The December 2002 Letter to the Editor “Weak staffing” by Chief Dwight B. Van Zanen of the Vista (CA) Fire Department certainly is thought-provoking to say the least. His comments regarding Chief William Goldfeder’s views on staffing and training seem to shed light on why firefighters are being killed in our country. When fire service leaders such as Van Zanen state that staffing and deployment are local issues that “must correspond to the needs, expectations, and circumstances of the individual community,” it becomes time to question our leaders! I have yet to meet a citizen of my community who doesn’t expect the local fire department to be able to perform all the firefighting tasks needed to protect lives and property. We as firefighters have a duty to perform these tasks while our fire service leaders, politicians, and city hall bean counters are obligated to work diligently toward this goal. Inadequately staffed fire stations are simply a “mirage.” Yes, we may have a beautiful station and outstanding apparatus, but without properly trained and fully staffed crews, we are misleading those who need us most.
NFPA 1710 is not a perfect document, nor are most of the standards and guidelines we work with; however, it is an excellent start to addressing our staffing and deployment deficiencies. By agreeing with much of this standard, Goldfeder is not advocating some new drastic change to fire department operations, and he is certainly not “uninformed,” as Van Zanen claims. On the contrary, I have been in several of Goldfeder’s lectures over the years and have found him to be one of the most educated, practical, dedicated, and well-informed chiefs on the job. He is simply stressing the need to look out for our own. It appears that some chiefs and politicians have forgotten that. Common sense tells us that by sending more personnel and resources to an incident, we lessen the workload on each individual, in turn producing better results on the fireground. If it takes standards like these to open the eyes of our bosses, than we must push for their existence. I applaud the IAFF and IAFC for their diligence in dealing with 1710.
Van Zanen is correct that we must not send an inadequate number of firefighters into an interior operation, but it is his job to ensure the proper number of personnel and apparatus are allocated to protect those we are here for, including our own personnel.
I thank officers like Chief Goldfeder who are striving to make our jobs better and safer.
Aaron J. Heller
Captain
Hamilton Township (NJ) Fire District #9
I am quite taken aback by Chief Van Zanen’s letter. It always scares me when I meet or read about a chief who “manages by excuse.” There are far too many chiefs who operate in their comfort zone and find excuses for their positions. And there are far too many politicians who truly care nothing for the fire service who deserve a lot of blame for insufficient resources and “bad things that happen.” And even more unfortunate, those politicians usually surround themselves with “yes” men and women.
It also scares me when a chief feels strongly enough about an article on staffing and training to make public comment on it and then never mentions training in the criticism.
Van Zanen seems to want to be reactive instead of proactive. This also concerns me. Reacting to an emergency has the tendency to catch people with their guard down, which increases the possibility of human error, which can result in death and injury to emergency workers. Imagine if the United States military sat back and waited for someone to attack and then dealt with it “the best they could” and if staffing and training were not sufficient, the military then pulled out to protect Canada and Mexico.
The main argument of the letter is aimed against NFPA 1710, and it seems to be an uninformed opinion at best. First, he gives a couple of examples where NFPA 1720 applies, not 1710. He also states that “whenever a minimum standard is promulgated, it is understood to apply in all circumstances everywhere” and “when we are talking about staffing and deployment for fire protection, a minimum standard does not work because the necessary features must correspond to the needs, expectations, and circumstances of the individual community.” I was unaware that buildings burned differently in California and that the expectations of California citizens and firefighters were vastly different from those in other parts of the country.
Simply put, an average of 100 firefighters continue to die in the United States every year. If we continue to operate in the same comfort zone, if we continue to have fire department managers instead of fire department leaders, if we continue to think that staffing and training are not important, if we continue to operate under the assumptions that “It will never happen to me” and “Bad things only happen to other people,” and if we continue to think that minimum safety standards addressed and implemented by fire service leaders from throughout the country and Canada are unimportant, then shame on us.
