BY BILL MANNING
The National Fire Protection Association reports that 112 firefighters died in the line of duty in 1999. That’s the highest yearly total since 1989 and a 19 percent jump in one year.
Fifty percent of these deaths occurred on the fireground. Forty-three percent of fireground deaths were the result of catastrophic events in fire buildings. Fireground heart attacks (“stress and overexertion”) accounted for more than that.
Add to this the fact that the rate of line-of-duty fireground deaths per structure fire has remained relatively constant, and it is very clear-as it has been for years-that fire response practices are tragically deficient.
In the wake of the “new” statistics, you will hear the usual litany: “Our incident management systems are not adequate. Our PASS devices are not activated. Our accountability systems are not being employed. Our gear allows firefighters to be `too aggressive.’ We’re not using the standards.”
The implication, of course, is that our continued hunt for better and better “passive” solutions to fireground safety ultimately will change the course of this annual disgrace. But the passive solutions typically offered by the Establishment obscure the real issue at the heart of our fireground failures. Our fireground deaths and death rates are proof positive that we have engaged in a 20-year experiment with disastrous consequences.
City managers, social experimenters, many fire chiefs, and so-called experts are in deep self-denial: The annual fireground death rate will continue or worsen until we invest in the people and resources at the point to attack. It is, and always has been, a “people thing”-that is, well-trained people with tools performing timely actions that can reverse the exponentially catastrophic physical effects of fires within buildings.
Perhaps we have ignored this simple fact because it is so simple. Maybe it doesn’t fit the evolving image of the “new” fire service. Maybe there are too many people in this business who have sold themselves to the bean counters, for whom getting at least one engine with one or two or three firefighters (including the officer, of course) to the fire scene within five minutes of receipt of alarm is imagined to be the fulfillment of civic duty rather than the height of professional and ethical irresponsibility.
Whatever the reasons, it is painfully obvious that the American fire service is grossly understaffed almost everywhere, be it career firefighters working out of a station or volunteer firefighters forming units on the scene. The Dallas and Seattle staffing studies of almost 20 years ago, as well as other important data, both quantitative and anecdotal, largely have been ignored out of convenience to politicians, both in the fire service and out.
It is also apparent, though until recently advocated only by a few brave truth-seekers such as Tom Brennan, that most fire departments do not get the kind of resources to the scene during the critical stages of fire growth to address necessary tactics for effective and safe operations. Mutual aid works in theory, but not as often in reality-there’s too much reflex time embedded in a fragile dynamic where every second counts. By not performing tactics when they need to be performed, we expose members to great punishment and increased risk. Because real fire training is deemphasized and service diversification the norm in departments throughout America, we add to the risk, sending encapsulated firefighters without much actual, real-time fire experience deep into poorly constructed, fire-weakened buildings to fight fires, often without appropriate ventilation and other critical truck function support.
Never before has the firefighter been pushed to the limits to which he has been asked to go in the year 2000.
And yet cuts continue. Companies run disgracefully thin. The first 15 minutes of fire operations are short on all but guts and grit. Fire departments are turning firefighters into the Band-Aid Corps. New firefighters are being told by their “progressive” “mentors” that firefighting and fire training are overrated. What began as unavoidable budget cuts combined with diversification of services during the recession of the 1970s has led to a fire service way of life by which “more with less” and “be all things to all people” have become interminable mantras, and at a time of economic prosperity unprecedented in American history.
This is nothing new-that’s the problem. It’s time for the fire service to come to grips with this plague.
Brennan has been saying it for years: “The lack of tactics is killing us.” He is right, all too right.
Don’t believe it? Then digest the fact that American civilians are more likely to die and 50 percent more likely to be injured in home fires now than they were 20 years ago. What does that say for our tactics?
We must make a break from “business as usual” to build the “business of what’s right.” It’s time to stop burying our dead without answers.
How many of the 56 fireground deaths in 1999 were because of scandalous company and fireground staffing levels? How many of the fireground heart attacks were because firefighters are doing too much with too little? How many died because we didn’t vent or pull ceilings or couldn’t read a fire building? How many died because the operation was tactically defective or deficient? Will we ever know?
When is the fire service going to look in the mirror and do something about what it sees?
“Lack of tactics is killing us.”
