By Anthony Kastros
Modern succession planning challenges are unprecedented. Experienced officers are leaving at an alarming rate, and COVID-19 has not helped. Most fire departments find personnel’s average years of service getting smaller and smaller. This often puts downward pressure to lower minimum standards to take promotional tests, as fewer members can qualify.
The fire service has always been challenged with in-house succession planning, especially with modern factors being added to the job description of company and chief officers. No fire department, regardless of size, has the appropriate training division staffing or budget to keep up with the demand to develop new officers.
Chiefs of departments of all sizes say they are plagued with issues that should have been handled at lower levels. Their desks are buried with paperwork and calendars are impacted with meetings because company officers and battalion chiefs are either making things worse or simply passing issues up the chain because they are not equipped to fix the problem at their level.
Command and Tactical Succession Planning: More Than Training
One of the most critical dimensions of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that a modern officer must develop is emergency operations. Although leadership and management dimensions are vital and have derivative KSAs that apply to being an incident commander (IC), the functions and KSAs for operations can save a life, and the lack thereof can cost many lives.
We must rethink succession planning—especially regarding operations, tactical decision making, and incident command—to include creating opportunities to give new officers more hands-on training and experience. Going to classes and performing simulations are important. However, they are only a foundation to develop the requisite KSAs to be safe, effective, and efficient ICs and tacticians.
Hands-on command training must include much more than simulations. Simulations help develop communication skills, and we have used them with radios and simulation software for years. However, more can be done and can have tremendous results.
All firefighters learn more effectively with hands-on training, and command training is no exception. Multicompany drills with all personnel in full turnouts with self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) and smoke machines provide the necessary conditions to truly develop real skills.
During hands-on command and tactical training, companies pull charged hoselines, look for victims (mannequins), enter the smoke, and do so in real time. The drill ground transforms into a live fireground with the “fog of war” and radio transmissions through SCBA, wrought with feedback, engines pumping, and saws blaring.
The first-due company officer often encounters a role-playing occupant who portrays a bystander or a panicked occupant who states that his children are inside. The company officer must manage the infusion of adrenaline, tachycardia, and overcome any tunnel vision while gathering critical life-saving information in the form of a victim profile. Simultaneously, the crew needs direction, and the radio crackles with subsequently arriving units who want to go to work.
KSAs like remaining calm, multitasking, communicating, and making critical decisions are developed in realistic conditions. All the while, the officers develop stress inoculation. They are given distractors, like bystanders who want to share useless information, crews who attempt to freelance, and others who do not answer the radio. All these things happen naturally and, in themselves, become opportunities for more training and growth.
Meanwhile, smoke is billowing out of the structure; subsequent companies are arriving; and the chief arrives, wanting a transfer of command. In some cases, the chief is delayed; in others, the chief is right behind the first-due officer. Countless permutations are developed and executed to give all aspiring company and chief officers as much realistic training and experience as possible.
The drills are not limited to the drill ground. Our department would often gain consent from apartment and commercial building managers to conduct nondestructive hands-on training. We used occupied apartment complexes and businesses successfully countless times for years. The managers of these occupancies saw the benefit and gave verbal consent to perform the nondestructive training. Many times, apartment occupants and their kids loved to help by portraying reporting parties or patients with smoke inhalation.
We used smoke machines in the occupied complexes. We would ask for an apartment that was vacant but not flipped (there was no fresh paint or carpet yet). We would reassure the manager that we would not do any damage and would clean up before we left. Hoselines were charged and companies entered smoke-filled halls and apartments in search of victims (mannequins). It helps to tighten couplings before the drill!
We conducted these drills for years with positive results, and the crews loved them. As the battalion chief (BC), I would conduct the drill, and any aspiring BCs would act as ICs. Aspiring company officers would ride up in the front seat, with their real company officers acting as firefighters there to mentor. I would mentor the ICs at the command post.
We recorded all the drills; this way, we were able to view video and critique everything, including radio traffic. The crews would take up after a drill, laughing, sweating, and talking about the “victim” and the smoke. Their adrenaline was pumping, and they all got better at calming the chaos.
One drill that stands out was at a three-story center-hall apartment building. As usual, we obtained verbal consent from the manager by explaining the benefit of our knowing the complex, interacting with the occupants, and having the new firefighters learning the idiosyncrasies of the building. We also explained that apartment fires were lethal, lives could be lost, and these types of drills could prevent a catastrophe. We never had a manager deny access.
In this case, the maintenance man had eight kids—jackpot! He and his whole family happily role-played for the crews as they arrived. The first-arriving engine was met with the mom yelling that her kids were trapped. The oldest daughter was holding the four-year-old who kept saying, “Mommy, what’s wrong?” (photo 1).
(1) Engine 101 arrives with family members engaging the captain to report multiple victims on the third floor. (Photos by author.)
