BY MIKE LOMBARDO
The loss of firefighterS in America is staggering; intolerable; and, most of all, tragic for families and peers. In 2007, there were 115 firefighter line-of-duty deaths (LODDs), nine more than the 106 deaths in 2006. According to the United States Fire Administration (USFA), 10 to 20 percent of these fatalities are defined as LODDs under the 2003 Hometown Heroes Act. The act establishes a statutory presumption that public safety officers who die from a heart attack or a stroke following a stressful or strenuous nonroutine physical public safety response or training activity are considered to have died in the line of duty for benefit purposes. This has increased the number of our LODDs and should be taken into account in our efforts to stem this terrible tide.
This multifaceted problem needs attention from all involved for a better outcome in the future. Although we strive to reach a goal of zero firefighter deaths, this goal cannot be attained in the foreseeable future. Firefighting has always had and will continue to have an element of danger. Firefighters will sometimes encounter very dangerous circumstances involving a great likelihood of injury or death, but their involvement is vital to saving lifeat times, many lives. Every year in the United States, firefighters die while saving lives, and we should never minimize this sacrifice.
The Buffalo (NY) Fire Department (BFD) has a proud history dating back to 1880 as a fully career fire department. According to the U.S. Census, in 2006, Buffalo was the second-poorest large city in America. This level of poverty demands a high level of fire department service. The city has more than 10,000 vacant buildings that are often the targets of arsonists and vandals. In 2006, the department responded to 1,543 serious working structural fires; in 2007, 1,298. The BFD has lost 111 firefighters since its establishment as a fully career fire department more than 125 years ago. Sixteen of those firefighters have died since I was appointed to the department in 1983. I worked at fires in which eight of those men were killed, five firefighters at a warehouse explosion and three individual LODDs. The three LODDs involved a warehouse fire in which a wall collapsed, killing a lieutenant; a house fire in which an acting battalion chief died from smoke inhalation; and a house fire in which a young firefighter burned to death. Having operated at the scene where eight of those men died has really driven me to be safer and to create a safer environment for my crews.
We have improved; the BFD has not lost a firefighter on the fireground since 1997. However, three deaths have occurred since then. In 2005, we lost a member who was killed in Iraq. His death was a tremendous loss to our department, although technically not an LODD. That same year, a truck company lieutenant succumbed to cancer that was duty related. In February 2006, a firefighter who had been injured in 1995 and who had remained in a coma for 10 years passed away. This firefighter “woke up” after 10 years and spent some 36 hours communicating with his family and friends. He then slowly slipped back into unconsciousness and died in a coma 10 months later.
Implementing numerous measures, such as assigning accountability officers, providing radios for all assigned positions, and increasing training in all aspects of the job are some of the reasons our department is safer. I mention all of these issues concerning my department and me to provide some insight into the human side of this issue and some personal perspective. Although many people are writing about and dealing with the LODD problem in the American fire service, we don’t want to create a cottage industry based on LODDs. We cannot forget the tremendous sacrifice that these firefighters and their families have made for us all.
DISCIPLINE
Two major areas have the most impact on firefighter survivability and safety: discipline and training. Although “the love for the job”dedication and commitmentare very important to have throughout the department, it is also good to have solid department discipline. Look at the causes of death for firefighters over any of the past 10 years; fully 25 percent involve vehicle response. Imposing a mandatory seat belt use rule and mandatory procedures for backing up apparatus can dramatically reduce these numbers. When I started my career, I did not wear a seat belt; now I always do. Disciplined firefighters who operate within these procedures will be much safer than those who would “love to wear a seat belt, but ….”
Many causes of firefighter death involve things we can do something about. We can avert those risks all the time. The type of incident to which we are responding or at which we are operating does not matter. What does matter is that we will not expose ourselves to controllable risk. This is not risk/benefit analysis; it is risk aversion. I will wear my seat belt when I respond to an automatic alarm and when I respond to a well-involved structure fire at a fully occupied orphanage.
