Fire Chief

My previous post about the “death” of the 24-hour tour of duty for safety reasons provoked some good response — that‘s why writers write and bloggers blog. I write because I‘m passionate about the delivery of fire and emergency medical services and I feel it‘s important for us constantly to be working to connect the dots.

English poet and philosopher John Donne wrote, “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main….” The same holds true for the fire and emergency services in the United States. As the leaders of this noble and honored profession, we must constantly be scanning the environment and identifying those critical factors that will influence, for better or for worse, our organizations in the future.

Far too often, the fire service has had to react to external forces. Ponder this incomplete list of issues that many fire and EMS organizations took notice of and addressed only after litigation or regulation forced them to do so:

• Creation of employment or advancement opportunities for gender and racial minorities.




• Adoption and use of the Incident Command System.




• Elimination of the tailboard riding position and open-cab apparatus in favor of enclosed cabs with a seat and seatbelt for everyone.




• Requirement of post–high school education for promotion and advancement.




• Use of two in/two out and rapid intervention crews on emergency scenes.

This year‘s Safety Stand Down focused on members being fit to respond. Was the issue of sleep deprivation addressed? Several readers cited issues with people working multiple 24-hour shifts in succession or working multiple 24-hour shifts for several different organizations, eventually being “tired when they show up for duty.”

Don‘t those employees who are showing up too tired for work have supervisors? If so, why are these supervisors enabling such behavior? Why aren‘t they fulfilling their responsibilities to their other employees and to the public by allowing only those who are fit for duty to respond to fire and EMS calls? Probably for the same reasons that supervisors allow members to:

• Drive too fast.




• Respond to calls without wearing their seatbelts.




• Respond to calls without the proper protective clothing and equipment for the hazard.




• Engage in unsafe acts on the emergency scene without consequences. Is anyone else as shocked as I am by what I read at the Close Calls Web site?)




• Be overweight and physically out of shape

Research on sleep deprivation and its affect on worker performance is just as applicable to firefighters and EMTs as it is to the operator of a nuclear power facility. (The Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident happened at 1: 23 a.m. Other high-profile catastrophes that have been attributed to fatigue include the Exxon Valdez crash, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Bhopal and the Challenger explosion.

It has been estimated that approximately 90% of all industrial accidents can be attributed to fatigue and sleepiness. Direct and indirect costs of sleep-related problems are estimated to be between $100 billion and $300 billion annually, according to the National Commission on Sleep Disorders. Due to great human and economic costs involved, sleep deprivation urgently needs to be addressed.

The commission reported that decreased productivity and accidents in the workplace cost the nation $150 billion a year. Research shows that rotating shifts and sleep deprivation lead to mistakes, dips in attention, delayed reactions, accidents in the workplace, crashes on the roadways, reduced productivity and difficulties in communication.

The dots are out there. We just need to start connecting them before, once again, someone else does it for us.

For more information, read:

• Recognizing the Dangers of Sleep Deprivation




• Lack of sleep another safety risk factor




• Sleeping on the job




• The Sleep Well: A well full of information on sleep, sleep disorders, sleep activism, sleep-related events and much more