Value-driven organizations
I just read Mark Wallace’s article “Creating a Value-Driven Organization” (August 2000). Wow, what a refreshing article! A triple AMEN for Wallace’s insight into what powers an organization’s success. I hope everyone makes a serious attempt to understand what he delineates in the article. Value-driven organizations are our only hope for successfully meeting the challenges the fire service faces today.
As a fire chief and public sector consultant, I have preached Mission, Vision, and “Core Organizational Values” for more than a decade. In the organizations with which I work, major transformation takes place when the whole organization discovers, delineates, and communicates its core values. Wallace clearly states in the article, “The organization’s common values are desired behaviors that everyone is committed to and will not violate.” I can’t emphasize enough the truth and wisdom in that statement. Most public sector managers don’t understand that they can be strong leaders, have tremendous skills, and possess high levels of support but can fail miserably by trying to drag an organization “against the grain.” The organization’s values must be understood and communicated clearly. Goals and objectives must be aligned with organizational values, as any attempt to pull, push, drag, regulate, or otherwise manipulate the organization against its values will end in disaster.
I applaud Wallace for his writings, and I applaud Fire Engineering for its insight in publishing his article. I highly recommend Wallace’s book, Fire Department Strategic Planning: Creating Future Excellence (Fire Engineering, 1998). I find it to be the most accurate published description of strategic planning that really works out in the field. Public sector leaders will find that, with the exception of a few slightly complex chapters, Wallace’s book is a breath of fresh air when comparing his concepts with the overpriced, boilerplate strategic plan consulting currently offered in the marketplace.
Just in case you’re wondering, I’ve never met Wallace, but I have been applying principles very similar to those in the article and in his book for more than a decade, and I believe it would be wise for all leaders in the public sector to take to heart the tenets expounded on in both.
Michael B. Sherman
Chief
Newberg (OR) Fire Department
Ladder for unexpected emergency escape
I commend Captain Raul A. Angulo for his Fire Commentary in the August 2000 issue and for your highlight of his theme: “If we change our thought process to put up ladders for the unexpected firefighter bailout, just maybe that ladder will be there for you.”
I was trained as an auxiliary firefighter by the Detroit Fire Department in 1953 and have served as a rehab volunteer in Silicon Valley, California, for more than 30 years. Naturally, I’ve observed much action, but the one scene that is indelibly engraved in my head occurred at the Motor City Wiping Cloth Co. building fire in Detroit on March 12, 1987. It was covered, beginning on page 26, in the June 1987 issue of Fire Engineering.
The fire began in a small pile of rags and rubbish but flashed over; the resulting five-alarm fire cost the lives of three firefighters. One firefighter was hanging out of a window; heat and flames were about to overwhelm him. An alert “fire engine operator,” as they’re called in Detroit, spotted the situation, opened up with a deck gun, and held the fire at bay until a ladder was placed and the firefighter escaped. I wasn’t there, but I saw a picture of the scene; as I said above, I’ll never forget it. I thought of it again when I read Angulo’s article. I hope his suggestions become standard operating procedures throughout the fire service.
Leonard W. Williams,
CPA
Past President
International Fire Buff Associates
Sunnyvale, California
Rooftop LPG tank? Nonsense!
Reference is made to National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 58, Flammable and Combustible Liquids Code, which allows rooftop installations of LPG tanks in certain situations. Evidently, this provision is aimed at making the code more “international.”
I remember the first rooftop LPG tank I saw in Mexico 20 years ago and how stupid an idea I thought it was at the time. I am amazed that the idea is even getting review time by the NFPA. Yes, a rooftop installation may save valuable space (which was not an issue in the instance I cited), and, yes, it is unlikely that a rooftop tank would be struck by a vehicle. Beyond those considerations, what could possibly be the motivation to consider the practice seriously? Placing a container of heavier-than-air, flammable, liquefied gas on the roof of a building is nonsense, plain and simple. Common tasks like maintenance, inspection, and filling will be more difficult; the fire danger will be increased; and the hazards to firefighters will be multiplied.
While on the topic of firefighter safety, the NFPA is now also considering adoption of 17l0, which, in many cases, would require the doubling-at least-of the cost of operating a fire department. Or, its adoption could place a noncompliant department at risk of litigation, ostensibly for the sake of setting a standard of performance and safety that is recognized as the best possible regardless of cost. This is a very noble cause but not terribly realistic in my view. Some communities and locales clearly need more suppression resources than others. Yet, countless fire departments that have very commendable fire loss and employee safety records do not come close to the station location or staffing requirements of NFPA 1710 because the risk and demand load is lower (read: fire is prevented and contained by built-in and behavorial methods). But if it is indeed the mission of the NFPA to set standards that reflect the highest possible measures of safety, then what is up with the same body (albeit different committee) even entertaining the notion of allowing LPG tanks on the roofs of buildings? And, if setting an international standard is truly the trend, then which nations should be picked as an example to set the standard of fire department organization and operations? Many countries have a better firefighter safety record than the United States, and better fire loss records as well. Remarkably, those countries have organizational patterns that don’t even resemble the pattern proposed in NFPA 1710. It would seem that there is a disconnect here unless the connection is that the consensus process is being driven by special interests.
Some codes and standards contain bunk and are brought to the table by committee members with a particular agenda that may have very little to do with fire safety. Mark Twain said it best: “Two things you never want to see made are laws and sausages.”
