“You have to WANT to know more. No one’s going to do that for you” – @UL_FSRI‘s Steve Kerber, #FDIC2015 Keynote pic.twitter.com/w3VC7yPfDg
— Fire Engineering (@fireengineering) April 22, 2015
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In his keynote address at the Opening Ceremony today, Steve Kerber raised two questions relative to the evolving fire service: “Whom do you listen to? Why?” These questions are especially fitting for the times. In the fire service today, according to Chief Bobby Halton, There is taking place “a lively and spirited discussion on tactical options for structural firefighting.” Kerber, the director of the Underwriters Laboratories Firefighter Safety Research Institute, addressed some of the complexities that make it difficult to answer the above questions and the basis for some of the differences of opinion among firefighters. “With so many voices out there, you can find as many people suggesting you do something as you can suggesting that you will die if you do that,” Kerber related.
FDIC 2015 Q&A: Steve Kerber of UL
Complexity
When working at the Maryland Fire Rescue Institute, Kerber had his first encounter with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which he ultimately joined. There he said he learned and applied the science of firefighting. “The more I learned, the more I learned what I did not know,” Kerber said; and as a deputy chief in the College Park Volunteer Fire Department, he learned that “firefighting is very complex and that it is difficult to learn on the fly while you are trying to execute a plan, perform tasks, and see the big picture all at once.”
It is not surprising, therefore, that there is more than one “side” to many of the issues relating to firefighting tactics. “It has become fascinating for me,” Kerber explained. “Everyone has their own experiences and form opinions from them, but experiences and opinions vary greatly.” These circumstances, Kerber said, have led him to “learn more and have an open mind.” He told the firefighters that he, too, has questions, which include the following: How come after 200+ years of firefighting experience we do things so many different ways? How come battalion chiefs in the same battalion on different shifts will expect different operations on the fireground? How is it that fire academies just a few miles apart are teaching very different tactics for different reasons? Who is right, and why?
Throughout his presentation, Kerber raised additional questions, including the following:
- Firefighters don’t have the opportunity to practice during real fires, and our training environment does not replicate reality, so how do we know our tactics are best?
- How do we try new tactics if our training environment cannot produce results that are indicative of what we will see in the field? You don’t get the same fire twice to try two different things, and even if you did, how would you know which is better? What looks better to you may be worse for the trapped occupant. What looks good from the chief’s vantage point may be horrible for a crew operating in a certain place in the structure.
- What happens when we get experience in a certain environment and that environment changes (different fuels, different floor plans, and different building materials) or we introduce new technology to support our operations (turnout gear, self-contained breathing apparatus, thermal imagers, combination nozzles)? Do the tactics change? For some people it might be yes; for others, it may be no. It depends on the experience of a particular person, crew, company, battalion, department, region, state or country.
Science
“There are so many questions. How do we get answers?” Kerber asked the audience. “The great thing about science is that once you understand how things work, you can understand things you have not experienced yet.” He explained that although no two fires and no two response areas are the same, there are many similarities regardless of where you are in the world.
“Shouldn’t we be trying to learn everything we can so that we are doing the best thing possible when called to do so?” Kerber asked rhetorically. “What is the best thing possible? I have been studying the fire service my entire life and as a career full time for 13 years. It is my mission to find these answers with all of you to evolve the fire service.
The Process
Kerber described the scientific process that is followed in the NIST and UL fire research: “ I have found my voice through full-scale experimentation with sensors in the right places, bringing together fire service leaders with diverse experience and open minds early in the process, keeping everyone involved in a transparent way and getting the results out in a way that provides considerations that can be interpreted and implemented in a flexible way depending on the needs of a particular department.” Funding from the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program enables them “to try to tackle fire service questions one at a time and provide some clarity to the ongoing conversation,” Kerber explained. In some cases, he noted, “We learn what we don’t know.” The research is always done with firefighters from across the country, Kerber said. “They ask the questions and design the experiments, and we pull it all together. We have yet to run a series of experiments where we were not surprised by some of the outcomes.”