Meanwhile, on the third-floor balcony, two more kids were screaming for help as smoke billowed out from the apartment’s sliding door behind them (photo 2). On accessing the fire floor (laden with smoke from the second smoke machine), the captain was met with two more kids, one of whom gave him a piece of paper that read, “Welcome to the fire floor. Using your thermal imaging camera (TIC), you look down the hall and have a heat signature from the third door on the left. P.S. If you didn’t bring your TIC, go back and get it.” The other teenager was coughing uncontrollably.
(2) Two kids scream for help from the balcony of the mock fire apartment.
This built muscle memory and real-life experience into each drill. The dividends paid off! Our officers were calm and decisive; had command presence; and were confident in the role of first due, IC, or division/group supervisor. Our members promoted and became great officers. Most importantly, our fires went better and better. Each fire was recorded and then critiqued by all the crews the next shift. I was the first one to be critiqued. I wanted their input to make me better as well, and the camera does not lie.
Real-Time Fireground and Emergency Scene Succession Planning
I firmly believe in the philosophy of “crawl-walk-run” espoused by Dr. Brian Crandall, who has a Ph.D. in adult learning and leadership and how ICs learn. We must develop our officers in the emergency dimension gradually. Tabletop exercises and simulations are a great start (crawl). Then the hands-on multicompany drills provide great practice in realistic conditions (walk). The “running” phase is on the actual fireground or other emergency scene. Here, the aspiring officers must do the job under the close eye of their mentors.
Like a paramedic who goes through a didactic (crawl), clinical (walk), and field internship with a preceptor (run), so too must our company and chief officers. There are two ways to accomplish this. First, your department should have a mentoring program in which your aspiring officers ride up in the front seat of the engine with the company officer riding back and mentoring. This means the acting officer is the officer for the shift.
Aspiring officers in my battalion were expected to answer the phone, do reports, schedule the daily activities, conduct drills, lead inspections, and run the crew on all calls. At their side, for the entire time, was their officer, acting as mentor, coach, and safety net.
When I was a captain and one of my crew wanted to promote, he rode in the front seat. We had an agreement regarding when I would take over a situation. For example, if we were on a call or in a situation in public in which he felt he was in over his head, or I felt like someone would get hurt, we had a safe word. I would then take over.
This occurred one night when we were the second-due engine on a house fire with a victim trapped. He hesitated. I asked calmly on the headset from the back seat, “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” His hesitation caused me to take over and we executed a rescue while our engineer got a water supply. We spoke afterward. It was a learning moment. I am happy to say he later promoted and was a great captain.
Another way to give your aspiring officers practical experience (run) is to allow them to retain command or tactical positions on an incident. I often allowed my company officers to retain command during house fires. I would arrive on scene, walk up, and say, “You’re doing great! Want to retain command to get the experience?” They always said yes!
Perhaps the most compelling means to provide command and tactical succession planning is in how your standard operating procedures are set up for command. If you use the incident command system (ICS) in a progressive way, divisions and groups get set up sooner than later. This keeps the span of control down, radio traffic quiet, accountability accurate, and multifocal risk/gain management going continuously.
This methodology also allows company officers to fill division and group supervisor roles more frequently. Hence, they get infinitely more experience making tactical decisions with multiple companies below them. This gives the chief/IC flexibility in setting up the ICS for a fire by having the option of putting company officers in place to supervise divisions/groups when chiefs are not yet on scene or just to get good experience under the tutelage of a subsequently arriving chief. If conditions warrant, a second or third chief may allow a captain to retain the division/group supervisor role to get valuable experience.
On a townhouse fire, the Engine 108 (E108) captain was in command on my arrival. I knew the second chief was approximately 10 minutes behind me. Rather that assign the E108 captain back to his crew at the task level, I assigned him Division A, with engines and trucks all working for him with the objectives of fire attack and interior search.
He was responsible for accountability and safety and spoke to his crews primarily face-to-face. He also had the authority to initiate tactics (additional hoselines, searches, coordinate vent and fire attack) without checking with me. This decentralized method of command is extremely effective in reducing unnecessary radio traffic and building future battalion chiefs.
If a company officer is placed in a tactical supervisory role, he has several options with the rest of the crew. First, he could assign the crew to another company officer within the division/group for accountability. Second, he could assign the crew nonimmediately dangerous to life or health tasks, like water supply or an exposure line. Finally, he could assign the crew to assist the officer with supervising the division/group by accounting for crews, performing door control, or stretching a two-out line.
Modern succession planning challenges are plaguing the fire service. No fire department is exempt. Succession planning and incident command must be interwoven. Training must include high-fidelity, multicompany hands-on drills with realistic conditions like smoke, victims, and panicked occupants. In addition, the methodology of command, using ICS, allows company officers to lead multiple crews in the form of division/group tactical supervisors. This decentralized command ethos will yield operations that are more safe, effective, and efficient as well as officers who are more confident and ready to take on more responsibilities and challenges.
Anthony Kastros is a 32-year veteran of the fire service and founder of Trainfirefighters.com. He was the FDIC 2013 keynote speaker and 2019 George D. Post Instructor of the Year. He is author of the Fire Engineering book Mastering the Fire Service Assessment Center and video series Mastering Fireground Command, Calm the Chaos.
