BY BOBBY HALTON
The burning question over the past few years has been “How can we achieve greater fireground safety?” There’s nothing more essential to protecting the lives of the citizens we swore to protect that is more important on the fireground than firefighter safety. One can argueand rightfully sothat the two goals are inextricably intertwined and that the only way we can rescue threatened civilians is by maintaining firefighter safety. I could not agree more. Many of us assumed that by adapting the successful strategies from aviation and other high-risk professions we would improve fireground safety. Although they have been very helpful, the solution is not that simple.
So the question still lingers: Why, after such intense efforts over the past 25 years and, in particular, over the past five years, are line-of-duty deaths and injury rates from traumatic causes continuing to rise? This reality is especially difficult for the uninformed to understand in light of the fact that the incidence of structure fires has gone down. There are some very noteworthy explanations to be found in just the sheer increase in complexity regarding structural firefighting over the past 25 years. This includes the widespread increase in polymer-based materials in every aspect of human life; the widespread integration of technology with our daily lives; and, very significantly, the new methods of construction in which mass has been replaced by engineering.
Given these realities, the responsibility falls squarely on us, the fire service, to address the issue of maintaining our own safety while at the same time remaining faithful to our sworn responsibility to protect our communities. Many of the recent attempts at improving firefighter safety and survival on the fireground have focused on the individual firefighters themselves. Although this is a critically important focus and we must continue to train and innovate with regard to firefighter self-rescue, it also is not the only solution. Firefighter self-rescue and rapid intervention are absolutely necessary because of the very random nature of how the world and the fireground really work. We will never be able to create enough standardized operating procedures, policies, and regulations to address every possible thing that can happen or could happen when systems fail and accidents or acts of nature occur.
Over the past five years, we have thoroughly addressed many cultural and behavioral issues in a wide variety of programs, all pertaining to what is manageable at the individual and task levels. This is important; however, some significant findings in a great number of studies on managing dynamically complex events suggest that it is generally inffective to push the responsibility for managing highly complicated and interconnected factors that can be cataloged at virtually every fire down to the lowest possible level of responsibility.
Our next efforts in improving fireground safety need to be focused squarely on management and management’s commitment to fireground safety. And this is not going to be addressed at all by lofty and long-winded mission and vision statements or more confusing and complicated policies and procedures. But rather it must be done in concrete, physical, and extremely practical terms by a strong commitment of resources, supervision, time, and energy.
Let’s begin by defining what a safe organization is. Cognitive psychology gives us four categories: unsafe systems, safer systems, safe systems, and ultra-safe systems. An unsafe system is one that accepts the risk of losing one’s life in the performance of one’s duties. Included in this category are high-altitude climbing and transplant surgeries. People who work in unsafe systems are generally highly competent, and their outstanding performance and constant quest for maximum performance make these unsafe systems work. Safer systems such as roadway transportation are categorized by increased standardization and improving participants’ performance through additional rules, procedures, and technology. Safe systems, such as food distribution, are generally categorized by a strong top management commitment to safety with thoughtful investments in policies, monitoring, and quality control. Ultra-safe systems include the airline industry, and the key feature is supervision. These systems are categorized by the execution of many routine tasks that help keep practitioners compliant and help predict problems.
I believe the fire service currently falls into the category of a safer system. We can move to a safe system by acting aggressively on a few management-driven causes. To determine where to begin in your organization, ask yourselves a few questions: Do we really understand the dangers we face on the fireground in our community? If so, are we constantly evaluating our capabilities in relation to those dangers? Do we recognize that we are always exposed to risk and are vulnerable and that past success is no indication of future safety? Do we recognize when another department suffers a tragedy that there but for the grace of God go we? Do we look at problems or issues as a complete organization, or is everything the problem of one particular group such as training or the fire marshal’s office? Do the people working in administration understand how the fireground really works, or have they developed an idealized perception of operations? Do our safety officers have any real power, or are they just window dressing? How open are we to new ideas?
We can become safer. We can’t eliminate all the risks, but we can and we must refocus our efforts to where they can do the most good and stop identifying the results of our problems on the fireground as the causes. Then we can get to the next level of a safety culture.
