Instructors Take Barbs of Speakers, Hear What the Future Is Demanding
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A more demanding future for instructors was depicted by some speakers as others voiced criticism of present practices during the annual fall conference of the International Association of Fire Service Instructors at the Royal Coach Motel in Atlanta October 28-31.
After January 1, 1982, all breathing apparatus used inside buildings will have to be the pressure-demand type, Thomas Seymour of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in Washington told an industrial instructors workshop. He explained that after that date fire fighters will be able to use demand type breathing apparatus only when they are outside, protecting exposures.
Glenn Gardner of OSHA, who shared the presentation with Seymour, added that “there is no question pressuredemand breathing apparatus is going to have to be used,” and he cited test methods used to prove the superior protection provided by the pressuredemand apparatus.
Control by NIOSH
Seymour explained that the National Institute of Safety and Health (NIOSH) is assuming sole federal control of breathing apparatus and other respirators. The NIOSH responsibility includes approval, fitting, training and maintenance.
Demand apparatus has a protection factor of 100, Seymour explained, while pressure-demand apparatus with a proper fit has a protection factor of 10,000 and with a poor fit, 5000. When asked for figures on the number of fire fighters who had experienced breathing injuries while wearing demand type breathing apparatus, Seymour responded that injury data was not available. However, he mentioned a chlorine incident in which Boston fire fighters wearing demand type breathing apparatus were affected by chlorine inhalation. He commented that “in the long run, positive-pressure provides such superior protection to the people wearing it, that that’s the way it’s going to go.”
An optimistic note for the future of the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration was voiced by Administrator Howard D. Tipton, who disclosed that Secretary of Commerce Juanita Kreps had encouraged a doubling of the NFPCA budget request. Tipton commented that this is the first time he “has begun to see support from the executive branch.” He explained that with doubled resources in five years, the National Fire Academy could handle 4000 students in about 10 programs annually.
However, Tipton said the NFPCA has not “broken ground” with the Carter administration in the “area of real (financial) assistance in education and training.” He explained that the cost for this fiscal aid is great and the administration does not see the need for it. He saw a “tough problem” ahead if this education and training assistance cannot be obtained. With this assistance, Tipton said, the NFPCA could have direct contracts with state agencies and training facilities.
A larger budget, he added, could provide for more planning assistance, and the national fire data system could do more in-depth analyses of more fire problems—such as it is now doing under a Department of Housing and Urban Development contract for mobile home fires.
More needs to be done
Depending on the funding, Tipton hopes to see at least 20, or perhaps all, states getting funds for public fire safety education resource centers, and he said he would like to do studies on the urban core problems at a cost of $500,000 each.
—Staff photos.
“Certainly we’re doing something in the field, but we’re not doing what we should,” the NFPCA administrator asserted.
Tipton predicted that fire departments will have planning sections for management and research and he told the instructors that “more than ever, we have to become better managers.” More management work must be done on the local level to support discussions of the impact of proposed programs, he stated.
Instructors chided
Howard Boyd, Nashville, Tenn., fire marshal, deplored the debate over whether instructors or fire marshals should be responsible for the development of professional qualifications for public education officers and suggested that both groups should “get on with the task and share those things that we learn in order that we may be able to pass that knowledge to the public.”
As a clincher, he declared, “I would only suggest to you that you have had the opportunity for 50 years to teach the fire fighter how to teach people what to do to prevent fires and it hasn’t been done.”
The Nashville fire marshal also reminded the instructors that while they “will spend untold hours developing a new hose lay or a new method of putting hose in the bed,” they “have not spent any hours teaching the fire fighter how to make a decent inspection of the buildings that he is charged with protecting.”
In noting that instructors are responsible for training recruits to pursue “the most hazardous occupation on earth,” Boyd told the instructors, “You haven’t done such a hot job in that area either or it wouldn’t be the most hazardous occupation on earth.” The speaker predicted that “in the very near future,” an instructor’s failure to properly train fire fighters “will result in law suits being filed not only against the municipality, but personal suits against the instructor” by families of fire fighters injured in the line of duty.
Boyd pointed out that law suits have been based on the negligence of fire and building inspectors in fire protection matters.
Top priority for training
In the keynote address, Douglas Harmon, Alexandria, Va., city manager, declared that training “has to be top priority” and the fire chief must become convinced of this. He deplored the assignment of men to the training division as a way to keep them on the payroll until retirement.
Harmon warned that liability for the proper training of fire fighters is one of the most important issues facing instructors in these days of prevalent legal suits. He also told the instructors that if they “are not doing long-range planning, you’re not doing what you should be doing.” Training officers, he added, should be involved in team-building with other municipal departments, time management and task force management.
“One of the most important things a training officer has to do is to evaluate what’s going on,” he commented.
Harmon viewed the training officer as one of the basic extensions of management in a fire department. He voiced the opinion that there is a bad image of fire departments in the area of management capability and he charged that the areas most overlooked in the concept of a chiefs role are management systems, planning and fire prevention.
