VOLUNTEERS CORNER ❘ By RON GRANER
In Part 1 of this article (September 2022), I examined the “what” and “why” of the volunteer fire rescue service’s current recruitment crisis. This article will look at the “who,” “where,” “when,” and “how” every agency must address if it wants to survive this crisis. Although this article has focused on issues in volunteer agencies, career and combination agencies must also address many of the same issues to ensure efficiency, effectiveness, and safety.
- A Solution to Volunteer Recruitment and Retention: Training
- Messaging for Volunteer Firefighter Recruitment
- Put Out Your Recruitment Fire with ‘Big Change’
At the end of Part 1, I urged agency leaders to ensure that every member of their organization read the article to better understand the facts of this crisis and how the solution will never be successful if a “top-down” approach is used; these issues must be addressed from the bottom up to be successful. The hard work of identifying the fixes to these problems must involve the agency’s youngest and newest members teaming with the most senior members just as they work together at an emergency incident to save lives and property. These teams are the “who” to fixing the problems.
The primary role of fire chiefs and commissioners in this bottom-up approach is to ensure that each study team receives feedback from every agency team member, from the newest to the most senior. Nothing should be off limits when addressing the agency’s long-term survival. Chiefs and commissioners need to provide their support for the efforts of each team and monitor the internal relationships within each team while tracking each team’s progress. Then, leaders need to get out of the way and let the teams do their work. This process is certainly going to be a major journey for some agencies.
Before you can begin any journey, you must know where you are now and where you want to go. The “when” is certainly now! Teams must review what their agency offers to volunteers. When they recognize missing incentives and weaknesses, those teams must present leadership with the change solutions for success in the way their agency thinks, plans, and works at every level.
The major changes in the fire rescue and all emergency services began long before the pandemic. However, some leaders did not recognize that change was happening all around them because they believed, “That’s the way we have always done it, and what we did 25 or 50 years ago has always worked for us and will continue to work.” Every team member must be brave in supporting the changes they propose. Every agency leader and team member must also understand change is and always has been a constant fact of life.
Nobody Likes Change!
Agencies that make drastic fundamental changes may endanger the organization because those changes could upset current volunteers, causing them to consider leaving. Although that may be true, changing times and conditions demand changes. If you really want to know how to do a job better, ask the people doing that job. Those same current team members certainly have a clear view of what their agency is doing right and what it could be doing better. True leaders will involve everyone on their team in the improvement process. Open discussions, most of the time, lead to improvements, especially when all current members have been included in the change process. However, leaders must also be aware that there will always be those who will not accept any change, no matter what. Yes, these people may leave because of change. However, in the long term, their departures will likely be for the betterment of the agency.
Staffing issues impact emergency responders in all types of departments, not just volunteer departments. Across the nation, the media reports stories of how local government leaders are reducing the number of on-duty firefighters and closing fire companies because of a lack of staffing and the need to contain costs to taxpayers. The days of career fire departments staffing five or six responders on an engine and six or seven responders on a truck company are forgotten history in all but a few major career departments.
Today, many fire rescue departments respond to incident scenes with just a driver who arrives with his apparatus, rarely knowing if any other responders will be joining him. There are also career and combination fire-rescue departments with staffing shortages that force them to close companies and stations almost daily because of this lack of staffing. Every delay in getting a sufficiently trained and equipped staff as well as equipment to an emergency incident puts lives at risk. In the emergency medical services (EMS), repeated studies have proven that, unless definitive life support (i.e., cardiopulmonary resuscitation and defibrillation) occurs within four minutes and advanced life support is initiated within eight minutes or less of the event, the ability of a patient to survive cardiac arrest diminishes rapidly. Findings from the Mayo Clinic show that lives are saved or lost within six minutes after cardiac arrest. There is much documentation that proves the correlation between cardiac survivability and the treatment received by patients suffering from stroke (CVA), apnea, and trauma and that a system that is maintained to ensure survival of the cardiac patient is better able to support the needs of other, less severe, but no less critical patients.
On the firefighting side of the response equation, most fire officers today are aware of both the realities of the Dynamic Effect of Fire Growth and how the chemistry of fire growth impacts the efficiency and potential for operational safety and effectiveness of firefighters in their response to emergency incidents involving fires in structures. These factors of fire growth can be directly related to the findings of the ISO survey of fire protection capabilities in the time it takes to travel to an incident with the apparatus and staffing required for mitigating and controlling a fire. The dynamics of fire growth are essentially a chemical reaction with easily calculated and predictable elements. The stage of every fire emergency affects staffing and equipment needs to mitigate the emergency. Both staffing and equipment needs can be reasonably predicted for different risk levels and fire stages. The ability to correlate fire and emergency medical staffing and equipment to this cascade and timing of events is the primary basis for establishing an agency’s Standards of Response Coverage Policy.
