By Kevin McCart
What is accidental success is, and what does it look like in the fire service? As a firefighter, ask yourself: Are you applying knowledge to the best of your ability? That knowledge includes the things you read, training you have received, your past experiences, and some of the current and past research.
Accidental Success
Organizations, crews, and individuals can be “accidentally successful” and not even realize it. Accidental success may be defined as “a positive outcome or achievement that occurred unintentionally or without specific effort.” Some synonyms for accidental success include lucky break, fluke, unintentional or unexpected success, fortuitous achievement, and random triumph, to name a few. These words suggest that the accidental success was unexpected, unplanned, and sometimes not even realized in the moment, but still very much appreciated. Accidental success can be beneficial and yet lead to practices, actions, or in-actions that are not so desirable or beneficial. But one must be able to recognize when and where accidental success may be occurring on the fireground and make the required adjustments.
Fireground and Non-Fireground Examples of Accidental Success
Many organizations that have an adequate staffing (four or more firefighters on a rig) are sometimes not able to see shortcomings or performance issues on the fireground. The staffing levels they can throw at a scene often camouflage operational and or skill deficiencies. This in turn leads to the interpretation of their performance as a “success.” Aggressiveness of a couple key members can also produce the same outcome. Having an adequate staffing and being aggressive is great, but ensure that you take a hard look at your performance and be honest. I have seen fire departments with crews of four or more be less effective than departments that have only two or three per rig. One could argue that there are many variables that dictate this. I don’t disagree—it could be as simple as who is or is not on the rig that day, their training, experience, and aggressiveness certainly plays a part in success.
This can also happen at the company level, and I have seen it firsthand. Think about a company making an interior attack. Let’s say the company has a small, first-due alarm area with great response times. Because they arrive so quickly on scene, they seldom need to flow and move or hit and move to advance to the seat of the fire and extinguish it. Due to the size of their first-due area and quick arrival times, the fire is usually extinguished in the incipient stage. This is great for everyone, right? They can rapidly extinguish the fires, resulting in less property damage and less likely loss of life. Yet because of their routine successes from their practices, a false sense of security may arise if members misunderstand the reasons for success. The crew may not practice and or train on flowing and moving or keeping the nozzle open as long as possible while advancing. The next time they have a fire that has grown past the incipient stage prior to arrival, and they are presented with a flow-and-move or hit-and-move situation, members may fail to be effective. Maybe they are forced back out, a rescue is missed, or unnecessary property damage occurs. In this case, everyone on the crew wonders what happened and went wrong. Fire Department of New York Lieutenant (Ret.) Ray McCormack says: “If you never had to keep the line open to advance, that’s not bad ass, that’s good luck…but one day you will.”
Another example could be the use of a booster-size line for an interior attack. If a department has great response times, can arrive quickly, and has extinguished numerous residential fires successfully with a booster line, firefighters may develop unfortunate habits. When they then experience a fire in a large home, commercial building or have a delayed response, they may pull the booster line out of habit, effectively bringing a knife to a gun fight. Some of these behaviors we see can also be described as “normalization of deviance,” namely when abnormal behaviors become enshrined as routine. When firefighters are exposed to stress, consequence, and time compression, the urgency we sense may compel us to take shortcuts, departing from best practices. Over time, this behavior can become the norm and we begin to rationalize our practices. Often, in denial, firefighters cannot see that we are drifting towards failure until it is too late; we may begin to defend our actions as best practice, especially given our previous successes. We may not recognize our close calls, near misses, and poor performances. Accidental success sometimes can be hard to identify, but its consequences could prove deadly.
In the non-fireground examples given, those instances accidentally led to a success that we all have benefited from. In the fireground examples, luck just happened to be on our side. Accidental success can be both beneficial to society and deadly on the fireground if we do not understand it, recognize it, and fix it before we run out of luck. So, how do you recognize it on the fireground and use it to your advantage? It starts with fireground hot wash or postincident critique. Discuss the incident from the start to the finish and being open and honest about all aspects of your crew or department’s performance. The hot wash can be simple. What are three things we did well? What are three things we didn’t do so well? What are three things we absolutely must change or address immediately? It doesn’t hurt to throw in a couple of what-if’s for perspective and to stimulate conversation on how you would have adjusted your tactics. This is a great way to start discovering areas where accidental success may be occurring. Another way is to read articles, books, and trade magazines related to our craft and discuss published fire reports with your crews. Attending trade conferences and learning from others’ experiences also will help you gain valuable perspective. Doing these things may uncover past fireground experiences where accidental success played a role.
Application of Knowledge
In my opinion, the fire service does not do a particularly good job of applying its knowledge. I am not referring to water application. I believe that our craft continues improving but we must never stop learning. The lack of application of current and past research, reports, education, prior experiences, and training can lead us to accidental success. NIOSH reports are continually ignored at all levels, and many organizations do not pay any attention to their own shortcomings in the recommendations (I’m not referring to the organization the event occurred with). Thus, lessons are not learned, and we often repeat the same fatal mistakes. This is not meant to disrespect those who have sacrificed their lives in the line of duty. Sometimes bad things happen, and the NIOSH report’s contributing factors may or may not have prevented a tragic death. However, we are disrespecting prior firefighter line-of-duty deaths by not learning and openly discussing the factors from each of their tragic deaths. Maybe your organization’s training division is attentive to these reports, which is commendable. But what about the rest of your department? When’s the last time you reviewed a NIOSH report? These reports are excellent quick and easy training opportunities and can also assist you in building and maintaining your fireground standard operational guidelines (SOGs). Studies done by Underwriters Laboratory and National Institute of Standards and Technology are ignored by many organizations, preventing the application and understanding of data and findings from their studies and research. Many are even unaware of what research and studies are being conducted.
This is not acceptable or professional. We still see and hear firefighters and officers say, “don’t flow water till you see the fire,” and yet we know from the findings and from our craft experts that this is not the best practice. We still see uncoordinated ventilation leading to rapid fire growth and flashover. You can get research results and free online training thru the UL FSRI Fire Safety Academy. I promise it will give you the “why” with regards to best practices.
Similarly, the Firefighter Rescue Survey, led by Chief Brian Brush and now maintained by an entire team dedicated to improving our knowledge, is another example. This study continues to provide data that has not been previously recorded regarding rescues performed by firefighters on the fireground. The data available should provide you with a tremendous resource and analysis that should be driving our tactics. Please refer to www.firefighterrescuesurvey.com and become intimate with the results; you just might save a life. The data and details of this survey and project support several tactics that many fire departments still won’t allow.
We must pay attention to, extract knowledge, and adjust our tactics as a result of these reports and studies. If we want to call ourselves professionals, we should be looking for ways to modify and enhance our training, SOGs, and fireground operations to reflect the science and data these reports tell us before the emergency occurs. Instead, many organizations still do not apply these findings or routinely take a hard look at their own operations; they perceive their current tactics and actions as a success, but they are really only “accidentally successful.”
Are you, your organization, and your crew current and competent, or have you been lucky and accidentally successful? Just because the fire went out and everyone came home and we didn’t break any equipment doesn’t mean we are operating in a highly informed and skilled manner. If that is your only measurement of success, disaster may be lurking around the corner. Don’t rely on luck as a strategy!
Kevin McCart has 21 years of fire service experience, and has been a hands-on training instructor at FDIC International.
