Overcoming District Disorientation

BY ERIC G. BACHMAN

When I teach firefighters about preincident intelligence, I pose the question, “What is the most important incident information?” The most common responses are the following: the number of occupants, hazardous materials used on site, and the construction type. There is no arguing that each of these items is important. However, the most important piece of information, at least initially, is the location of the emergency. If the location is not known, the other information becomes moot.

Once you know the location, you must establish a timely travel route. Response time is critical and influences many incident aspects. A driver/operator (DO), chauffeur, or whatever your department lists as the title for the person driving the fire truck, as well as the officer riding the right front seat (ORFS), must be intimately familiar with the district. Knowing which direction to turn out of the fire station, while seemingly elementary, is essential.

An error in identifying the incident site or in approaching it can delay your response. Making a wrong turn can be the start of a series of unfortunate events that leads to an unfavorable outcome. It can be embarrassing and delay the initiation of operations, but, most importantly, if it is a working incident, the problem, without any actions to deter it, will continue to develop and escalate. Many factors contribute to district disorientation. I classify them as acute and chronic.

ORIENTATION INFLUENCES

Acute, or short-term factors, include physiological circumstances including fatigue, lack of sleep, and other preoccupations (such as home-related issues). Short-term factors are subjective and can typically be addressed by rest, food, or counseling. Short-term issues, however, do not equate to insignificant influence. These conditions may interfere with spur-of-the-moment critical thinking and contribute to mental blocks that preclude rudimentary thinking. Acute factors can lessen mental awareness, and you may confuse what you think is the incident location with another address.

Chronic factors are long-term and often reside within the fire department’s cultural priorities. Training is the most prevalent chronic district disorientation category.

Training

How much of your DO or officer training is dedicated to district awareness (photo 1)? Driving fire apparatus must be practiced. Fire truck crashes are consistently the second leading cause of line-of-duty deaths. Driver training programs should include a comprehensive review of driving dynamics, forces, and operations. Additionally, the district disposition (see below) should be a part of DO training. This knowledge and the skill base needs should be instilled in new drivers and continually be reinforced for experienced drivers. Identify chronic factors and correct them.

(1) Photos by author.

DISPOSITION CATEGORIES

Jurisdictions are most commonly characterized as urban, suburban, or rural. Urban areas, such as cities and towns, are considered established communities. Generally, these areas are well developed with little potential to expand. Suburban communities are typically outlying parts or areas adjacent to a city or town. Stereotypical visions include single-family housing developments, shopping centers, and more open spaces. Rural is stereotyped as sparsely populated outlying agricultural areas.

Although jurisdictions can be categorized by population density, size, and the infrastructure elements in place, dispositions are not always black and white. Some areas are mixed, and others are experiencing rapid growth even during the current economic climate. Residential developments are replacing farm fields and rolling hills (photo 2), commercial centers, industrial complexes, and highways. These once “country” settings are becoming “rurban”—a label for a mixed district and the transition stage from the stereotypical rural setting to a suburban bedroom community or bustling urban area. Growth can be gradual and can take decades. Conversely, it may take only a few short years for infrastructure development to support rapid growth, drastically changing the skyline.

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COMMON GROWTH ELEMENT

Growth increases the demands on the fire service and creates new challenges—new business and industry that present new hazards that must be identified and prepared for. If you do not remain current on community changes, you can expect to fail. Therefore, preincident preparedness and district intelligence processing are imperative.

With the myriad of challenges that can arise, a common result is the construction of new roads. Remembering every road, block division, and other boundary element is difficult. Often, this essential competency is not required or mastered, and it is not a part of a fire department’s internal training program. District awareness, however, is an important concept to grasp and reinforce.

Sometimes disorientation is influenced by entities outside of the fire department. Developers often create complex developments as space constraints and environmental concerns influence design and arrangement. Some complexes, especially residential developments, yield cul-de-sacs, run-on roads, and limited access through-ways. Not only can the physical arrangement be difficult to recognize, but so can the assigned road names.

Some development planners base a development around a theme. Road names in themed developments are often similarly named or based on a subject or share other associations such as types of trees, flowers, and royalty titles. A residential complex in my area is the Hempfield Green Development. This asymmetrical development includes road names such as Glenridge, Glengreen, Greentree, Greenbriar, and Greenridge (photo 3). Without comprehensive knowledge of access, layout, and intersections, a wrong turn is inevitable.

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In another development, all road names are based on bird types, including Cardinal, Bluebird, Robin, Chickadee, Partridge, Pheasant, Chukar, and Hummingbird. In yet in another development, the roads are all female names. The play on names can make it difficult to recognize arrangement, especially when the names are similar. A scorecard of sorts is necessary to identify intersections and other access considerations.

ORIENTATION MEDIUMS

Even the most experienced DOs and ORFS encounter memory lapses. Did you ever ask yourself, “Where the heck is that?” after a dispatch? Sometimes, dispatches to atypical areas will result in unfamiliarity. To overcome incident location disorientation whether caused by acute or chronic factors, you must develop tools, make them available, train on them, and use them.

