote the final version of the document, and the OKC document is nearly identical to The Philosophy Statement of The Woodlands Fire Department, then how can one individual claim they wrote The Philosophy Statement of The Woodlands Fire Department?
On a side note if this philosophy statement were to be strictly adhered to, Chief Benson would have to terminate himself (with a smile on his face?). 