The fire suppression tasks that are required at a typical fire scene vary a great deal depending on risk level. However, there is a key factor required for success at every incident if fire companies are to save lives and limit property damage. Responders must simultaneously and quickly arrive at the right time with the staffing and resources needed to do the job safely, efficiently, and effectively. Matching the arrival of resources with a specific point of fire growth or the condition and number of patients is one of the greatest challenges to emergency response managers. The answer for controlling the variation in fire dynamics lies in finding a common reference point, something that is common to all fires regardless of the risk level and contents of the structure or the time the fire has burned. The benchmarks and training for evaluating fire dynamics do exist.
Regardless of the speed of fire growth or length of burn time, all structure fires go through the same stages of growth. The point of flashover marks the critical change in hazard conditions for both the occupants and responding personnel. When flashover occurs, all combustibles in the room instantaneously erupt into flame, which generates a tremendous amount of heat, smoke, and pressure, resulting in enough force to extend the fire beyond the room of origin through doors and windows or breaches in walls, ceilings, and floors. The combustion process then speeds up geometrically because there is now an even greater amount of heat to transfer to unburned objects through convection, radiation, direct flame contact, and conduction. To save lives and property, it is vital to have fire suppression efforts well underway before flashover occurs.
Flashover, which normally occurs within 10 minutes after free burning begins, is the critical stage of fire growth for the following two primary reasons:
- When a fire has reached flashover, it is too late to save anyone in the room of origin. No living thing in the room of origin will typically survive flashover. The chances of saving lives in a structure fire after flashover drops dramatically.
- Flashover creates a quantum jump in the rate of combustion, and significantly greater amounts of water and resources are needed to reduce the temperature of the burning material below its ignition temperature.
The time of growth to the point of flashover can generally be predicted. That growth pattern can only be changed by intervention of firefighting personnel or the activation of protection systems such as automatic fire protection sprinklers. The time from the start of a fire inside a structure to the time of flashover in a nonsprinklered structure generally ranges between seven and 10 minutes. The dangers and characteristics of flashovers can be seen in the blog posted by the U.S. Fire Administration of FEMA.
Note that, although the fire department cannot control the duration of time that passes between the inception of a fire and its discovery and reporting to the emergency communications dispatch center, there are ways to reduce this time, some of which follow:
- Ensuring that there are automatic fire and smoke detection systems with direct alarm notification to an emergency communications center is the most positive factor in reducing the variables between fire initiation and notification of occupants and emergency responders.
- Having an automatic sprinkler system in the structure will delay fire growth and, in many cases, extinguish the fire if it is in an area protected by the sprinklers.
- Ensure the emergency response agency is in compliance with currently recognized standards for staffing, station locations, and apparatus so that responders will arrive in time to initiate action before flashover occurs.
Responses to Incidents in Private Vehicles
Note that the following comments are in reference to response to fire rescue incidents. In emergency medical response situations, the use of single-responder “fly cars” to get a responder on scene in time to save lives can be an effective practice as long as the responder is not placed at personal risk. These EMS single responders should be provided with a properly marked vehicle with adequate warning lights and so on rather than be expected to use their private vehicles because of the same reasons that volunteer firefighters should not respond in their private vehicles.
(Note: Previously, I said that I would return to the topic of agencies expecting volunteers to respond directly to incidents in their own cars. I hesitated to place this subject earlier in the article because I understand that this is a “hot-button issue” for some agencies, and readers should know the truth on other issues before “waving the red flag” about what has been a long-time tradition in many agencies.)
In my opinion, the practice of volunteers driving their private vehicles directly to the scene of emergency incidents must end. I see no legitimate reason that emergency fire rescue responders should use their private vehicles to respond directly to the scene of any fire incident. The response itself is a very real danger to the responder and the public when unmarked vehicles are racing to an incident on our public streets and highways. However, the danger on the streets is far less than the truly significant dangers to emergency responders who arrive at the scene before apparatus. If this is unrealistic for your department to enforce, at least attempt to minimize the use of POVs for your volunteer firefighters.
