Who’s in Command Here?

BY BOBBY HALTON

We always want to know who is in charge, who is calling the shots. Our organizations have command structures that begin with the senior man and ascend to the chief of department. Fireground command should descend in the same order; unfortunately, it sometimes gets weird, as when there are two of one rank vying for command or when there is an inexperienced player. I attended a conference recently where we discussed command and debated stationary vs. mobile options.

Someone mentioned that the American political system’s executive branch has a process for succession should an American president suddenly become incapacitated. It is a well-developed plan for succession that should work for the fire service, too—well, maybe.

What would occur if the president and the vice president should somehow simultaneously become incapacitated? Power should be passed to speaker of the House, but what if he were unavailable? If there were an immediate threat to our nation, it could turn out to be kind of up in the air as to who might ascend to the presidency.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley outside of the Washington Hilton. Hinckley also seriously wounded Press Secretary James Brady, Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy, and Police Officer Tom Delahanty. The President was raced off to the hospital. Once under the doctors’ care, Mr. Reagan was incapacitated. What happened back at the White House is where the story gets interesting.

The secretary of state at the time was Alexander Haig, a four-star general. He made a phone call to notify Vice President Bush, who was in Texas, of the shooting. While the vice president was en route, the question arose, “Who was in charge at the White House?”

When that question was posed to General Haig, now secretary of state, on television, he responded, “Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state, in that order; and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. As for now, I’m in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.”

For years the good general went around explaining what he meant: “What I meant was, we had to run a government,” Haig said many years later in an interview about the day. “We had to have an authority to send all the messages out; to speak should we find it was a conspiracy; and to take appropriate action, if necessary, pending the return of the vice president.” If General Haig were a firefighter, he would’ve said, “Vice President Bush is in ‘mobile command.’”

We generally run our firegrounds with a system of command that places the first-due officer “in command,” whether the officer has one fire or 17,000 fires under his belt. It is simply predicated on arrival order. When the first-due assumes command, he should provide a good description of the conditions he is encountering, the actions he intends to take, and any needs he can anticipate. This is a proper and effective way for the first-due to assume command. That officer then should remain with the crew and proceed with the tactical and task-level activities for which they are responsible, passing command when the first-arriving command level officer is on scene.

When there is a strong tactically driven and well-trained response system, the first-due does not assume command. And this is also completely acceptable within such a system. He simply provides a quick size-up and goes about the task and tactical responsibilities. Command is managed by a command level officer who is en route, “mobile command.”

The fireground is an uncertain and complex place. Complexity means that a huge number of interacting and diverse things—fire, construction, fuel load, wind—are combining to give rise to outcomes that are really hard, if not impossible, to foresee.

Faced with a very complex, ambiguous, and dynamic situation, the first-due’s ability to make decisions is very limited. The primary responsibility of the first-due officer is to focus on the crew, its capabilities, and safety. The expectation of someone being capable of conceptualizing the current and future fire conditions, the subsequent effects of their actions on those fire conditions, and then assigning subsequent arriving crews is a lot to ask—maybe in dynamic conditions, impossible. It seems to make sense to have the first-due officer arrive and take command, but he must remain with the crew intact. It is completely unacceptable in most cases to separate the officer from the crew and demand that the officer stay in a stationary location to fulfill the command requirement excluding perhaps defensive operations.

Systems that constrain our choices to fulfill the command requirement do not acknowledge the value of having an officer with expert knowledge of how to function at the task level lead the team. This expertise can mean the difference in dynamic conditions. Being expertly aware of how the work is done at the task level provides us with the ability to coordinate tactically to bring order to chaos.

The function of command is critical and should be instituted on receipt of the alarm. How that runs depends on the sophistication of the system and the capabilities of the members in the system. By providing the officers with as much discretion as possible, we will get better results. By limiting our officers to strict guidelines to fulfill perceived needs, we greatly hamper their abilities and our organizational abilities to provide the best solutions.

The good general was not savvy in task-level politics, so his misstep created confusion, not order. Being a successful general, for Alexander Haig, did not translate into his being a successful secretary of state or a politician. Being a good fire officer requires that you understand not how to expertly do everything but how experts get it done.