I do agree with one premise of Van Zanen’s letter—that no firefighter fireground death is acceptable. Is a 100 percent reduction in firefighter fatalities obtainable in the future? We will never know unless we address staffing and training responsibly in a proactive manner and cease to respond reactively. It won’t happen if we continue to operate in our individual comfort zones and criticize those who try to disrupt that zone. It won’t happen unless we try.
Kevin D. Schott
Firefighter
Illinois Air National Guard
Carlinville (IL) Fire Department
In response to Chief Dwight B. Van Zanen’s letter about staffing, when you start to reduce staffing, things will happen—maybe not right away, but they will happen. First, there will be the structures lost because all of the required tasks associated with fighting a structural fire could not be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time or, perhaps, not at all. Then there will be the lawsuits because you did not have enough people on your apparatus to extricate those injured people from the vehicle in a reasonable amount of time to increase their chance of survival. And, of course, there will be the firefighter funerals.
I take particular exception to the phrase “Firefighters will die because officers will attempt to fight fires with insufficient resources or attack a fire with any number of personnel when it is unjustified.” Firefighters continue to die because of the profession they have chosen. I know that there is not an acceptable casualty rate in the fire service, but people live because we attack fire, not because we wait outside for it to come to us. One officer I know was killed when he opened the door and started to enter a building and the landing below him collapsed. How many of us do that every day? Did he do something wrong? Absolutely not! It was a bad break, and he lost his life. Not every firefighter who loses his life does so because of a mistake. Sometimes the enemy just sneaks up behind you. Ask any war veteran. Many good people have died; to say that they died because of aggressive attitudes discredits these heroic, courageous people.
Less staffing equals unfinished, incomplete tasks that endanger the firefighters and the public alike. Once upon a time a mayor and a commissioner decided to reduce staffing. I believe we lost 11 members in less than two years. First you reduce the engine. Then it takes that much longer for the engine to stretch the line. How long does it take for fire to consume a single room? I have had to sit and wait for the engine, watching the fire after the primaries have been completed.
I have had the privilege to work with some of the most decorated, gutsy, heroic members of the Fire Department of New York. They have performed unbelievably. If they had Van Zanen’s attitude, there would be a lot more vacant lots and dead people in New York City.
Tony Tricarico
Captain
Special Operations
Fire Department of New York
Chief William Goldfeder responds: Chief Van Zanen’s comments further affirm my years of research, observations, and instructing that Weak Training + Weak Staffing is truly a disaster in waiting.
Firefighting is task-oriented. Period. It is impossible to accomplish certain “minimally required” tasks if the staffing is not on the scene. For example, if a department responds with five to six firefighters to a 2,000-square-foot, two-story, working fire dwelling, it may be able to establish water (if hydranted) and pump, stretch a 13/4-inch line (2 firefighters and 1 officer), and force entry (2 firefighters). No other tasks can be safely accomplished. The question is, without adequate and trained staffing, who is going to stretch the second line (which is mandatory—if you stretch one line, you MUST stretch a backup to protect the crews and exposures and numerous other reasons), perform ventilation, perform search and rescue, operate in the basement or upstairs floors, perform truck work such as searching for extension, be on standby for RIT team operations, manage accountability, be the sector commanders to be the “eyes and ears” of the IC, be the “safety sector” commander to ensure all your employees do the job safely and properly “manage the risks” on an emergency scene, and be prepared for the unforeseen at otherwise “routine fires”?
Over the years, we have seen staffing dwindling to less and less because of a failure of city and “fire managers” to properly “look out for both their firefighters and the citizens.” This “loss” made it even more clear that a national standard was needed to further enhance the safety of our firefighters as well as look out for the interest of those we serve. Are 1710 and 1720 perfect? No—far from it. But they are a start and give those who understand the need for safe and adequate staffing a document with measurable goals to work from.
Why wouldn’t a chief want to give firefighters enough help on a scene (on the initial alarm) so they can properly, competently, and safely do their job? By doing that, you are truly looking out for the best interest of your taxpayers. “Sending more firefighters to a scene increases our liability and expense,” says one chief. Well, with that kind of logic, why send anything more than an insurance underwriter to a fire to write a check to the homeowners for what started as a small kitchen fire and then burned their home to the ground! Why even bother with EMS? Why not take sick people straight to the funeral home? As a well-known and seasoned fire officer said years ago, “Some communities would be better off with no fire department than the one they have.” At least the public wouldn’t have that false sense of security.
