“GONE FIREFIGHTIN’ ”
EDITOR’S OPINION
“Firefighting is not the ‘most hazardous occupation in North America,’ ” says the chief of a small paid Texas fire department in an article recently published, with minor variations, in two different national monthly trade publications. It first appeared under the title “Firefighters See Red” in the January 1993 issue of Public Management, the monthly journal of the Washington D.C.-based International City/ County Management Association (ICMA) that counts city managers and other municipal officials among its readers. The following month it appeared in a fire service magazine under the title “The Most Dangerous Profession?” Its purpose is twofold: first, to provide ammunition for “local government executives responsible for handling firefighter issues and fire chief requests” to “dispel claims that firefighting is the most hazardous occupation,” and second, to refute the proposed national minimum fireground staffing standard.
The article cites a 1987 statistical study by J. Paul Leigh, Ph.D., out of San Jose State University, which concludes that firefighting is less life-threatening than felling a tree, flying a plane, installing an electrical power line, collecting garbage, driving a truck, operating a bulldozer, building a roof, baking a cake, sewing a garment, or spackling a room. It also cites data from the National Safety Council and the National Fire Protection Association indicating in part that in 1991 there were about three times as many on-the-job fatalities per 100,000 employees in the agriculture business (including forestry and fishing) as there were in the fire service.
You didn’t know you had it so easy. Pretty soon you’ll see a surge of “Gone firefightin’ ” signs on shop doors all over town.
Armed with statistical BBs, the author attacks the notion that there is a relationship between crew size and firefighter safety. None of the 22 fireground deaths in 1991, he analyzes, is significant to the discussion of staffing, either by virtue of the fact that the deaths categorically fall below a national statistical average or because they occurred alter four members had assembled on the fireground, the number pushed by proponents of a national staffing standard.
He points, rather, to the steady decline in civilian deaths, the reduction in firelighter deaths, and the holding pattern of firefighter injuries as indications that our efforts in prevention. early detection, training, equipment improvement, and physical fitness are working. And to an extent, that’s true, certainly. But we must question the use of fatality statistics to measure fireground risk and effectiveness and to rationalize cutting engine and truck company staffing levels.
An intensive analysis of firelighter injuries, including type, frequency, and severity, perhaps would be a more appropriate method for studying the relationship between staffing and safety: however, adequate statistics for such a study do not exist The author believes there are three reasons “tor the lack of accuracy in identifying injuries and trends”: “There is difficulty determining what constitutes an injury”: “Firefighters are more likely to file an injury claim today than a decade ago”; and “Firefighters can use injury reports indicating an unsafe workplace as a way to retaliate against a fire chief.”
At any rate, you can put the words “declining fireground deaths” and “declining company staffing” next to each other in the same sentence, but it doesn’t establish a definable, quantifiable correlation between the two. The best you can hope to conclude, especially if it serves your political interests, is that if deaths are dropping, we must be doing something right, so why change the course, especially when it comes to the expensive proposition of staffing? Because, first and foremost, every firefighter has a right to go into a burning building with the highest reasonable margin of safety possible. That extends to staffing levels consistent with mounting a coordinated initial attack on high-hazard fire situations in the jurisdiction. Handling a wastebasket fire with two members is one thing; stretching a 2 1/2-inch line into a well-involved warehouse with two is something else entirely. Can the city manager predict when the warehouse job will happen? Think optimum safety, not minimum safety, for all firefighters. Anything less is irresponsible.
A firefighter from South Carolina sent me the Public Management article. He wrote, “It only takes one of these to set us back years.” How true. Some of your most important battles are faced remote from the fireground. Stay informed. Be educated. Write letters. Respond to what you disagree with. Represent yourself. Fight misrepresentation of the fire service and firefighter concerns to outside groups. Oppose and expose officials who play the budget game with firefighter lives, and hold them accountable when a firefighter injury is attributable to insufficient staffing or insufficient prevention or insufficient training—and do it with facts and information, not rhetoric and emotion. Do not stand for the ploy that forces a trade-off between firefighter safety and vital department functions—a strong and healthy department that puts a premium on safety is strong and healthy in all vital areas of operation. Maintain focus: The real issue is not national uniformity or how firefighters arrive on the scene or the political motivation behind one group’s position or another. The issue is being able to account for the civilian and firefighter life hazard by addressing all vital fireground functions in the shortest period of time and with the greatest margin of safety.
The author of the article is right on one point: We should be thankful that firefighter deaths seem to be on the decline. And we must continue to emphasize the importance of training, prevention, personal protection, fitness, and a variety of other factors that play a role in firefighter health and safety. But there should never be more people on a garbage truck than on a fire apparatus.