Concern for suppression
Concern that the expanding attention to fire prevention will result in too little attention to fire suppression was voiced by Joseph Redden, National Fire Protection Association fire service specialist and retired chief of the Newark, N. J., Fire Department.
In referring to the “most dangerous occupation” stigma of the fire service, Redden declared that “we must be the most careless” peacetime occupation and he called for the application of strict safety rules on the fireground to reduce the number of fire fighter deaths and injuries.
“What’s in the head is more important than what’s on the head,” he commented.
Redden also challenged the instructors to train fire fighters and officers to make good decisions on the fireground and added, “We haven’t been doing our job in the fire service in helping fire officers to do their job on the fireground.”
Air disaster experience
The unique experience of running across his front lawn and looking up at an airliner making a crash landing was described by Chief John R. Clayton of New Hope, Ga.
“I was 35 to 40 feet from the tail section when the plane crashed,” Clayton recalled.
While he was standing behind the tail section, the fuel ignited and blinded him for a moment. The chief of the sevenyear-old volunteer fire department had two things going for him. The members of his department had finished a Georgia Fire Academy training course in New Hope just two days before the April 4, 1977 crash of the Southern Airways DC-9, and a hump just off the roadbed of Highway 92 jolted the downed, skidding jetliner just enough to alter the course it was taking that would have demolished the firehouse with the department’s pumper and tank truck inside.
Clayton said that as he turned to run to the firehouse for one of the trucks, he saw the first one coming to the scene. In introducing Clayton to the conference, Harold G. Thompson, Georgia Fire Academy supervisor, said that the volunteer fire fighters “pulled 23 people out of the plane who wouldn’t have made it without their help.” The crash took the lives of 68 other persons.
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New Hope had no foam, so the fire fighters took a 2 1/2-inch fog line into the tail section. Clayton commented that with the help of a 1948 pumper, 2 ½ -inch hose and the Georgia field training program, the fire in the wreckage was extinguished in seven minutes. The chief added that 1300 pounds of fuel remained in the tanks.
In discussing public fire safety education, Trudy Daly, fire safety education director for Hartford Fire Insurance, told the instructors that “a lot of things we teach in fire prevention are totally worthless” and urged them to teach the teachers and not the children.
“If you have 10 hours to give to fire safety education, give them to the teachers,” she advised, adding that it was important to have the teachers on the side of the fire service. She saw a critical need to get elementary school teachers turned on to fire safety and declared that this was something that had to be done by fire departments.
“You don’t have to teach fire safety to kids,” she told the instructors and pointed out that a good manager learns to delegate and “you don’t have to be a fire fighter to teach fire safety to children. She declared that “a lot of things we teach in fire prevention are totally worthless.” She advised the instructors to keep their priorities straight and forget the fire triangle especially when talking to small children. Instead, she urged teaching tots to drop and roll— something they can understand that can save their lives.
Fire fighter death rate
The NFPCA fire services technology manager, Andrew Sears, pointed out that from 1964 to 1974, the death rates for other occupations tended to drop while the fire fighter death rate remained relatively level. Sears reported that the advance development contractor for Protect FIRES (Firefighter Integrated Response Equipment System), Grumman Aerospace Corp., is now evaluating existing turnout gear in order to establish recommendations and standards. The protective garment system is being studied in terms of providing self-contained breathing, lighting, communications and personal cooling capabilities.
A prediction that this so-called protective envelope for fire fighters will be available in “four or five years” was made by Joseph Clark, NFPCA associate administrator for fire safety and research. He also ventured that this protection “won’t be that expensive. It will be things we can afford.”
Clark also voiced his feeling that low-cost sprinkler systems for homes are about 10 years behind the extensive introduction of smoke detectors in homes. He expected that the sprinkler heads would have flow rates of 4, 5 or 6 gpm.
In speaking of the annual fire death toll in the United States, Clark said that the “magic number of 12,000 is a thing of the past. We now know and realize the number is around 8000,” give or take 500. What we do know, Clark added, is that deaths in the homes—in ones and twos—constitute the major loss and this is a “pretty tough part of the problem to tackle.”
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At an officer workshop session, Fire Marshal James Dalton of Montgomery County, Md., described the use of 8mm movie cameras to evaluate standard operating procedures and equipment. He explained that as many as five cameras might be needed. One photographer should shoot a view of the entire evolution while the other cameramen should each film one person, following the action of that person from the time the apparatus stops until the end of the evolution. Dalton said that each fire fighter was asked to write what he did during the evolution and that many times what the men said they did varied from what the films showed.
The speaker stated that the films can identify needed changes in both standard operating procedures and equipment and can help identify manning requirements. He also found the filming helpful in developing procedural manuals based on factual findings instead of past practices and unsupported opinions.
Training is priority
A surprise priority that has surfaced from state fire service planning programs is basic training, said Anthony D. Manno of the National Fire Academy, who heads the academy planning assistance program (APAP). The other priorities most often identified were instructor training and management training. He declared that fire service leaders must have plans if they are to talk successfully with city managers and governors.