Kerber pointed out examples of how “speaking out” can help the fire service evolve into a more efficient and safer profession:
- Dan Madrzykowski, a fire protection engineer with NIST, who decided he would dedicate his life work and his voice to work with the fire service.
- Los Angeles County (CA) Fire Department shared its voice for progress with the world, according to Kerber. He explained: The department could have kept its videos, training, and standard operating procedures internal, but it didn’t. Chief Derek Alkonis could have feared that other fire departments would poke holes in the content. The department could have asked, ‘Who cares?’ but the hundreds of thousands of hits on their training videos say that people care and that they are watching.
- The Fire Department of New York could have said that it has 11,000 members and goes to the greatest number of fires so they know how to fight fires, Kerber noted. The department could have continued to say that LODDs are fluke incidents, but it didn’t. The department reached out for help to a group that many say are just scientists and don’t know firefighting. Jerry Tracy could have said that the Vandalia Avenue fire that claimed the lives of three firefighters was an anomaly, but he didn’t. He pushed and pushed for answers over several years. Through his leadership, he brought in additional voices and minds like John Ceriello, George Healy, and Tom Galvin. That collective voice became two series of experiments in New York City, additional tools for the FDNY, and new knowledge about wind-impacted fires that has been shared around the world.
- Erich Roden is showing how to drive progress through the use of data. He was partnering with some of the best universities out there in “big data” before that became a buzzword. From forecasting workload to predicting fire incidence to identifying factors that influence response times, Roden has been pushing the boundaries of data analytics in the City of Milwaukee. Big Data is showing politicians what the reality and landscape really look like, and it will play a key role in moving the fire service forward.
- Sean DeCrane has stepped up to be the voice of the fire service in the codes arena. No one wants to sit in hours upon hours of code hearings, but Sean does because he has our backs. As new hazards emerge, like tall wood buildings or large-scale energy storage systems, DeCrane will be looking out for your safety in the codes arena in which we are underrepresented
- • In 2008 Stefan Svensson took his voice internationally and invited firefighters from all over the globe to his fire academy to begin a dialogue about firefighting, research, and science. I was lucky enough to be one of those firefighters/researchers, and the dialogue has not stopped. His plan was simple: Put firefighters in a room and see what happens. We all used our voice for fire service progress and realized that we are more alike than different.
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The Future
Kerber outlined the needs of the fire service for the future:
- The fire service will require critical thinkers working with partners to solve problems. To get to the answers, we need partnerships across the fire service, across geographies, and across disciplines.
- Fire service members must be lifelong learners: The world changes; the hazards change. We have to challenge everything, ask why, and have that genuine curiosity–not the desire to prove someone wrong or point fingers.
- The fire service needs “constructive disagreement.” With millions of collective years of firefighting experience and 30,000+ fire departments there seems to be many disagreements about the best way to do things. We will study these disagreements to try to understand where these beliefs come from and under which context they might be applicable. “The fire service needs to stop reading bullet points or looking at pictures and think they now know what could be learned in an eight-hour class. The bullet point or picture should spark an interest to know more, but it is on you to want to know more. We also need to take emotion and rhetoric out of many of our discussions.”
The Challenge
Kerber presented audience members with a set of questions with which to wrestle during their own careers: What are you going to be known for? What are you doing with your voice? Have you started conversations in your company, battalion, department, state, and region? Have you done so in a respectful way that brings people together?
Finally, he issued this challenge: “Let’s create a legacy of intelligent professionals, critically thinking firefighters, who will continually work to get better. Let’s build on the foundation of 200+ years of firefighting in a way that continues to make sense as the fire environment evolves. Firefighter effectiveness is an evolution. There is no one answer today, and we aren’t going to solve it tomorrow. It is a process that is ongoing, and we all need to invest in it.