The training and motivation of the new generation of firefighters have been much discussed. Today, we try to explain the reason for rules and regulations. This is good, since our new firefighters are intelligent and willing to learn. However, this does not release us from having rules, regulations, and procedures. Many departments have replaced standard operating procedures with standard operating guidelines; I fully understand the rationale for this. But some of our operations do need clear-cut direction. The BFD uses standard operating procedures and department orders. More importantly, starting in recruit school, we need a system in place to instill discipline and to have a known set of consequences when rules, regulations, and procedures are violated.
Earlier I mentioned risk aversion and risk/benefit analysis. For much of what we do in the fire service, risk aversion works. If we wear seat belts every time, if we wear SCBA during any exposure to smoke, if we practice good communication on the fireground with our partners and our commanders, we will reduce our risk of injury and death. We will do this regardless of the incident to which we are responding or at which we are operating. There are times when we have to weigh the possible outcome of what we are going to do (risk/benefit). An incident commander may have to order people into situations that are extremely critical and may result in a firefighter injury or death, but hopefully this would be extremely rare. A company officer or firefighter may have to operate a hoseline under very dangerous conditions to secure a position to provide a much larger benefit (e.g., protect a stairwell door in a high-rise fire to maintain the means of escape for hundreds of civilians). These heroic and courageous duties require discipline just as much as the mundane do. Instilling that early in a firefighter’s career and throughout the organization is vital to the fire department’s success and overall safety.
TRAINING
Training has the most impact on firefighter safety and survivability. The following statement will rankle many firefighters: Individually, firefighters do not perform structural firefighting duties very often. Even in very busy departments, the average individual firefighter does not engage in structural firefighting typically more than a couple of times a week. Much has been made of how technical our profession has become. It has, and we are involved in many areas of emergency response today that require a complex level of training. However, most firefighter deaths still involve common fireground incidents, medical issues, and response-related events, often involving basic operations. Likewise, 81 percent of all civilian fire fatalities involve residential fires; people die in ones and twos in their own home. We cannot emphasize or practice basic fire training enough.
I use the following sports analogy with my firefighters. Buffalo is home to the almost four-time Super Bowl Champion Buffalo Bills and the National Hockey League’s Buffalo Sabres. Looking at a professional football player’s career, we can see the training and practice that enabled a player to reach this pinnacle. How many tackles did a defensive linebacker make before ever stepping onto the field of a National Football League (NFL) stadium? How much conditioning had that individual undergone before he reached the NFL? The Buffalo Sabres hockey team plays 82 games in the regular season; what do players do in between games? They practice playing hockey! Likewise, as firefighters, we need to practice our most basic skills and constantly update our knowledge.
An individual firefighter may not very often engage in actual combat firefighting. Although the BFD is quite active, few of our firefighters fight more than a serious fire or two every week. Certainly, there are departments where a firefighter could go for months and not engage in fire combat. My solution is training and learning every daynot only in the mandated subjects but in the basics as well. Isn’t it odd that bloodborne pathogen training is mandated annually but hoseline training is not?
If every time an engine company works a shift, its members practice stretching a line multiple times, they will be good at stretching a hoseline, and they will not get fat (I’m guilty, but I sit behind a desk). If the ladder company crew practices multiple times raising a 35-foot and a 16-foot ladder to a roof and opening the roof (if they are fortunate enough to have a facility), we will see the same results. On the next shift, if those crews switch apparatus and training assignments, think of the benefits. Fully 50 percent of firefighter fatalities are related to medical reasons; this physical activity will strengthen the heart and produce a healthier, safer firefighter.
Since 2001, the BFD has provided extensive workout equipment and peer fitness trainers. Training as we fight will always be better than simple workouts if for no other reason than the motor muscle and task repetition will increase our effectiveness.
Our training must mirror our fire environment. Training firefighters in fire behavior awareness and basic building construction and layout is a huge step toward keeping them safe. Fatality after fatality in the fire service involves firefighters who became lost and disoriented inside buildings. More often than not, these firefighters were caught in changing fire conditions. Many firefighters have fought their way into a building with heavy fire. But a much more dangerous situation is a building that has few signs of fire showing on arrival; after firefighters have entered, conditions rapidly deteriorate. Training in situational awareness (ongoing size-up) is invaluable.
