THE NEW TIA: THROWING ACRONYMS AT A FIRE
EDITOR’S OPINION
Quietly, minus the storm clouds that have shadowed the national staffing standard affair for two years, the NFPA Standards Council recently issued a Tentative Interim Amendment (TIA) to NFPA 1500, Standard on Fire Service Occupational Safety and Health Program, requiring that four members be on the scene before commencing interior operations at a working structure fire, except in “rare and extraordinary” circumstances in which “members find an imminent life-threatening situation where immediate action may prevent the loss of life or serious injury.” The TIA broadly defines a working structural fire as “Any fire that requires the use of a I ½-inch or larger fire attack hose line and that also requires the use of self-contained breathing apparatus for members entering the hazardous area.”
In embracing the TIA, the Standards Council overruled the 1500 technical committee inasmuch as the amendment did not gain acceptance by three-fourths of committee members, the requirement for a TIA to pass through committee —the NFPA was going to get the foreground staffing monkey off its back, come hell or high water.
The end result, however, is a disappointing amendment that is redundant, falls far short of making the vital connection between staffing and safety for the full breadth of foreground operations, beginning to end, and cradles the stereotype of the fire service as comprised of raw-faced kamikazes requiring the vigilant protection of the fords of Safety.
Hyperbole? The real fib was exercised by certain fire service elements too entrenched in their own politics to use a national forum to tackle together what has been a major fire service problem: Budgets are shrinking, therefore manpower is shrinking, therefore the “typical” fire call receives less than the needed response at the crucial incipient and growth fire stages, therefore buildings saved vs. buildings lost is tilted far to the latter and the civilian death rate and firefighter injury rate per fire are greater. Instead the Union picked up its ball and went home like a schoolyard brat, and the technical committee, led by the Chiefs and the Volunteers, who spearheaded the new TIA, developed instant myopia, creating an amendment that would have the ieast effect on the most people yet carry an aura of safety, to drive home that, yes, they are pro-firefighter safety. And it worked because the NFPA, too, was smarting from the previous TIA experience and needed to pass something.
The stalling safety problem —the stickiest problem of them all — cries out for progressive fire service leadership, but the TIA actually may exacerbate the situation. There’s no reason to believe the TIA will comped two-member-company paid departments to compliance (can these departments, with two per company, really be listening to 15(H)?), yet there is ginxl reason to suspect that the TIA will give a boost to city managers looking tor even a bad excuse to trim their fouror five-member companies to three. A three-member company minimum is implied in the TLA; a crew of an officer, two firefighters, and a chief officer (the most common U.S. paid department first-in response) fits neatly into compliance since the TIA imposes no restrictions on who the four should be or how they arrive at the scene.
So the TIA won’t affect the “threes.” will be ignored by the “twos,” and either may hurt or won’t affect the “fours” and “fives.” What about the volunteer sector? Here the situation gets more complicated for obvious reasons, but the Chiefs and the Volunteers apparently feel confident that the majority of volunteer departments can reach the magic number of four in a reasonable time. In some areas where demographics, geography, and economics create longer response times and manpowerlimited responses, an interior attack rarely is feasible, and this TIA becomes a virtual moot point.
It is not too much to ask a fire department (or financial decision makers) to provide the numbers of personnel needed to launch a safe interior attack, maintain communication with the interior team, and initiate rescue efforts if the interior team runs into trouble. (Indeed, Section 6-4.4 of NFPA 1500, though not quite as explicit as the new TIA, already provides for just that, and therein lies the redundancy.) But let’s play devil’s advocate:
To dispatcher, 2 a.m.: “There’s a fire in Mrs. McGillicudy’s house, I think she’s inside.” First engine arrives, two firefighters and an officer. Chief officer is delayed. Fire appears to be in the back bedroom, first floor. Moderate smoke condition. Front door is slightly ajar. It is a working fire by anyone’s description, and by TIA definition the firefighters should not attack it. But is Mrs. McGillicudy in the house? Was the neighbor certain of Mrs. M’s whereabouts? No eyewitnesses. The officer calls, there is no response. Are there children? Upstairs? Should we wait for the fourth member and hope Mrs. McGillicudy is not succumbing to smoke inhalation behind that fire? Seconds are ticking.
To dispatcher, 2 p.m.: “The smoke detector has been going off at 63 Main Street for about five minutes.” Private house. Three firefighters respond, fourth is not expected for several minutes. Front door is open wide. Officer observes a light, hazy smoke condition on the first floor—nothing showing from the second floor or the attic. Working fire? In the basement? In the walls? People in the house who need help? The officer peeks in, sees no one, calls out, hears no one. Doesn’t appear to be a “life-threatening situation” —not yet. The officer directs the two firefighters to establish a water supply and stretch an attack line to the front door. What should the officer do? The officer steps into the hallway, walks to the basement door, sees smoke seeping out. Fire downstairs. It’s working. Does he attack? Or does he wait for the fourth member and hope Mrs. McGillicudy isn’t down there? The seconds tick.
The new TIA assumes that the firefighter can locate and assess the extent of fire from the apparatus, and thereby begin the process of “locate, confine, and extinguish” —if four members are present, of course. It assumes he knows the whereabouts of Mrs. McGillicudy without entering the building. It rules that there had better be four members present before he makes a decision to enter the environment of what may he a “working fire”—and if he decides to commit before he has four, and someone gets injured or worse, he better have a good reason for doing so—and be able to justify it on the witness stand.
This is why you cannot expect national standards to serve as a panacea for the operational challenges facing our nation’s fire service—there are too many ifs, ands, and buts. This is a prime example of taking decisions out of the hands of those who know and placing them into the hands of those w ho say they know but are not there when it happens.
In the end, we can preach safety and fabricate parameters ’til the cows come home and do it again tomorrow, but there is no substitute for a firefighter’s on-scene, hands-on risk analysis based on his training and experience and knowledge of the capabilities of those who serve with him. Unless the fire service recognizes and incorporates that notion into the process, we wall have unrealistic standards that will be ignored. A drop of water in your cup may be from the ocean, but it is not the ocean.
