By BILL MANNING
Separate CAREER AND VOLUNTEER FIRE response standards will become a reality with the upcoming 2001 versions of National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1710, Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments, and NFPA 1720, Standard for Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression, Emergency Medical Operations and Special Operations to the Public by Volunteer Fire Departments.
The inability of career and volunteer camps to consummate a single standard through the now defunct NFPA 1200 deployment standard set the stage for this parting of the ways. Ultimately, minimum staffing was the dividing line.
The efficacy of separate career and volunteer standards is open to philosophical debate. One can’t help but wonder, however, as to how it came to pass that the volunteer leadership abandoned its right-minded “politics of equality” (“Volunteers are professionals, too!” “Fires don’t know the difference between paid and volunteer!”) for the safe, flaccid, unoriginal, and overly simplistic document that is NFPA 1720, in its current form.
From a deployment standpoint, the predominant problem gripping the American fire service is getting the needed numbers of trained and equipped personnel to the fireground in a timely manner to perform the tactical necessities required to “make the building behave.” NFPA 1720 ignores this issue.
What is the minimum number needed to make the building behave? The sad truth is too many so-called fire leaders don’t know, caught up as they are for all these years in the more-for-less trap, incapable of marketing their fire departments from the strongest position-that is, “good firefighting,” which by definition encompasses tactical absolutes and, therefore, staffing absolutes. This, in turn, accounts for the current state of affairs in this fire service-our sagging record of fire response success. We’re forced to endure minimum national standards because locally the “standards” are low and getting lower all the time.
NFPA 1710 does attempt to tackle this vital issue, setting at 14 the minimum of personnel required for a full first-alarm assignment at any structure fire. This number may be right; it may be wrong. It is open for debate. But it is a starting point, a minimum number that makes some sense for two-line fires in residential areas using a typical first-alarm response of two engines, a ladder, and a chief.
The drafters of NFPA 1720 would have done well to engage the debate. In sidestepping the people issue, the volunteer leadership would appear to admit that quality response, or rather the expectation of quality response, is in general less for volunteers than for career firefighters. And while, no doubt, many volunteer fire departments will continue to strive for a level of service that rivals and, in some cases, exceeds that of their career brothers and sisters, the implication is hard to swallow.
But, it’s 1710’s hot button issues-apparatus staffing and response times-that have fire department managers across the nation in an uproar. Not only does 1710 seek to require four firefighters per company; in areas with “tactical hazards, high-hazard occupancies, high incident frequencies, geographical restrictions, or other pertinent factors” as determined by the authorities having jurisdiction, companies will respond with five or six. Not only that: The first-due engine company will be expected to reach the fire building within four minutes from dispatch. The full first-alarm assignment will be expected to reach the fireground in eight minutes from dispatch. The standard sets the same time requirements (four and eight minutes) for basic life support and advanced life support response.
For fire department management, it’s a double whammy: You can’t neuter staffing with station closures.
Like NFPA 1500 before it, 1710 takes the fire service out of its comfort zone. It take us out of “business as usual.” It is challenging. The fire service has been quick in recent years to embrace convenient change that carries little management accountability. This change will force fire service leadership to throw its mismanagement baggage somewhere other than on the backs of firefighters, who now are at greater risk at fires than ever before.
Finally, a minimum of four members per company, at least as a standard, is a done deal. Still, there are fire department managers seeking harder quantitative proof of a four-firefighter minimum. But, we have had the Dallas study, the Seattle study, the New York study, just for starters. How much evidence do you need?
And how can you argue against improved response times, at least in principle? Does it threaten your politics of irresponsibility?
National standards most certainly are an intrusion into local jurisdictions. They upset local fiefdoms. But the fire service is a public institution. Unlike private enterprise, it cannot count on market competition to raise the service level bar. And for 20 years, too many local fire departments manipulated by local politicians have proven that they just won’t give what the public and the firefighters deserve. Perhaps it is time for some to grow into creative leaders instead of being caretakers of the downward spiral.
NFPA 1710 is by no means a perfect document. For one, the split standard leaves members of combination fire departments scratching their heads as to where they fit in. Second, it contains some true curiosities, such as its 10-percent allowance for response time noncompliance (more than four and eight minutes), which is fine except if it’s your heart attack or your house on fire. And for sure, there will be many small career fire departments that will be noncompliant for a long time.
But overall, 1710 is basic, simple, and prescriptive, encouraging fire departments to change from the politics of “can’t do” to the politics of what’s right and must be done.
NFPA 1720, on the other hand, is a dangerous document. Its existence side by side with 1710 could, in litigation, remove the teeth from 1710. It should be divorced from 1710 and be renamed “Do What You Want When You Want.”
Some fire department managers will see NFPA 1710 as “the worst of times.” The rest of us know better.
Ask the firefighters running with three (or worse): What does the fourth member mean for effectiveness? For safety? If you don’t know or won’t listen, get out of the fire service. Get into a field where your managerial foolishness can’t get anyone killed.
