On October 29, 2021, Suffolk (VA) Fire & Rescue (SFR) was presented with a single-story residential structure with heavy fire showing from the front, one person lying in the road whom bystanders had rescued, and a bedridden adult trapped in a rear bedroom. The time of the fire was 1:31 a.m., and the difference between life and death for the bedridden adult was seconds. Ladder 3 initiated a vent-enter-isolate-search (VEIS) of the rear bedroom while Engine 3 initiated an aggressive interior attack on the fire from the front (photo 1). This is what the crews at Fire Station 3 train for and what SFR expects them to do.
(1) Suffolk Fire & Rescue Engine 3 initiates an aggressive interior attack from the front of a single-story residential structure while Ladder 3 performs VEIS on the rear to rescue a trapped, bedridden occupant. (Photos courtesy of Suffolk Fire & Rescue.)
What constraints does the chief of department place on SFR firefighters and officers? What policies are in place to limit decision making? What expectations that place safety over performance are drilled into members? What level of performance is expected in the fire service? The fire service is in a difficult predicament: Should it safely execute difficult and dangerous tactics or should our safety be first?
The fire service is morphing into a “safety-first culture,” and performance is suffering. This cultural transformation began in 2004 with the development of the 16 Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives at the first Firefighter Safety Summit. Although it was not the intention, the summit and its initiatives gave birth to a “safety-first culture,” not a safely executed, high-performance culture. Policy-based initiatives and directives resulted that inhibited the performance of competent, wise, and experienced fire officers capable of performing safely in critical or dynamic incidents.
Reducing the firefighter fatality rate by 25 percent within five years and 50 percent within 10 years is a noble goal, and everyone who serves desires to “return home safely after every shift.” But, has performance suffered with the shift to a safety-first culture? Is the fire service using the Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives to justify not engaging or delivering services to remain safe?
Safety-First Culture
Incident commanders now depend on checklists and are not reading the fire or the building to decide how to “aggressively” perform safe and effective strategies and tactics. By establishing benchmarks that must be performed in a defined order from which no one may deviate, regardless of the situation or variables present, the safety-first culture is hindering high-performing officers.
For example, departments are not teaching or executing vertical ventilation on the fireground. Water is only introduced from the exterior or the “yard” because of the paradigm shift that aggressive tactics and interior firefighting are dangerous and unnecessary. Some are removing self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) from the apparatus cab; some departments forbid the firefighter or officer to wear turnout gear inside the cab.
It is easy for a chief to promote buzzwords like “safety first” and “minimize risk” through policies, directives, expectations, training, and discipline, but the fire service is now mandating “clean” cabs, transitional attack, staging fire and emergency medical services (EMS) apparatus blocks away from incident scenes, removing SCBA from the apparatus cab, and developing incident command policies to limit decision making and “script” the words and actions of the first-arriving and command-level officers. The policy-driven, safety-first culture is taking away officers’ and firefighters’ ability to think and decide on the fireground.
The first Firefighter Life Safety Initiative is cultural change. Now, this initiative is used to promote “safety” as the primary fire service mission. Firefighters and officers are expected to lead; manage; supervise; and be accountable and responsible for delivering high-performance firefighting, rescue, and EMS safely.
Developing Decision Makers
Human nature dictates that when choices exist, people choose the path of least resistance. The closest distance between two points is a straight line. However, the line between two points is never straight on the incident scene; responders face unexpected challenges and choices.
Policy-driven departments that opt for a safety-first culture lose the opportunity to foster and develop critical decision makers. Policies and rules should never hinder the fire officer’s ability to deliver high-performance, aggressive, and safe operations. Safety comes from allowing fire officers to get from one point to another point in the most expeditious route, not necessarily the straightest.
Real-life situations have unscripted challenges, obstacles, variables, and interjections that are unpredictable and unforgiving. Individuals, groups, teams, and organizations succeed when they progress safely and responsibly from one point to the next while respecting the elements. Rigid safety policies and repetitive training to attack fires from the exterior and not enter a building fire until the fire has been “reset” only limit the officer’s and the firefighter’s ability to make decisions, especially when a rescue or interior firefighting is warranted.
Removing gear and SCBA from the apparatus cab limits the ability of the officer and the firefighter to engage the incident in the timeliest manner, allowing the fire to grow and intensify, increasing the chances of occupant injury and death. If the culture is safety first, decisions are made only through policy and the opportunity; the expectation of performing differently is unsafe.
Prepare and Adapt
How can the fire service achieve a high-performance, safe culture? Preparation and adaptation are key to safely delivering high-performance fire, rescue, and EMS services. With fluid incident objectives, critical decision makers can develop their skills to adapt to changing conditions. Without the ability to adapt, decision makers cannot safely transition from one point to another.
Rigidly defined policies and expectations prevent the fire officer from adapting to changing conditions, limit the fire officer’s ability to decide how and when to enter a building, and mandate that SCBA will be donned on the curb while the fire grows and citizens witness firefighters reach over each other for tools and equipment. Most importantly, this develops robotic command officers who learn not how to decide but how to follow a script. The result is a “predictable” fireground for the chief listening from fire headquarters, but no incident is predictable or scripted. These behaviors work in the classroom.
The key to a high-performance culture that executes safely is to develop critical decision makers who learn to minimize risk and maximize reward by using the tools, equipment, and resources to engage. Firefighters and officers can minimize risk when they understand the elements that can complicate decision making, not just avoid missing a benchmark on the scripted command board. Risk can be minimized when members prepare to engage critical incidents by coming off the truck geared up, with SCBA donned, and watching the fire—not merely performing a policy-based walk-around, relaying to all incoming units a scripted response learned in the classroom.
The goal of a culture change is to minimize risk through preparation and element reduction. Risk and element identification is accomplished through training, education, and experience, which together comprise wisdom.
Critical decision making is the product of knowledge gained through exposure to like situations and not through policy directives and the fear of performing. Safety is not based on a policy or direction that limits performance; safety occurs when well-trained and well-equipped individuals are allowed to engage and perform high-risk activities based on training, repetition, wisdom, and experience. This is what makes the difference between life and death for responders and citizens.
(2) Suffolk Fire & Rescue Ladder 3 executes VEIS in the rear of a single-story residential structure to rescue a trapped bedridden occupant while Engine 3 performs an aggressive interior attack on the front of the building.
SFR firefighters and officers are trained and prepared for VEIS and are experienced in aggressive interior structural firefighting. The difference between safely entering and completing a complicated and difficult rescue was that department policy allowed the officers to decide to engage in delivering high-performance, safely (photo 2).
MICHAEL J. BARAKEY (CFO) is a 29-year fire service veteran and the chief of Suffolk (VA) Fire & Rescue. He authored Critical Decision Making: Point-To-Point Leadership in Fire and Emergency Services (Fire Engineering, 2018), regularly contributes to Fire Engineering, and is an FDIC International instructor.
