Situational awareness deals with processing information from your environment in real time and understanding what events suggest will happen in the future. This is a critical skill for firefighters to have on the fireground, and Chris Brennan of the Harvey (IL) Fire Department discussed issues regarding firefighter situational awareness and fireground survival during his FDIC 2011 workshop.
“Situational awareness has been a buzz word around the fire service for a number of years,” Brennan said, “But we have yet to put it all together. We’re getting there, though.”
Brennan discussed physiological survival responses in conjunction with fireground audio recordings of a firefighter in distress. He talked about survival conditioning and the need to train firefighters to respond to constantly changing conditions so then can control their anxiety level in Mayday or emergency situations. The fire service, Brennan said, was very good at training on tasks, but not as adept at training on putting all these elements together, as it’s difficult to carve out substantial time for live fire training. He noted that it’s difficult for firefighters to get comfortable with the dangerous low-frequency events that often lead to injuries and deaths.
Brennan likened live fire training with Navy SEALS constant training for ambush situations, and said structure fires were like ambush situations for firefighters.
“Situational awareness is a critical fireground skill that improves firefighter survival and reduces fireground injuries,” Brennan said. “It goes beyond the traditional criteria of ‘size-up’ to involve an intuitive understanding of what is occurring and an ability to predict how the fireground with change.
“As we see a decline in structure fires, we must develop training programs that will give our fire service warriors the required ‘sets and reps’ to build fireground expertise. By melding the core concepts of situational awareness with a model for fireground tactical decision making offer a new way to mentally prepare for the fireground.”
