BY ALAN BRUNACINI
This is a continuation of last month’s discussion on how we can help train incident commanders (ICs) to remain calm during difficult situations.
YOU MUST CONTROL YOURself. This one is pretty simple: You cannot control anything or anybody else if you cannot control yourself. Learning how to be calm on the fireground starts with a set of personal behavior routines that create an effective level of self-control. These routines enable the IC not to turn his behavior over to a chaotic situation. The foundation of self-control is the manner in which the IC uses his “body parts” (eyes, ears, brain, heart, gut, hands, feet, etc.), particularly during difficult times. Consciously using anatomy and physiology for self-study shows how these very personal components and capabilities connect to functional command effectiveness. This behavior management approach creates a very practical (and intense) way for a person to examine how he performs in critical areas and what he can do to be personally more effectivelike being a cool, calm, collected IC. There is an important interplay between personal capabilities that must be effectively understood and managed.
As an example of this interplay, there is a critical connection, and sometimes natural competition, between the IC’s brain and other body parts. The IC must develop the mental ability to stay awake, pay attention, and effectively connect to the current situation. This cognitive awareness (situational and personal) creates the capability to quickly focus on current conditions and then to automatically predict what can (and probably will) happen in the future. Being able to mentally forecast how the incident can change (get better/get worse) and then attach a projected timetable to those changes can produce a critical future-oriented skill that prevents surprises (more cool stuff). This ability creates the skill to attach tactical patterns to incident conditions. These patterns get stored in the “slide tray in the brain.”
Developing the ability to use tactical patterns to, first, better predict and, then, to track how fireground time and changing tactical conditions connect becomes the basis of the IC’s controlling the timing of his command actionthis creates the IC’s capability to take control of time rather than the opposite. Developing such a perspective of how what is going on now will evolve into what is next becomes the natural tactical pattern launching pad for developing and initiating Plan B, Plan C, and so on. Having these future-oriented tactical “ABC plans” already mentally formed and in the brain bank becomes a huge part of the IC’s being proactive (cool) instead of reactive (playing catch-up), and this capability becomes a huge part of the IC’s maintaining command and control of rapidly changing conditions.
The IC must mentally apply the standard organizational management systems as a set of command behavior “security blankets.” These are the organizational procedures and guidelines that create a game plan of how local resources are to be used. It would be impossible, to say the least, for an IC to develop these operational directives and the organizational agreement to play according to the plan while the “fire was burning.” The basic local ICS system creates a very practical and doable plan that establishes and integrates standard command and operational roles, relationships and functions of the entire team on the strategic (IC), tactical (sector/division/group), and task (company) levels. Using the command system structured around the eight standard command functions is a routine management structure that becomes a huge part of coolheaded performance.
Local tactical guidelines are another major way the organization describes standard tactical action. These guidelines describe how basic operational action (laying hose/raising ladders/using tools) will be performed and how those basic evolutions connect into integrated tactical operations. They are typically packaged in SOPs and outline how operational work (who does what, where, and when) will be performed. These SOPs are based on local capabilities and limitations and describe accepted good work practice for that department. These SOPs become a huge help to the IC in making, evaluating, and updating fireground assignmentsthey become a quick and easy way for the entire team to relate to each other, and they create a practical timing framework that structures the beginning/middle/end of a standard tactical work cycle.
It would be simple if the IC were a robot with a chip that was programmed to go through an intellectual command routine with no distractions. The command functions and operational SOPs could be loaded into Cyber Chief, and he would automatically perform in an absolutely coolheaded, clinical way. So far this unit has been a no show, so we are stuck with Chief Smith, a real live human. He routinely shows up with all his human, nonelectronic components and must somehow get the package of all those pieces and parts to work together.
A continual behavior challenge is that the heart comes along with the brain, and this creates an interesting connection (and many times competition) between cognition and emotion. Now we plop our Chief Smith with his human heart/brain package directly in front of a fast-moving, violent, very visual structural fire where the red monster is very actively attempting to murder the occupants and the firefighters. The brain is saying, “Stay cool”; the heart is screaming, “Stay cool hell, everything in this zip code is burning, and I must somehow figure out how to submerge it all out.”
Another very human reaction is for the IC to emotionally connect to the very intense damage and destruction occurring to the persons who come with what is burning. Having the responsibility to effectively command an incident where everything that defined a person’s existence is now going up in the thermal column is extremely heartwrenching, and this natural humanization makes it even more difficult to stay calm.
Retired Chief ALAN BRUNACINI is a fire service author and speaker. He and his sons own the fire service Web site bshifter.com.