Some fire departments maintain hard-copy forms and lists of district elements. Often stored in ring binders or a catalog-type rack, these mediums, while effective, can be cumbersome and difficult to maintain. In this age of technology, some departments maintain apparatus-borne computers (photo 4) equipped with maps and geographic positioning system (GPS) tracking. These are tremendous assets if the fire department can obtain and support them. However, it is important to remember that there are no absolutes. Murphy’s Law often makes an appearance at the most inopportune times. The time you really need to locate an address on a computer will be the time the “failure to initialize program” pop-up window or other malfunction message will be revealed. Now what?

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Often, when I visit a fire station, members are eager to present their equipment. They boast about their apparatus, equipment, and state of readiness, of which they should be proud. As I view the cab interior, the officer seat area in particular, my disheartening observation in some cases is that no district information mediums are available. This is a critical deficiency and can influence incident decision making.

TOOL REDUNDANCY

Redundancy is key with any preparedness element. To accomplish certain fireground tasks, apparatus are typically equipped with more than one tool. Although some alternative tools are considered “old school,” they work. If the state-of-the-art ventilation saw breaks, what now? Get the ax. “Old school” tools may be laborious, but you should consider, practice, and apply the same redundant concept to district data carried on the fire truck as you do to firefighting.

ORIENTATION EXAMPLES 

Eden Fire Company No. 1 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, protects a first-due area of approximately eight square miles (photo 5) with nearly 15,000 residents. This relatively small suburban and abstract district houses dozens of roads, many located in nonuniform residential developments with cul-de-sacs, short streets, and run-on roads. Undeveloped areas in the district are continuously being excavated for new residential and business projects, resulting in new road names.

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For nearly 30 years, Eden has employed a hard-copy street index. Even after the acquisition of laptop computers equipped with county-developed Geographical Information System (GIS) data, the manual paper system is still used. It is often referenced for convenience and sometimes because of untimely laptop computer start-up processes.

Each Eden apparatus is equipped with a comprehensive alphabetical street index. There is a description for each road of the most direct response route (Figure 1). The directions are formatted from the perspective of responding from the station and include how and where to turn. The left column provides benchmarks, such as stop sign locations, traffic signals, and intersecting roads. This section includes a municipal abbreviation (MT and ELT), as Eden covers portions of two different municipalities. It is further enhanced to incorporate coordinate references with data in a commercial map book.

Figure 1. Eden Fire Department Street Index

The commercial map book is commonly used by most emergency service agencies in the county. Few of the county’s 80 independent fire companies have laptop computers, but most maintain commercial map book copies. Mutual- or automatic-aid companies not familiar with a location are immediately given the corresponding commercial coordinates. Researching the commercial book and noting the map page on the hard-copy street index ahead of time eliminate the need to research when seconds count. This reduces radio traffic and eliminates the need for the incident commander to give step-by-step directions for response routes.

Eden further uses the street index to interface with its other district intelligence mediums (photo 6). The middle column provides a corresponding development/area/complex name and cross-street information. This is helpful to “jog” the memory to determine the location of a street. For some complexes or properties, other criteria such as apartment building numbers are noted. The third column provides geographical and corresponding map references, including supporting floor plans and site and detail maps. This eliminates another research step. A spare copy of the street index and supporting intelligence mediums are maintained at the station for use by cover companies.

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Other cost-effective tools can be developed. One example is the index card catalog system used by the county’s Quarryville Fire Company. Its first-due district encompasses 98 square miles, including the borough of Quarryville, and portions of six other municipalities. It protects the largest area in the county all from one station. Some distances are more than 10 miles one way. Response time from the station is nearly 15 minutes one way. With that large of an area, it is difficult, if not impossible, to remember every road, turn, and block division.

To overcome this potential response obstacle, the department developed an index card system (photo 7). The system uses index cards organized by municipality. Each road is detailed, including the area or development in which it is located. Each of the department’s apparatus is equipped with an index card system for reference. The department also maintains street references for many automatic- and mutual-aid locations. Both the Eden and Quarryville examples are effective and yield tremendous benefits. They are easy to develop and are cost effective, especially for fiscally challenged departments.

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CHALLENGES

There are pros and cons to electronic and paper formats. Electronic mediums are susceptible to “bugs,” preventing efficient use. Typing on a laptop keypad while the fire truck is in motion can also be challenging. Paper formats may be harder to update, and it may be difficult to ensure that replacement sheets have been recycled. Accuracy is another consideration. Just like hard-copy information, electronic databases are only as accurate and as effective as their last update. There are instances where electronic data have not yet captured new information. Maintaining a redundant and supporting paper medium is beneficial. Newly identified protection elements can be included on paper forms until electronic mediums have been updated.

District disorientation can be a catalyst for disastrous results. Any organization can apply the simple mechanisms described in this article. The infamous Francis L. Brannigan always stressed that we should know our buildings. That same logic applies to this concept: Know your district orientation.

ERIC G. BACHMAN, CFPS, a 29-year veteran of the fire service, is former chief of the Eden Volunteer Fire/Rescue Department in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He is the hazardous materials administrator for the County of Lancaster Emergency Management Agency and serves on the Local Emergency Planning Committee of Lancaster County. He is registered with the National Board on Fire Service Professional Qualifications as a fire officer IV, fire instructor III, hazardous materials technician, and hazardous materials incident commander. He has an associate degree in fire science and professional certification in emergency management through the state of Pennsylvania. He is also a volunteer firefighter with the West Hempfield (PA) Fire & Rescue Co.