REGULATING THE RESCUE
EDITOR’S OPINION
Shortly before 3:30 a.m. on September 16, 1991, a tractor trailer traveling southbound on Interstate Highway 91 through Windsor Locks, Connecticut, slammed into construction barriers at the top of an exit ramp and overturned. The cab dislocated from the tanker and came to rest several feet away. State and local police officers were on the scene when the first Windsor Locks firefighters, in their personal vehicles, responded and initiated stabilization and extrication procedures. About five minutes later, an engine crew responding from the downhill side reported that unidentified product was leaking from the tanker down the entrance ramp.
l ire Chief Joseph l aPierre established a safety perimeter, directing all personnel with the exception of the rescue team behind it, and requested a mutual-aid response from the Warehouse Point Fire Department from an accessible direction to establish protective lines. A command post was established. The product was identified as formaldehyde (36-percent solution), and proper notifications, including CHEMTREC and the shipper, were made. laPierre, while remaining at the command post, deferred command to a fire department officer with technician-level haz-mat training.
W ithin 1 5 minutes of fire department arrival, the victim was stabilized, extricated, packaged, and loaded onto an awaiting helicopter for transport to a medical facility. Subsequent control and cleanup of the leaking formaldehyde solution was accomplished successfully in the next 20 hours.
CONN-OSHA, the state enforcer of federal OSHA laws with jurisdiction over public agencies, paid a visit to the Windsor Locks Eire Department soon thereafter to investigate incident actions and to examine department records on training programs, SOPs. and personnel training levels, based on official radio transcripts and personal interviews w ith responders, the department was cited for not conducting air monitoring of the scene to determine IDLH levels prior to personnel entry. It also was cited for failure to train all members with first-response duties to the first responder-operational haz-mat level. (See “OSHA Compliance: Word to the W ise” on page 75 of this issue.)
While these firefighters may have been short on “operational” OSHA training, they were very long on heart and common sense and the intangibles that make this fire service tick. It was indeed fortunate for the trapped driver that the Golden Hour, not OSHA regulations, was foremost on the minds of first-responding firefighters that morning. He is fortunate that the gears of personal risk/benefit analyses were turning in Windsor Locks and victim life safety won. Often it happens that way, the way it has happened thousands and thousands of times before: You size it up, you are aware of the dangers, and you make a conscious decision to put others’ safety before your own. It is your tradition and your legacy.
but OSHA, which does it “by the book,” rewards the “unthinking” and “untrained” rescuers with citations and fines. They w ill remind you of the frequency with which rescuers become victims. They will argue that you owe it to your family to play by the rules. Remind you that worker safety—your safety —is their primary goal. That you must follow’ the law. And they will be 100 percent right —in the sterile world of laws. Outside in the very real world of very real rescues, the percentage is not quite so perfect. Laws arc nothing but the force behind our ideals, and ideals are the Mount Olympus above our anthill of an imperfect world.
OSHA 29 CFR 1910 most assuredly is encouraging the fire service to reconsider the training and tools it brings to haz-mat and potential haz-mat incidents. And that is healthy. The fire service must comply with these standards (and we should endorse nothing less), but I hardly think that rifling through department files, pouring over radio logs, and analyzing the “legality” of incident operations some time after the fact and without having been there is the way to encourage compliance. Fines that are collected for state or federal treasuries and not channeled back into fire service OSHA-compliance efforts or funding for regional haz-mat teams are not doing much for morale, either.
Have attempts to “regulate the rescue” gone too far? Let’s pretend that a high-ranking Department of Labor official had been in that crushed cab while first-in firefighters waited at a safe distance for OSHA-trained personnel to arrive with the air-monitoring device. It’s amazing how important laws are when you’re safe in your office and unimportant when you’re holding the short end of the stick. The rules w ill sound right, they will be in your best interest most of the time, and generally they will help guide you in your pursuit of increased safety, but they will never—so long as the American fire service continues to be who and what it is —become a wedge between a firefighter and his/her goal at that moment of truth. Because it has never been about rules and regulations; it has always been about saving lives.
These laws were made for safety. And let’s keep them that way. But let’s not forget the human element in the rescue equation. Heaven help the American public should that ever happen.