Both statewide organizational designs for fire service education and training and state master planning, Manno said, have been helpful in resolving disputes over areas of responsibility among fire service organizations in states and in identifying what the fire service in a state needs.
“It takes a lot of money on the federal level to get things done. I don’t know why, but it does,” Manno commented and added that “it’s going to be more expensive if you don’t sit down and tell us what you need.”
Open university plans
Although fire science courses are offered by at least 330 community colleges and 17 four-year colleges, “probably over one third of the people in the fire world have no access to any programs whatsoever” and others don’t have time for college study, Dr. Betty Jo Mayeske said in discussing the open university concept. She heads the $156,000 initial phase study of the feasibility of an open university fire service program that is being done under a NFPCA grant to the International Association of Fire Fighters.
Mayeske indicated that the program would include correspondence courses, audio-visual media and college tutors. She explained that tutors were important because the general correspondence course completion rate moves up from 22 to 52 percent when there is an instructor involvement in the program. She said the target date for implementation of the open university program is July 1,1980, and the present consideration is the establishment of a nationwide network of institutions that would offer the open university program.
Data system discussed
Deploring the collection of data when nothing is done with it, Thomas Wright, director of the NFPCA national fire data system, told the instructors that they “must be involved in data collection” that is understandable and is in a form pertinent to their needs.
“Instructors must always use the latest and best data available,” he declared, and he suggested that instructors request national fire data that can be compared with state and local data to justify programs and establish priorities.
Wright explained that the national fire incident reporting system (NFIRS) seeks to upgrade state and local fire data systems uniformly so that fire problems can be identified on all levels. He reported that 19 states were now involved to one degree or another in the national system and the emphasis is now on obtaining participation by Southern states. Wright said he hoped that all the states would be participating by 1981.
Among the several directors of National Fire Academy programs who participated in the ISFSI conference was James McNeil, who explained that the executive development curriculum he heads will consist of a series of courses that “will start with middle management and go up and down from there.” He commented that “fire chiefs should have input in what the executive development series should look like” and that the courses would pull pertinent material from the Harvard School of Business and similar institutions. This series of courses will be offered at the academy. (For descriptions of NFA courses, see the November Fire Engineering.)
Motivation for architects to take time from their business to enroll in the fire safety course the academy has designed for them lies in the growth of liability suits after fires, Edward J. Prendergast, director of that program, told the instructors. He mentioned that a damage suit has been filed against the architect for the Beverly Hills Supper Club building. The 30-hour course will be offered in segments that will make attendance feasible for busy architects.
George E. Wetherington, Jr., the academy’s national fire incident reporting course manager, reported that training had been completed in seven states and that the academy has a commitment to train 40 instructors in every state. He urged the inclusion of basic data collection instruction in every fire department recruit program.
Progress seen
The many education and training programs “seem to be making headway” against the fire loss, said Richard Small, director of the Oregon Fire Standards and Accreditation Board. He explained that the Oregon hoard has eight advisory committees to help it reach decisions.
Small reported that 15 percent of the Oregon fire fighters have been tested for proficiency and a direct correlation was found between the administrative quality of their departments and their proficiency. In a survey of public knowledge of fire safety, it was found that items requiring knowledge got a higher rating than items requiring change in behavior.
Another role for the fire service instructor—helping to improve the fire defenses of industrial plants—was defined by James Wick, senior supervisor, project engineering, at the Du Pont plant in Linden, N. J. He charged that the fire loss managers of industrial plants bet on the big fire never happening and therefore give little attention to fire brigades. Wick said that fire instructors could assist loss prevention managers in evaluating their problems and equipment and then help them develop and implement fire protection plans.
How the Mississippi State Fire Academy became a physical entity was described by James S. Hart, academy director. He said that the groundwork for legislative funding was laid by obtaining pledges of support by many groups for the academy concept. An appropriation bill introduced in 1973 resulted in the legislature voting for a feasibility study. Two years later, construction started on a 126-acre site and the academy was occupied in May 1976. The construction cost was $2 million and $300,000 was spent for equipment.
U. S. agencies chided
Federal agencies whose regulations affect the fire service were chided in the adoption of a resolution that urged ISFSI members to participate in user committees of these agencies and called on the ISFSI officers to seek support of this resolution by the Joint Council of National Fire Service Organizations, the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration and “such other federal agencies as may be required” to resolve inadequacies. Specifically, the resolution declared that “the methods of approval and voidance procedures” concerning breathing apparatus “are wholly inadequate to meet the needs of the fire service and should be made more responsive to the actual field use problems.” The ISFSI also called for standardization of “certain controls, devices and fittings” of breathing apparatus.
The resolution named the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and Mine Enforcement Safety Administration among those federal agencies which “impose their rules, regulations and standards—legal, moral or implied—without full consideration of their effects on the fire service and its objectives.”
The ISFSI business meeting also approved a change in the bylaws to establish a section for volunteer instructors.
