BY JOHN A. VAN DOREN
You are a fire officer in your small town. This simple statement carries a considerable amount of responsibility. There is so much you must know and need to consider just to make the call, if your true intentions are to save the lives and protect the property for which you are responsible.
Initial response. What is your thought process as you receive the call for a house fire, try to get out of your house with a mouth full of food, two kids crying for hugs and kisses, and an “understanding” wife (or husband) who shoots you that familiar look?
If you make it to your personal vehicle, you must remember that between 20 and 25 percent of all firefighter fatalities and numerous life-altering injuries are related to vehicle accidents going to and returning from your call. Of these fatalities, 85 percent occurred while volunteers responded to an emergency.1 You are now in what I consider extreme danger. Wear your seat belt!
Do you have a personal standard routine or checklist that includes ensuring the use of your seat belt? Do you use your lights and siren even if it is three o’clock in the morning? What defensive driving techniques do you use? Have you had an emergency vehicle driving course? Do you stop at all red lights and stop signs to clearly demonstrate your safety concerns for others as you respond? Do you consider the consequences of your actions right now as they pertain to saving lives and protecting property?
You are no good to anyone at the scene, at the firehouse, at home, or in the town you say you want to protect if you cannot safely complete this part of your mission, which should be saving lives and protecting property.
If you make it to the station and get on a fire apparatus, remember that the firefighter fatalities and injuries mentioned above also include those that occur while responding on fire apparatus. You are still in extreme danger and so are all your friends who are responding with you on this mission. As an officer, are you brave enough not to allow your truck to leave the station until everyone is seated and belted in? Also, you should allow on the vehicle no more than the legal number of firefighters it was designed to carry safely, regardless of the nature of the emergency.
Do you consider the mental state of your fire apparatus drivers? Can you look into their eyes and discern that they are in control-they know where they are going and understand the grave statistical situation in which they are about to put everyone inside and outside the fire apparatus? Is everyone fully seated and belted in? Is the way clear for your crew to make it under the door? Are firefighters running into the fire station and trying to jump on the truck to make the call? What is the mechanical condition of the fire truck? Was it designed for the purpose?
Crew readiness. What is the mental state of your crew on the truck? Can you look into their eyes and see they are in control and ready to complete their mission? Are they physically able to perform the mission at hand? Are they old (seasoned), stressed out, overweight, or smokers? Stress and overexertion are leading causes of 44 percent of firefighter fatalities.2
What are their hydrating/dehydrating habits? Are they trained and able to safely perform any tactic you may require of them with confidence? Do you intimately know what they are capable of performing as a team? What can you expect from the firefighters who responded to this call? Are there personality conflicts between anyone on the truck? Do they trust each other? As an officer, have you taken the responsible steps to ensure they trust you and your tactical decisions? We have all learned you are only as good as your last call.
Response time. As you signal out of the station, consider the significance of your reported “time of call” and the time it takes your crew to respond to the call and report “on scene”-that is, how fast do your department and community expect you to respond? Has your insurance industry fairly taken into account the amount of time it takes to respond safely and mitigate losses? Are the insurance industry expectations within the scope of saving lives and protecting property?
Have you ever considered the impression created among your family, friends, or townspeople as they watch your fire truck swerve around them, blowing through stoplights and stop signs just to make the call? Do you think your actions say you are saving lives and protecting property, or do you assume that if it were their emergency, they would want you to disregard a few safety measures just for the sake of getting there a few seconds sooner?
Preplanning. Don’t just sit there or allow your crew to wait in fear on the way to the call. You should be gathering information about your emergency and formulating an initial plan of action so you can pass this along to your crew. This is so they all know what is expected of them before they arrive on-scene and jump off the truck. Don’t be fooled into thinking you or your crew will hear and gather the same information. Do not assume you will each mentally formulate the same plan.
All your members should be concerned about the department’s performance, confident enough to respectfully warn you or any officer as soon as they detect any error in any plan. Most firefighters would be eager to do so; you must be brave enough to accept this correction with humility and respect. Do the right thing. If you cannot do anything to look any brighter on the way to the call, then do not do or say anything that will make you look any dimmer.
Preplans are an excellent foundation for your action plan, or someone on the truck should know to which house you are responding. Your crew should be actively checking the integrity of each other’s personal protective equipment and establishing who will perform specific tasks within the plan. Portions of your planning may also be accomplished with seating assignments.
Communication. How you convey information to crew members has a dramatic impact on how they will conduct themselves and react on the fireground. Who a person is dictates how you will speak to him. This is only one reason you must intimately understand your members’ training, experience/on-the-job training, personal limitations, and capabilities.
Training. Maybe you assume that a firefighter should only get on the truck if he is able to perform any assignment. You can’t assume that because your members possess training certificates, they did not just endure the training just to put in their time. Are you setting a good example yourself by attending all the training sessions with your department members, even if you are already trained? This is part of your validation as an officer. Training doesn’t end once you get your certificate.
Knowing these things about each other will greatly enhance the synergistic performances of your department on and off the fireground. Clearly and confidently convey information. Your voice inflection, tone, mannerisms, and choice of words will set the stage for your crew’s response. This is especially true when you speak on the radio because your firefighters can’t see you. Their reaction is based on the tone and pentameter of your voice.
At the scene. As you arrive on-scene, consider the apparatus placement. Who makes this decision? Is it the incident commander, your officers, the apparatus operators, or the person waving his arms in front of the fire truck? Are positioning and staging outlined in any preplans or department SOGs? What is the time and nature of the call, and what can you see happening at the emergency? Can you predict how the emergency will evolve from the apparatus? What tactics and equipment need to be put into action immediately? Do you make everyone wait at the truck while you do your walkaround? Consider what you can employ safely and successfully. Don’t set crew members up for failure just because you think they should be able to perform a given tactic. As an officer, you are responsible to know what you can reasonably expect of your people and equipment.
Mutual aid. What equipment was signaled out of the station behind you? Are automatic or mutual-aid companies on the way? Do you train together or share preplan information with your mutual- aid companies? How familiar are you with each other’s equipment? Do fittings match up? Can you communicate on the radio with each other? When was the last time you remember checking this?
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With all this thinking and tactical maneuvering, we have not even begun to save lives or protect property. Or have we? I strongly recommend you internalize the consequences of your actions or inactions with regard to getting people and equipment to the scene and safely deployed. Remember, your charges expect you to respond with trained people and equipment in one piece to mitigate their emergency. You can’t do this if you don’t think about your actions and what it takes just to make the call. ■
References
1. Incident Safety Officer Student Manual, Second Ed., Second Printing, Federal Emergency Management Agency, June 2004, 2-8.
2. Ibid., 2-6.
■ JOHN A. VAN DOREN is a captain/instructor with the Clyde (OH) Fire Department, where he has served for 13 years. He is a fire service instructor for the Vanguard Career Center in Fremont, Ohio, and serves on the Sandusky County Emergency Response Team and the Northwest Ohio Region 1 USAR Team.
