Fire Chief

By Dave Murphy

Safety has become the latest buzz word in the fire service. But should we expound on the virtues of safety and the cultural change it necessitates when, in actuality, not much has really changed?

In the fire service, there have been countless speeches given, classes taught, articles written, and presentations offered on safety all across these United States. Yet we continue to kill firefighters at the normal and predictable rate — which averages one every three days. Talk is cheap.

Most of us profess to be advocates of proactive safety, but do we really mean it? It is easy to talk the talk, but do we actually walk the walk? The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation drafted 16 common-sense life-safety initiatives that would have a significant positive impact in reducing firefighter injuries and fatalities if adopted, practiced and enforced at the departmental level. Have you read them? If so, do you plan to actually do anything proactive?

Take a look at some of the initiatives.

Define and advocate the need for a cultural change within the fire service relating to safety, incorporating leadership, management, supervision, accountability and personal responsibility. An incident scene will always be a dynamic place, but we can still be aggressive without being stupid. There is a safe way of operating at an incident without the macho, egomaniac image that we often promote.

At a recent FDSOA conference, Chief Kelvin Cochran said, “… [T]here is a very fine line between a medal of valor and a 30-day suspension.” It put many things in perspective for me. If an outcome is good, you’re a hero; if not, you most likely were hurt or killed or injured someone else. Does your department promote unnecessary risk-taking or allow freelancing? Do you routinely pin medals on your lucky idiots and belittle those who question stupidity?

Enhance the personal and organizational accountability for health and safety throughout the fire service. Everyone, regardless of rank, must be involved in the change process. Change is never easy and seldom is welcome. SOGs and SOPs should always put firefighter safety foremost. Do we hold our people accountable? Is anything done to those who do not follow the established protocols?

Focus greater attention on the integration of risk management with incident management at all levels, including strategic, tactical, and planning responsibilities. Who makes the rules in your department? Those who actually do the job or the upper brass who never get out of the air-conditioned Crown Vic at the scene? The entire membership must be included in the change process and allowed input in areas of importance. Firefighters create most of the problems, but they also hold most of the solutions.

All firefighters must be empowered to stop unsafe practices. The paramilitary organization of the fire service does not easily adapt or tolerate subordinate questioning in the heat of battle, but maybe it should, A four-person company with the freedom to speak up increases your potential visual and mental acuity and ultimately your decision-making capacity by 75%. Think about it.

Develop and implement national standards for training, qualifications, and certification (including regular recertification) that are equally applicable to all firefighters based on the duties they are expected to perform. The National Fire Protection Association standards are written by a diverse group of intelligent, experienced, well-intentioned professionals from many different perspectives. NFPA publications outline the minimum baseline qualifications essential to safety and efficiency in the ever-changing modern fire service. Do we use them? They apply to all departments, not just ones in the big city.

Develop and implement national medical and physical fitness standards that are equally applicable to all firefighters, based on the duties they are expected to perform. Look at what’s killing us. Pre-employment and annual medical/physical re-testing are absolute must. As the adage says, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The nature of the job will always require a fit work force. We must make the distinction between those who are able to perform and those who are not — end of story.

Create a national research agenda and data collection system that relates to the initiatives. Every national fire service agency that deals with firefighter safety issues should attend a U.S. Fire Administration–sponsored/funded annual summit where safety is the only focus. Committee assignments then could focus on specific areas and make subsequent recommendations. Don’t reinvent the wheel. If a specific safety intervention has worked for your fire department, it will most likely be of benefit elsewhere.

Use available technology wherever it can produce higher levels of health and safety. We should strive to fix what can be fixed before it hurts someone. It may be a simple as eliminating the water in the bay floor or adding a ladder guard to the end of the rig. Search for possible injury-causing mechanisms before they hurt someone. Technological advances occur almost daily that can affect firefighter safety. Assign some of your younger recruits to investigating possible inclusion of these advances into our daily operations. A national task force (possibly arising from the USFA summit suggested above) should be formed to foster needed innovations through the federally funded National Science Foundation and other key research think tanks.

