By Eric G. Bachman
Preplanning is a critical aspect of the fire service. It allows an organization to identify hazardous or potentially hazardous conditions and develop response contingencies and countermeasures to protect the community and its staff. The benefits of preplanning are infinite and incalculable; its importance, at times, is not recognized or appreciated until it’s needed. When certain things go wrong on the fireground, and postincident reviews are conducted, often times a contributing factor is lack of or ineffective preplanning.
The importance and need to preplan is constantly reinforced in many periodicals and entities. It is described in training programs and textbooks such as Fire Engineering’s “Firefighter I & II Handbook” Chapter 29: Pre-Incident Planning. It is a part of the Insurance Services Office, Inc.’s Fire Suppression Rating Schedule, Section 580—Training, (H) Building Familiarization for Pre-Incident Planning. The influence of preplanning on incident outcomes is often highlighted in articles and after-action reports.
Codes such as the International Code Council (ICC) International Fire Code 2012 Edition Section 508.1.5 prescribes criteria that should be maintained on a building information card including construction, utilities and contacts. This is also mirrored in the ICC International Building Code 2012 Edition, Section 911.1.5 (13) Building Information Card. And NFPA 1620 Standard on Pre-Incident Planning establishes criteria for developing pre-incident plans.
In many fire departments, however, little direction is provided to staff on how to establish and carry out preplanning activities other than being provided a form or template and being told to fill it out. Sometimes personnel are awestruck, overwhelmed, or intimidated by seemingly complex processes such as risk management, risk assessment, and preincident intelligence. And when someone does not fully understand something, they don’t engage it or, sometimes, just plain ignore it. Preplanning is a subject not to be ignored! It is a valuable life safety tool that often is not fully embraced, enforced, or practiced individually or organizationally. Excuses such as time and staffing are used to substantiate nonengagement.
Preplanning is certainly not a sexy activity in which to engage. Fire department staff would much rather spend time training on throwing ladders, advancing hoselines, and cutting roofs. But, for many of these practices, an underlying competency or consideration should be preplanning. Preplanning will help identify which ladders are needed. It will also provide information on potential hoseline lengths and identify roof assemblies so appropriate saws/blades are maintained.
Correlated Practice
An effective way to facilitate education is to correlate objectives into simple and easy to understand terms. When I teach the concepts of preincident intelligence, which sounds complex, it is similar to planning a vacation. After some student head-scratching, when broken down, preplanning, risk assessment, preincident intelligence, or any other process that prepares for an emergency is not the monster it appears to be.
Initial vacation planning involves developing a list of interesting places to visit. It includes determining the times these places open and close, daily and seasonally. Their features and amenities are reviewed and evaluated for comfort and convenience. Travel routes are determined and evaluated against other circumstances such as the quickest and shortest routes and their other challenges such as tolls. When planning a vacation, things are thought through to avoid inconvenience and problems. That same mindset applies to preplanning.
Time to Think
When the station alarm or personal alerting devices activates and a dispatcher announces the incident location and type, many things start going through a responder’s mind. As crews assemble, gear is donned, and the fire truck starts its response; short minutes limit the time to think things through. Factors such as what and where, the occupancy type, how many people might be inside the structure, the hazardous substances used, and a whole laundry list of other questions face a responder. These questions foster a mindset of the potential scenarios that may be encountered and the actions that may be necessary to carry out a response. Depending on the status of the fire department’s preplanning efforts, those questions may not be answered until after arrival.
Certainly, every incident scenario cannot be conceivably theorized; thinking through potential situations must be done well before an incident occurs. Typically, people do not go on a vacation without knowing anything about where they are going; neither should the fire service.
Goals
Whether you are preplanning a venue or planning a vacation, the goals are similar. Like vacationers, firefighters want a safe trip and its events to proceed smoothly. And, they do not want inconveniences or to be blindsided by an unrecognized situation. An overarching goal is success. Success, by definition, means something that has turned out as planned or intended. Measuring success is difficult. A successful vacation may be defined as an enjoyable time with family. It may also mean a relaxing or having a unique experience. It may mean that everything such as flights, travel, hotel arrangements, and other activities transpire according to plan.
Success in the emergency services is very difficult to quantitatively measure. However, fire service success occurs if all personnel went home after the call in the same condition as they went to the call. Fire service success is if incident damages were limited to the room, building, or block of origin that was encountered on arrival. And, fire service success happens if civilian injuries and deaths were not sustained after the fire department arrived.