For FIRESCOPE terminology
Reference is made to “The Sector Officer: the ‘Workhorse’ of Command” by Gary P. Morris (September 2000). The incident command system does an excellent job of what it is intended to do: standardize incident management, terminology, and communications. Division supervisor = geographical responsibility, and group supervisor = functional responsibility, thereby improving quality and quantity of information flow. Terms like “sector officer” do neither. Let’s adopt the common terminology of FIRESCOPE. I liked the rest of the article.
Dave Briscoe
Captain
Northstar Fire Department
Truckee, California
Lobby Congress for research
Having worked at the National Institute for Standards and Technology for 16-plus years, I will certainly not claim that more than a minuscule portion of its research effort addressed the needs of the fire services (despite my unheeded protestations to several successive directors).
You don’t mention the Federal Emergency Management Agency/U.S. Fire Administration, yet this organization has an even more direct congressional mandate to do research that is helpful to the fire services. But, I also seem to lack a microscope with sufficiently high magnifying power to find the relevant fruits of labor there.
Having said all that, I would think you would want to take a positive approach rather than a negative one. Lobby Congress to get the research done somewhere. It does not have to be at organizations that are resisting doing it.
Vytenis (Vyto) Babrauskas, Ph.D.
Fire Science & Technology Inc.
Issaquah, Washington
NFPA 1720 should be the standard
William Manning’s “A Tale of Two Standards” (Editor’s Opinion, October 2000) misses the point of the debate on National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards 1710 and 1720. I refer to James G. Tauber’s “Pre-Emergency Deployment of Fire Department Resources: A Call to Action” in the same issue. The issues of concern are that the NFPA, in the development of the proposed standards, did not do any of the evaluation steps Tauber recommends and did not include any consideration of the local community’s acceptable risk or of the community’s ability or willingness to pay for the service level proposed as the “standard” by the NFPA.
The real problem is that the NFPA is proposing as minimum standards deployment rules that are not the minimum by any definition of the word. They are optimum standards that fire departments serving 90 percent of the United States do not now meet and will not meet within the next 50 years. Are 90 percent of the fire departments not providing the minimum acceptable service to their communities? The issue is local control, and the fact is that the local taxpayers determine what constitutes the acceptable service level.
These are not safety standards. If deployment were a safety issue, it would be in NFPA 1500. It is a service-level issue, and that means it is a political decision determined by the local political processes. In Manning’s criticism of draft NFPA 1720, he failed to acknowledge that of the two, 1720 is the one that puts the determination of the local acceptable standards of service in the hands of the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ). The AHJ is the only authority in a position to evaluate risks and resources and to come to a rational conclusion about service level using the process advocated by Tauber. Without that analysis, a national standard from the NFPA would impose a deployment that may work in Chicago and New York. What about the communities all across the nation where it does not fit and is not needed and where local taxpayers cannot pay for it? Only one standard is needed for deployment. The standard the fire service should adopt is NFPA 1720. It is the standard that requires the process of local evaluation and decision making Tauber recommends. NFPA 1710 would bypass the analysis and go right to the conclusions-and they are conclusions that just don’t fit the needs of most communities.
Manning stated that NFPA 1720 would “remove the teeth from 1710” in litigation. I certainly hope so, because if 1710 becomes the rule of law in litigation, we will all be in court more than we will be fighting fires.
Has Manning actually considered what NFPA 1710 would require? With a response time standard of four minutes from time of alarm, you get three minutes of travel time after the staff gets to the vehicles and opens the doors. At an average travel speed of 30 mph, you get a service area of 4.5 square miles on a perfect road grid with no geographic obstructions. With a minimum of four personnel/station, you end up with one firefighter on duty for each square mile of service area. With the shift schedule they work, that means a total staffing level of four to five staff/square mile of service area. I manage a fire department with a 55-square-mile service area on the maximum levy rate authorized by law, with an annual budget of about $4 million and a 45-member career staff.
To meet the requirements of NFPA 1710, we would need a staff of at least 250 operating out of about 13 fire stations and an annual budget of more than $25 million-all that to serve a population of fewer than 50,000. Funding at that level is unreasonable, would never be approved, and should not be proposed by responsible elected officials. It is obvious from the application of the proposed standard to this real situation that NFPA 1710 is not a “minimum” standard.
No one will argue that more staff and more stations would not improve service levels. The issues are the following: How good is acceptable? Who decides? Who pays? 1710 says the NFPA decides. 1720 says the AHJ decides. Fire protection and EMS are local services provided by local governments and paid for by local taxes. It is no contest. 1720 wins. The local AHJ should decide. We can still modify or defeat the proposed NFPA 1710 next year at the NFPA meeting in California.
With regard to the 90-percent compliance standard in the proposed NFPA 1710, 90 percent (or less) compliance will result even if you deploy so that you could meet the standard for 100 percent of the area served when starting from the station because the units will not be in the station all the time. Multiple calls, training, and other details will produce delays 10 to 20 percent of the time. It is not a matter of a 10-percent allowance for noncompliance. It is a small and inadequate recognition of the fact that any standard must operate in the real world. A deployment standard could not, and should not, be understood as a guarantee of a level of service in every single incident or in every single location.
Dwight B. Van Zanen
Chief
Maple Valley (WA) Fire and Life Safety