Thoroughly investigate all firefighter fatalities, injuries and near misses. Let’s give NIOSH broad investigative authority and support it with adequate funding to quickly respond and investigate to every line-of-duty death. Most fire chiefs dread the thought of big brother being in their fire department, but NIOSH is there to help not hurt. The near-miss program is another valuable tool that is either ignored completely or isn’t mandated by fire chiefs, therefore is very limited in its usefulness. As my third-grade teacher aptly said, “only the guilty flee when not pursued.” Would you welcome these tools into your station?

Grant programs should support the implementation of safe practices and/or mandate safe practices as an eligibility requirement. Instead of handing out funding to those with the greatest political alliances, show us what you have done to improve your existing safety program and how money will further what you are already doing. We will never completely remove politics from a system that systematically hands out free money, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to apply for them.

National protocols for response to violent incidents should be developed and championed. The world is changing and will continue to change. Don’t wait till it happens to you. Anticipate your worst-case scenarios and act accordingly. Again, don’t reinvent the wheel. An existing standard can be tweaked to meet your specific needs.

Find a like-size department with well-written, proven SOGs to adapt to your department. An effective SOGs is the first piece of an effective risk-management puzzle. State what you will do, train for it, test for comprehension/documentation, and re-evaluate at least annually. Once adopted and trained on, your incident responses will standardized, resulting in a much safer and efficient outcome.

Each town, regardless of size, should strive to promote interoperability to affect an acceptable outcome before the actual event transpires. The inability to communicate and work together will make a terrible event much worse.

Firefighters and their families must have access to counseling and psychological support. Let’s take it a step further. Families should be contacted to explain the available services and possibly schedule an appointment. There are many positives that can be realized form this effort.

Public education must receive more resources and be championed as a critical fire and life-safety program. Very little of a typical fire department budget is applied to this proven life-saving activity. In the firehouse, members often complain about this type of duty and look down on those in prevention and education as lesser beings. It is often hard to measure what does not happen. But as Ronny Coleman once said, there is no honor in fighting a fire that could have been prevented.

Advocacy must be strengthened for the enforcement of codes and the installation of home fire sprinklers. We are most often our own worst enemy. It is not uncommon for firefighters to speak against sprinkers. But sprinklers in the home save lives, and there is no valid argument against them.

Safety must be a primary consideration in the design of apparatus and equipment. Engineering is always the best solution — let’s fix it before it breaks. Fire apparatus and apparel manufacturers exemplify this concept. Why? Fear of litigation. We should learn from them. The fire service is no longer exempt from liability. Why must we wait until we are sued to do something that should be done anyway?

I commend the NFFF on the drafting these common sense and achievable recommendations; however, they are merely words on paper if ignored by those who can actually affect cultural change.

What is missing from the initiatives? There is no mention of the importance of higher education. When is the last time you visited a doctor who did not have a diploma on the wall? To be viewed as a true professional, we must elevate the fire service requirements to what other professions have long mandated. But this alone is not enough. A well-rounded firefighter/fire officer will always require a mixture of common sense, actual experience, physical ability, training and education to be effective. Every fire department should strive to promote and provide the means necessary to obtaining and maintaining all of these essential elements.

Who do we expect to effect cultural change within the fire service? If we don’t reach the younger generation, the cycle of 100-plus annual LODDs will continue if not rise. Higher fire service education offers the greatest opportunity for us to change the current culture. Please make a valid attempt to follow these 16 initiatives – your department will be much safer if you do. I would also encourage you to support higher education; I am convinced they go hand in hand.

Dave Murphy retired as assistant chief of the Richmond (Ky.) Fire Department and is currently an associate professor in the fire safety engineering technology program at the University of North Carolina–Charlotte. Murphy is the eastern director of the Fire Department Safety Officers Association and also serves as the health and safety officer for the Harrisburg (N.C.) Fire Department.