Site Selection
Another common process is site selection. When contemplating a vacation, people often create a list of adventurous destinations that enlist fun, exciting, or relaxing activities. They research each venue through many sources including Web sites, brochures, and personal reviews. Similarly, a fire department should have or make a comprehensive list of the venues it protects to better understand what lies in wait. It should also initiate preincident research through available open resources to learn more about each site.
Certainly, vacation site selection is broad and based on any desirable location. Fire department site selection, however, is narrower and is based on the jurisdictional disposition. Unlike a vacation, the fire service cannot choose where or what it wants to protect; it needs to know what it does protect. For a fire department that does not have an organized preplan program, site selection is a starting point. This initial step is through compiling a list of the venues it protects.
Research
Narrowing or prioritizing the vacation site list can encompass a wide array of factors such as its location and the type of activities it offers. The more activities and amenities, perhaps the more attractive, desired, and higher up on the list the site becomes. Applying this to fire department preplanning site selection, consider the venue activities and its inherent challenges. The more challenging of situations a venue presents, the higher on the preplanning priority list it goes.
For vacation planning, detailed study is initiated to rate one venue above another. This may include analysis of the resources mentioned above as well as determining which venue may be more interesting, or challenging. If comparing amusement parks for a vacation destination, it is likely the one that hosts the most variety or of rides, such as roller-coasters would rate higher. Applying this to the fire service, evaluating the types and degrees of potential hazards is necessary.
Narrowing or picking the right vacation destination may include evaluation and comparison of available personal resources. One of the most dictating personal resources is money. Does the vacation fit into the budget? Similarly in the fire service, narrowing or developing a preplanning priority list requires comparing the fire department resources to the potential needs of an incident at a particular venue. Like a budget where a particular vacation may break the personal bank account, what facility may quickly overwhelm the fire departments resources?
Sometimes in vacation planning, consideration is given to a rating schedule. You’ve probably seen certain entities publish ratings for food establishments and hotels such as a five-star hotel. The higher the star rating is for a restaurant, the higher the quality of service and food.
For fire service preplanning, rating schedules can help quantitatively rate the hazard potential of a fixed facility. Categories such as number of occupants, built-in fire suppression, construction type, exposures, and hazardous materials have a correlating number schedule. Other categories such as site visibility, value to the community, and service criticality may be included to further separate one facility over another. After assigning and totaling the values for each site, priority is given to the site with the most points. These rating systems, however, can be subjective to the person assessing the rating schedule. Regardless, criteria needs established to guide preplanning site selection.
Access
When a vacation spot is picked, one of the next things considered is how to get there. Vacation planning, in most cases, includes ascertaining the most direct route or the route of least inconvenience. On a recent trip to Virginia Beach, Virginia, I found many travel route options. Some travelled along high-traffic highways; others through small towns and across a lengthy toll tunnel-bridge. Considering the patience of my kids (“Are we there yet?”), I chose the route of shortest time.
For the fire service, time is of the essence, so use the most appropriate route. Travel routes should be evaluated and confirmed beforehand. Identify any limiting factors before a response to avoid backtracking and a delayed response. Constantly monitor travel routes for changing conditions. Consider alternatives to account for inconvenient circumstances such as a road detours and time-of-day traffic congestion.
Operating Considerations
In vacation planning, many site-specific elements have specific daily and seasonal operating hours. In the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation, Clark Griswald takes his family on a cross-country trip to Wally World, only to find it is closed; poor preplanning on Clark’s part. The lesson learned is to ascertain operational hours.
Fire service preplanning, too, should consider venue operating times. When might the facility be occupied? This may provide clues during a response that allows fire officers to anticipate potential occupancy loads. A facility that publishes specific hours of operations does not mean that there will be no one on site outside of those hours. Employees may be on site hours before and after “public times” to prepare or clean up for the day’s operations.
Other venues that often have assumed operational hours require constant situational awareness. Consider a school with a typical school day of Monday through Friday from 0700–1600 hours. Outside of those time parameters, one may think the site is closed. However, after-hours there may be extra-curricular activities with extraordinary occupant loads and challenges.
Vacation planning can sometimes be influenced by the time of year. Some locales have consistent weather that promotes year-round activities. Other areas are weather sensitive and have in-season and out-of-season profiles. Being from a county with many attractions, we have five seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter, and tourist season.
One of the seasonal tourist attractions is the Amish community, which takes place from spring through fall. This season brings many response challenges including high occupancy loads and increased traffic. Local establishments may alter certain facility characteristics. Hoteliers may have in-season and out-of-season services and room rates. Daily operational hours of many facilities may change with the season. In some establishments, staffing levels increase.