In the past, I taught firefighters in my department and in others across the United States and Canada. Numerous times, I have met an interested, motivated firefighter who could recite the hazard classifications of the Emergency Response Guidebook but knew nothing of nuances of buildings in his district. Firefighters should learn not only the basic construction features but also the basic building layouts by type in their response areas.
This is also very basic training; but after recruit school, how often do firefighters perform basic search and maneuvering drills under blackout conditions? What training does a firefighter receive on fire behavior; its effects on the buildings they operate in; and, more importantly, its effect on that firefighter? There are numerous examples of where we fall short in training, which are endemic to a larger problem often at a level above the local fire department.
TRAINING FACILITIES
Many firefighters in this country are afforded few or no training facilities. Across the United States, many large counties have no training facilities of any kind. At the state level, the training often concentrates on the incident management or technical level, judged to be unavailable in the local jurisdiction. Although programs on “Rigging for Structural Collapse,” “ICS 400,” and “Underwater Dive Operations” are great, they do nothing to help train local firefighters in a rural county with no training center.
We cannot forget that a department’s primary mission is to save life and property. According to the USFA, that mission will most likely involve fire in one- and two-family homes. This likely will be the biggest threat to department members and citizens. Again, we must direct our training to what our departments confront every day.
For some years now, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has investigated and reported on firefighter LODDs. Fire departments nationwide should review these reports to discover what situations continually recur at incidents and should look for less obvious information as well.
For example, one report mentioned in passing that the first hoseline used at a fatal fire was 400 feet of 1½-inch hose. This was not identified as a problem. But depending on flow, using a 400-foot, 1½-inch hoseline would necessitate a minimum of between 150 and more than 200 pounds of pressure to overcome the friction loss. Combined with the necessary 100 pounds of nozzle pressure, you would need a minimum of 250 to more than 300 pounds of pressure at the fire pump. This is a tremendously high pressure to achieve and may not have been adequately supplied. Stretching and properly supplying the first hoseline are very basic skills. Although not cited in the report, this action could very well have contributed to the problem. Most actions in the NIOSH reports refer to items that can be tied directly to an Occupational Safety and Health Administration or a National Fire Protection Association standard. That’s why it’s crucial to review these reports and discover any training issues not highlighted.
At the federal level, we also have the National Fire Academy (NFA), certainly a welcome addition to fire training for America’s firefighters. NFA training is almost exclusively classroom based, focusing on upper-level operational and management fire service functions. Again, this is good and necessary training, but it doesn’t address the thousands of firefighters with no access to good physical fire training facilities. The United Kingdom’s Fire Service College at Moreton-in-Marsh, England, is overwhelmingly superior to almost anything provided by the U.S. Government. The Fire Service College has physical facilities that simulate, among other things, private dwellings, high-rise structures, wide-body aircraft, ships, and subways. Such facilities are not available to most American firefighters. Also, with today’s technology, we could present NFA programs to many more firefighters in the virtual classroom instead of requiring them to travel from New Mexico or Oregon to Emmitsburg for a classroom presentation. Our NFA needs more support.
More commitment to fire training is needed from all levels of government. I doubt that the FBI academy ever considered using an old college as its full-service campus. This commitment must include funding so firefighters can be trained locally with useful facilities. At the state and federal levels, advanced classroom and physical hands-on training programs are needed.
Strong, effective discipline and focused, ongoing robust training will contribute to a safer fire service. For success, our profession must embrace these two elements at all levelsrecruits, seasoned firefighters, company officers, command officers, and fire chiefs. Although no one thing can solve the problem of firefighter fatalities, implementing and reinforcing training and discipline programs will save lives.
MIKE LOMBARDO is the commissioner and chief of department for the Buffalo (NY) Fire Department and a 30-year veteran of the fire service. A New York State fire instructor, he served on the team that developed the New York State firefighter survival and rapid intervention programs. Lombardo instructs on fire tactics, live-fire attack, firefighter survival, and command throughout the United States.