At some point, fire officials need to decide if they want to have a fire department or just look like they have a fire department. Sadly, the comment “The staffing and deployment decisions are most appropriately made at the local level by those who must pay for the costs involved and live with the resulting service level” is true but affirms the “fake fire department” attitude. That attitude has allowed for the gross lack of standardization nationally, resulting in communities “getting away” with beautiful fire engines, beautiful fire stations, and two to three firefighters on duty. Unfortunately, in many cases, those “who pay for the costs” are not always given the whole factual picture from those entrusted with the public funds.
The old argument “We’ll decide what’s best for our community” is a good one if the leaders are truly looking out for their constituents’ needs. But unfortunately, it is often used to attempt to justify less staffing, which means less funding. Van Zanen mentioned that some rural communities do not have nearby communities to provide automatic mutual aid. That is certainly true in some rare cases, but there are far more rural, suburban, and urban communities that do have other departments nearby, but because the chief and others just “don’t get along” with each other or because “we can protect our community without any of their help,” the public and firefighters suffer—sometimes in tragic ways.
Minimum standards are just that—minimum. I have identified what must be “minimally done” to properly do the job of a fire department at a reported single family dwelling fire. The organization must be cost-effective. That’s correct! The “cost” of any fire department must be able to justify the “effectiveness” of that agency when the call for the expected emergency services come in. For years, you can run low on staffing and no one notices—because of the infrequency of fires and a lot of luck. However, when that fire call does come in, and it will, will that department be able to perform the tasks listed above? Clearly, as Van Zanen stated, a fire department must be able to “correspond to the needs, expectations, and circumstances of the individual community.” That is exactly why a minimum standard such as 1710/1720 is so critical to benefit the community, the firefighters, and maybe even the chief in the area of liability.
Van Zanen stated, “Firefighters don’t die because not enough of them arrived at the emergency. They die because officers attempt to fight fires with insufficient resources available or when a fire attack with any number of personnel is unjustified. If not enough personnel arrive in time for a safe and effective direct attack, the job of the fire officer is to protect exposures and his personnel. It is not to charge in anyway, hope for the best, and blame politicians for insufficient resources when bad things happen.” Accepting that as the way to operate on a normal, everyday basis without attempting to improve the levels of service through innovative ideas should be viewed as a shame. Fire leaders need to do more than just “hope for the best.” They need to plan ahead and anticipate what will happen, what will go wrong, and what can be done “before the incident” to be best prepared. That may require some bold leadership on a chief’s part including working out automatic-aid programs, working with management/labor to hire additional firefighters, or working within the community to recruit more volunteer firefighters. It is easy to look at a community and predict what will happen “when that call comes in” based on staffing and training.
I have spent decades studying the staffing issue—I am certainly not a new 1710/1720 groupie. I have files of documentation and case studies from agencies such as OSHA, NIOSH, NIST as well as several state Department of Labor and fire marshal offices that all affirm my factual comments as originally published in Fire Engineering. I also have met with numerous chiefs who have changed their opinions and operations following tragic events related to staffing and training. I hardly jumped on the “staffing bandwagon” last year. In my 30 years as a firefighter (22 years as a chief officer), six years as an ISO Public Protection Engineering representative, and six years as a commissioner representing the IAFC on the Commission on Fire Accreditation International, I have documented numerous examples of “Weak Training + Weak Staffing is truly a disaster in waiting.” I have now rewritten that statement to read “Weak Training + Weak Staffing + Poor Leadership is truly a disaster in waiting.” As is true of football, I’d say that you can have the best ball team (fire department) in the world with the best-trained players, but without excellent, informed, and courageous coaches, we will continue to lose.
