Editor’s Opinion | By David Rhodes
When someone mentions safety in our business, we often get an eye roll from the operators. It’s not because they are anti safety but because they are anti risk averse, which many believe hijacked the term safety in our industry. If we are being honest with ourselves, we have to admit that some of the fire service leaders became so obsessed with the word safety and the unrealistic expectation of zero acceptable injuries that a risk-averse mentality trickled into decision making.
Some emphasized safety so much that many began to believe that our primary existence as firefighters was to ensure our own safety. They forgot that our reason for existing was to rescue or assist others who are in dangerous situations. Rescuing people is still our primary reason for existing. It is our work.
The law of unintended consequences definitely kicked in, and we saw a reduction in live fire training and any type of hands-on training; restrictions on what types of workouts we could do at the station; and restrictions on any on-duty activities with basketballs, footballs, soccer balls, or volleyballs. We were told we couldn’t make entry into a structure until a checklist of items was completed. We must leave two people outside if two people are going inside, even when there are only four of us there in the beginning. If there are only three of us, then we have to wait for another unit to arrive!
More often than not, these policies are put in place to protect our organizations so that when something does happen, it can show from a liability standpoint that we violated a policy. This always puts us in a precarious position of moral obligation vs. compliance. Most of us put moral obligation ahead of compliance but not everyone.
It seems we did everything we could to legislate our way to safety rather than instilling individual responsibility, ensuring that members were competent and proficient in the skills required to get the job done and working to improve decision-making skills. We implemented “safety officers” on incidents to look out for our well-being, once again shifting the responsibility of safety (or at least the perception of it) to an official person.
Research showed that the most dangerous intersections for pedestrians were the ones that had signs telling people when to walk and when not to walk. Intersections without signs require pedestrians to assess the risk, look for traffic, and make the decision on their own. The addition of the sign essentially falsely removes the decision making from the individuals and they blindly accept the recommendation of the sign without looking for themselves.
Have we fallen into that ourselves? We have a safety officer assigned and we have RIT established so we don’t have to be as careful to size up our own situation at the moment. Has the bombardment of safety, safety, safety conditioned us to take more risk? Just because we checked all the boxes and we are compliant with all the policies doesn’t mean that we are out of danger.
Mike Rowe put forward the “Safety Third” term several years ago as many professional trades were experiencing some of the same risk avoidance or averse management practices. The reality is that no amount of safety talk or safety professionals will ever be able to eliminate risk in our service. Some in the fire service have latched onto this term without understanding the complete message. Safety third doesn’t mean unsafe or without regard for safety but rather that our primary job is NOT safety; our primary job is preventing and responding to emergency situations and giving maximum effort to protect or rescue anyone in harm’s way!
Being competent in firefighting skills, providing realistic training evolutions that require various levels of decision making, and developing strong decision-making experience are vital components of risk management. Experiencing an injury due to an accident in the station or on an incident should not be a time to fall into the trap of banning the activity without looking at the possibility of the unintended consequences.
Fire service leaders should not cave into the bean counters and let cost saving be the only consideration when trying to equip our firefighters with the skills they need to perform and equipping the citizens with a force that functions with surgical precision on an incident. The more we train, the more injuries there will be. Yes, we can do a lot to prevent some types of injuries, but with the complexity of our work, the type of equipment we wear and operate, and the situations that we must put ourselves in, there will be injuries. Being able to understand the cost of doing business and explain the flip side, not training in hard, realistic conditions, is something that fire service leadership must have the ability to articulate.
Being so afraid of something happening to someone under your watch that you hamper their development or deployment in certain situations has the potential to make things unsafe. It can definitely have adverse consequences for those we have sworn to protect and save!
No one is advocating for reckless behaviors that result in unsafe practices, but we are in the risk management business and cannot confuse the two. Taking risks does not equate to being unsafe! None of us disagree with the “Risk a lot to save a life” philosophy but, unfortunately, some have created cultures that risk nothing under any circumstances.
The struggle between moral obligation and strict adherence to policy will continue unless we are clear and honest about what our work is and why we exist as a service.