When those volunteers arrive and don their personal protective equipment, they become the face of your agency. The public expects and demands them to take action immediately, even when the responder has no equipment to take action safely. These volunteers hear people screaming, “People are trapped in that house!” or “Go in and bring them to safety!” and now feel the public pressure to go into danger without self-contained breathing apparatus or a backup hoseline.
Now, the volunteer’s only thought is often “stay low and leave the door open so you can find your way out!” The responder will enter the structure and leave the door open, which provides the air the fire needs to grow. When the fire grows and cuts off the exit, the volunteer becomes another trapped victim. If the volunteer stands and waits for the apparatus to arrive, the public will absolutely grow more furious with that volunteer. The responder will then be called a “coward” or worse by the bystanders until that apparatus finally arrives. And, in today’s world of instant online communications, there will certainly be bystanders recording the entire episode with their cell phone cameras. These videos attacking the lone volunteer and his department will be posted and spread worldwide before the units return to quarters. There is no way for the agency or responder to erase these postings or repair the public damage they cause. And certainly, the negative feelings of the bystanders and those who see the online videos toward the volunteer and the agency will last long after the incident.
As elected officials and city managers struggle to control costs by reducing staffing on fire apparatus, the resultant conditions impact emergency responders across all departments. When an engine company arrives on scene with just a driver, that driver will face the same dangers and pressures from bystanders and the public as the volunteer who arrived in his private vehicle. No single responder—career or volunteer—should ever be placed in that position. Because there is no legitimate reason emergency responders should respond to any fire rescue incident scene in their private vehicle, nor is there any legitimate reason to ever dispatch any fire apparatus staffed with only one responder to an incident, every agency is obligated to ensure that none of its emergency responders ever get placed in that dangerous situation.
Standards for Staffing, Station Locations, and Apparatus
Today, there are still fire-rescue agencies operating as if they were living in the mid-20th century. They often have the attitude that what they are doing is the right way because “that’s the way we have always done it” and “if it was good enough for my father and grandfather, it must be good enough for us today.” However, it is time for the leaders of every agency to acknowledge that we live in the 21st century. The world has changed, and the performance expectations for every emergency service have also changed, dramatically so. Today, there are nationally recognized standards for how emergency services must operate to ensure the safety of the public and emergency responders. These standards are the direct result of hard work by many of the fire-rescue service’s true leaders, who examined a deep history of emergency responses and understood the need to improve how we respond as well as improve the health and safety of all emergency responders.
After many years of research and discussion across the nation, the first edition 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, was approved in 2001. That was more than 21 years ago! That same year, the first edition of NFPA 1720, Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Volunteer Fire Departments, was issued. Over the ensuing years, both standards have been upgraded to help ensure safety for responders and the communities they serve. The standards also define the levels of service, deployment capabilities, and staffing levels for career and volunteer agencies. At the same time, NFPA 1620, Standard for Pre-Incident Planning, was introduced.
(Note: As a public safety consultant, I am always surprised at how many agencies either are not aware of NFPA 1620 or are just not willing or able to comply with it.)
Yes, these are the standards that every agency is expected to meet. These are also the standards that lawyers will reference in court when a responder or member of the public is injured or dies at an incident because your agency has failed to meet those standards.
The primary questions for every emergency service leader today are as follows:
- What is your agency really doing to meet current standards?
- What is your agency doing to create the conditions that will meet the needs of today’s volunteers, career staff, and potential volunteers within the framework of today’s standards?
- What has your department done to address the impacts of the changes in available staffing as it relates to safety and those standards?
- What has your agency done to address the issues that ensure apparatus and equipment are designed and equipped to operate efficiently, effectively, and safely in accordance with those standards?
- What has your agency done to ensure that there will be the necessary number of trained responders responding to emergency incidents in your community in accordance with current standards?
The answers to each of these questions must be the result of team efforts and work products from every bottom-up team as supported by your agency’s chiefs and commissioners.
References
1. The American Heart Association.
2. Mayo Clinic.
3. https://www.ifsta.org/sites/default/files/fire-dynamics-madrzykowski-2012.pdf.
4. Insurance Services Office.
5. https://www.iafc.org/topics-and-tools/resources/resource/standard-of-cover-template-cpse-cfai.
6. https://nfa.usfa.fema.gov/ax/sm/sm_r0204.pdf.
7. https://www.usfa.fema.gov/blog/cb-050520.html.
8. National Fire Protection Association.
9. National Fire Protection Association standards.
RON GRANER is a public safety consultant who retired as chief of three fire departments. He is also the author of The Fire Chief’s Tool Box (Fire Engineering).