In fire service preplanning, it is essential to evaluate the seasons and their influence on fire department operations. Because facilities and supporting elements and circumstances can change like the seasons, it behooves the fire department to be prepared. Obviously, weather is a consideration; winter snow can certainly affect response, for example. Seasons may affect operational practices in other venues. In industry, manufacturing facilities may increase operations to meet certain seasonal demands. Its inventory of raw materials may be stockpiled more than usual during certain seasons.
Mercantile establishments certainly have seasonal attributes. The Friday after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday and is the ceremonial start to the Christmas shopping season. During this day, access corridors are congested, which can cause response issues. Retail establishments are filled with shoppers which can influence accountability and search and rescue operations. And parking lots are filled, sometimes with illegal, yet innovative parking practices. This can have a direct affect on both response and access. In addition to those fluid external facets, mercantile establishments typically increase their inventories, extend their operational hours, and increase staffing. Each of these facets bring with it incident influencing circumstances. Seasonal characteristics may factor into prioritizing one facility over another for preplanning.
Cost
Sometimes, vacation planning and selection hinges on cost. What is in the budget is often a vacation destination’s determining factor. Certainly, there are people who over-indulge fiscally and later have regrets. They are thinking more with emotion rather than with real facts. Emotional decisions can be counterproductive to the end result. Tunnel vision, as opposed to garnering, the big picture may initiate actions detrimental to personnel, the public, and environment.
This cost correlation from vacation planning to fire department preplanning relates to consequences. This is considerate to the risk/frequency matrix regarding low-frequency events with high-risk consequences. It is necessary to evaluate the facts of each venue and not just consider with raw emotion. Sometimes, the high-profile, largest, and most occupied facilities are stereotyped as the most hazardous, thus rating high on the preplanning priority list. It doesn’t mean that those facilities do not present challenges, but look at other site-specific circumstances that can influence consequences. Built-in protection features, life safety egress components, facility staff training, and a host of elements may provide added safeguards.
Many line-of-duty deaths (LODDs) have occurred at sites perceived to present a lesser degree of hazard such as churches, auto parts stores, or a car repair shops, which may not rate high on the proverbial “target hazard” list. Nonetheless, they are hazardous and have been the scene of LODDs with a contributory factor of lacking preplans.
Reality
There is no silver bullet equation or answer that establishes an absolute priority list of facilities. It is too subjective of a practice and impossible to exclusively list certain facilities over another. Likely the answer to “what facility presents that greatest danger?”’ is after-the-fact when something goes wrong and questions arise on a fire department’s preparedness; it certainly is a double-edged sword. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In preplanning, preparedness is only as effective to the elements about which you don’t know or for which you prepare.
Preplanning is not just about identifying fixed elements such as building construction type, utility types and control locations, hazardous materials identification, and naming exposures. It’s also about assessing challenges, realizing limitations, developing countermeasures, and identifying resources. A vacation is not chosen solely on the venue; it is considerate of many other circumstances. A vacations approach to preplanning can aid in developing and sustaining a fire department’s preplanning program.
Post Vacation Analysis (PVA)
After returning from a vacation, you typically reflect on how it went and what was enjoyable and what was not. Did you ever go somewhere and say to yourself, “I’ll never do that again”? Or, “If we go again, we’ll do this or that differently”? In a sense we are conducting a PVA. In the fire service, this is called a postincident analysis (PIA), which identifies the things that went well and not so well. In PVAs and PIAs, corrective actions and countermeasures are noted to offset future negative occurrences. And, hopefully, they are initiated the next time the site or activity is engaged.
The correlation of vacation planning to fire department preplanning may seem like an elementary or comical comparison, but many of the processes are similar and contribute to similar end results: success and safety. Associating fire department preplanning to steps in vacation planning, while not comprehensive or all inclusive, is a simple starting point for a seemingly overwhelming practice. Unlike vacation planning, where the vacation ends when it ends, fire department preplanning is not a one-and-done endeavor; it is a living process because of the fluidity of fixed and existential facility, environmental, and fire department elements. Engage and appreciate the preplanning process so that you can enjoy a real vacation.
Photo found on Wikimedia Commons courtesy of Ben Schumin.
Eric G. Bachman, CFPS, is a 30-year fire service and a former chief of the Eden Volunteer Fire/Rescue Department in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He is the hazardous materials administrator for the County of Lancaster Emergency Management Agency and serves on the Local Emergency Planning Committee of Lancaster County. He is registered with the National Board on Fire Service Professional Qualifications as a fire officer IV, fire instructor III, hazardous materials technician, and hazardous materials incident commander. He has an associate degree in fire science and earned professional certification in emergency management through the state of Pennsylvania. He is also a volunteer firefighter with the West Hempfield (PA) Fire & Rescue Company.