Yes, if staffing is poor, departments should do little to endanger their members’ lives. At the same time, they should make it very clear to the mayor, council, city manager, and community what they can and cannot do and why. At that point, the chief needs to decide exactly what he is actually chief of. Some pretty fire engines and ambulances behind the bay doors of a beautiful fire station without adequate staffing (career, volunteer, or automatic mutual aid) for the first-alarm assignment constitute simply a “fake” fire department. It’s a matter of who’s kidding whom.
We are all “leaders”
I read the Letter to the Editor by William P. Bailey Sr. appropriately titled “Leaders of Tomorrow” (December 2002) and appreciate his commitment to progression. There is something vital to our profession that he left out. While most in the fire service associate leadership and all that goes with it with chief officers, I must remind (or even teach) each of you that leadership is a responsibility of all of us.
Leadership and the traits firefighters acquire that make them good leaders are developed at the beginning of a career and should not stop developing until the end of that career. I have been in the fire service for 13 years and in the military for 23 years and in no way consider myself an expert on leadership. However, I have had a vast amount of experience in leadership roles since a very young age and am always seeking more knowledge on ways we can make better leaders of our firefighters.
While I agree with Bailey’s suggestion, it’s not just us chiefs who need to “read and heed” Chase Sargent’s advice; it is every firefighter in the station who truly wants to make the fire service safe and its purpose meaningful. When you no longer think there is anything you can learn, it is probably a good indicator (and maybe only to others) that you should retire. So, read and heed all members of our great profession; the leaders of tomorrow are in your department today!
Thomas H. Taylor
Assistant Chief/Operations
Moses Lake (WA) Fire Department
“Living heroes”
Regarding the December 2002 Editor’s Opinion “Living Heroes” by Bill Manning, I could not agree more. When I started in the fire service more than 20 years ago as a cadet, I, too, was very naïve; was lured by the romanticism of the service; and was willing to follow the veterans anywhere. Fortunately, the underlying reason for my entering the service was simply to help people. I am now a career battalion chief, and I believe it is my charge to help the people closest to me, namely the 19 people on my shift. Recently, I told my newest member during orientation that there was no building in our district worth his life. I have witnessed many near tragedies in my career (I have come to accept them as miracles since no one died) where crews have allowed themselves to get into situations they should not have been in simply for reasons of bravado. Don’t get me wrong. I told the new member also that if we know someone is inside a burning building we will go the distance to get him out. However, if we are certain there is no one in there, we will take a much more cautious approach. Nothing upsets me more than seeing that another firefighter was injured or killed in the middle of the night, caught in a fire in a fast food restaurant. Who is eating a burger and fries at 2 a.m.? After all, they will just tear down the building and build a new one anyhow. If the owners of that building really cared that much about it, they would have installed sprinklers when they built it.
Steve Nash
Battalion Chief
Solon (OH) Fire Department
“Living Heroes” was an outstanding editorial. The fire service is in desperate need of this type of leadership even when many would find the message disturbing to our cultural norms. I am dealing with this issue head-on in Houston. We have had four line-of-duty deaths (LODDs) in less than four years: one heart attack during a training exercise in December 1998, two in fireground activities at a McDonald’s restaurant in February 2000, and another death in a residential high-rise fire in October 2001. I became the interim chief in October 2000 and was named chief in May 2001. These LODDs are unprecedented in the history of the Houston Fire Department, and significant changes are in progress to deal with these tragic losses. These changes do not come without some road rash when trying to move a department from an entrenched comfort zone to a level that overcomes deficiencies outlined in the recommendations identified in multiple investigative reports.
I am currently going to all 84 districts among four shifts in the city, meeting with the firefighters, reviewing the McDonald’s and Four Leaf Tower fires, and getting buy-in to the three-year plan that addresses all the recommendations in the reports as well as emphasizing fitness and safe driving practices that should significantly reduce the level of risk to our members. There is nothing more important for me to accomplish during my workday. I use the editorial during the presentation, and it really reinforces the message I am preaching. We can no longer accept this madness of “acceptable loss.”
Bill Manning hit the target directly, and I am impressed with Fire Engineering’s courage for printing it. Indeed, this madness has got to stop in the American fire service. Thanks to Manning for having the guts to place this on the national stage. His message reinforces my resolve to keep on fighting the good fight.
Chris Connealy
Chief
Houston (TX) Fire Department
Reverse lays
Tom Brennan asked the question, “Why don’t engine companies use reverse lays anymore?” (Random Thoughts, December 2002). The question was directed at fire departments that have no problems with municipal water supplies. Seattle, Washington, falls into that category; we have one of the best water supply systems in the country. Seattle Fire uses four-inch, large-diameter hose for supply, and there isn’t a problem with hydrant vandalism.
When I entered the department in 1980, we still had many 1958 Macks in service as first-line rigs. The booster tank capacity was 200 to 250 gallons, and that’s if the tank was topped off and didn’t leak. A common evolution was to have the first engine drop a manifold with six 21/2-inch discharge ports in front of the fire building. The crew would drop any combination of hose and equipment to prepare for fire attack while the engine laid reverse to the hydrant. The second engine would come in and lay a preconnected line with its 200-plus gallons and take a supply from the manifold. The potential problems would be if the driver (now alone) had difficulty making up all the connections or if he took a dead hydrant. Either one of these would severely delay getting a constant water source, leaving the second engine with tank water.
As more modern engines arrived over the next 20 years, the tank capacity increased to 500 gallons. This more than doubled Seattle Fire’s ability to apply increased gallonage from the first attack line. As Brennan affirms in his column, “Your stretch time and the booster tank’s supplying an intermittently used nozzle will give the motor pump operator enough time to gain constant water through the hydrant.” He can make this statement because he knows that 85 to 90 percent of most fires are controlled and extinguished with the first attack line with less than 500 gallons of water. If a fire requires more than 500 gpm to control, you’re probably going to set up for a transitional or defensive attack strategy.
There is no right or wrong answer. In fact, on larger commercial fires, I tend to drop a manifold and lay reverse. This allows for aerial master stream operations and keeps the engines away from the collapse zones and radiant heat. But with all that said, having a larger tank capacity makes laying forward a better option. Here are a few more reasons we are seeing more forward lays on the fireground:
- Laying forward keeps your “tool box” (the engine) close and readily available for ladders, forcible entry tools, first-aid equipment, spare air bottles, and “more hose” for those “mournful criers” who lay short instead of having all the needed equipment down the block at the hydrant.
- Newer engines have preplumbed deck guns that can only be used if the engine is in close proximity for an effective master stream.
- With the advent of lightweight construction and plastic home furnishings, I believe fires do burn faster and hotter. Once the fire advances from a contents fire to a structure fire, the collapse time is reduced to two to five minutes, and the hot toxic smoke makes survivability of the occupants negligible.
- Time is of the essence. A dry forward lay with a quick attack preconnected line gets water on the fire minutes faster than a reverse lay. Time the evolutions with your crew to see the difference.
- To address the concerns of charged and “snaked” LDH blocking the street for the incoming trucks or tower ladders, I saw a training video in which two large tower ladders were driving over LDH at a fire with no problem. Not a single section of hose burst. Today’s fire hose manufacturers no longer use the double jacket cotton, which was vulnerable to rot. Their material is stronger to withstand higher pressures and more dur-able. I suppose the only way to know for sure is to conduct actual tests with tower ladders and trucks running over LDH, back and forth, until they do burst. Then we will have a better idea of what will actually happen with modern fire hose instead of what we think will happen.
- If you are the first-in engine company with a crew of four, then the two-in/two-out rule makes a dry forward lay your only option. If the officer establishes command, a reverse lay would have the driver too far away to maintain a legitimate two in/two out.
Forward lays with rigs carrying 500 or more gallons of water give us the ability, for the first few minutes, to make a quick attack on residential fires and save civilian lives while giving firefighters a reasonable margin of safety without an immediate hydrant supply.
Raul A. Angulo
Captain
Seattle (WA) Fire Department
