BY T.J. STECK
How many times have you told your fellow firefighters, “Don’t ever go in that building if it’s on fire”? Why do we say that? Is there something in there we can see that no one else can? For years, we have trained ourselves and our fellow firefighters to watch the collapse zones and look for signs of backdraft, but do we really have a grasp on hazard identification?
 Photo 1. Photos by Author |
I don’t need to tell you how backdraft and hostile situations can kill us (we can all figure that out); this is a hazardous profession and some of these situations are completely unavoidable. I just want to expand the playing field a little and show you the real everyday hazards that occur right under our noses. For example, look at photo 1 and identify any potential hazards at this single-family dwelling. We’ll return to photo 1 after the following story.
When I was in EMT training many years ago, I rode along with a local city ambulance for experience. During this ride, I shadowed a strange paramedic that played “Ninja Turtle” while walking up to every incident. Each tree and fence we passed was a new threat for his paranoid response mode. Every call was a new experience in checking the house before entering. At the time, I thought this guy was crazy. But as I grew throughout my career, I appreciated what he was trying to teach me. Things aren’t always what they seem. Obviously this not-so-crazy paramedic had experienced a hazardous situation that he will never forget. Maybe it was an assault or a gunman lurking in the bushes (see photos 1 and 2), but something once caught him off guard. Look back at the photo 1 now and try to identify any other hazards. See any more?
 Photo 2. |
I’m no stranger to “tunnel vision,” but I can now say that I agree with that looney medic, knowing that “things aren’t always how they seem.” How many of us can honestly say that we don’t go straight to the seat of the fire without doing a thorough size-up or that we actually checked for a gun or knife before we tended to the unknown, unconscious victim? These hidden, unpredictable situations are the avoidable types of hazards that are killing today’s firefighters.
Let’s consider three different levels of hazard severity.
- Delayed threats to firefighters are those hazards that provide some potential level of danger and may result in serious injury or death but probably won’t. These delayed threats will, however, create some kind of kink in the system.
 Photo 3. |
Consider a working fire on a street with parked cars. One of the cars is parked too close to the nearest hy-drant, making it in-accessible to first-due engines. Where can you find a water supply? Did you look for alternate hydrants on the way in? Preplanning situations and continually sizing up the incident when leaving the fire station help you identify the not-so-obvious hazards that could easily affect the incident’s outcome.
Another example is a hole in the yard that results in a sprained or broken ankle. It may affect the incident only slightly but later will affect staffing. These situations can be strong warning signs for the other, more dangerous hazards we may encounter. Pointing out possible delayed threats during the day can train your mind to not only avoid these nuisance hazards but also to point out the big one-the immediate threat-that could be the last hazard you encounter.
- Immediate hazards are those that are present. Imagine yourself responding to a number of different emergencies throughout a normal Saturday. You begin the day by checking the apparatus. As you dig through the medical packs used on last night’s run, you realize that a used needle is floating around the bottom of the bag. Because nobody wants to experience that horrible uncertainty of a needle prick, your instinct to watch for this immediate threat saved you.
- Calculated risks involve situations in which you proceed after sizing up potential risks and determining that the risks are manageable. Soon after breakfast, you’re called to the house of a local couple who is well-known for their fights when the husband comes home drunk. After arriving with the cops, you discover that the husband is repairing a radio that was broken during the fight the night before. After you are told that there are no guns or knives on the husband or in the area, it seems obvious that things have settled down and you can start tending to the wife’s injuries. Suddenly, a piercing pain rips through your back. Cops subdue the husband, and you’re on your way to the hospital for emergency surgery.
Your instincts told you to check for guns and knives, but you didn’t consider that the screwdrivers on the table might be weapons. The lesson in this scenario is the fact that on entering the residence, you were motivated to help the person in need after checking for the obvious weapons. All the while, you overlooked potential weapons within the reach of these folks who were irritated by your presence.
For those out there who are saying, “I would have noticed the tools on the table,” then you would have moved on to level three and would have decided to take a calculated risk to enter the house with those potential weapons still there. This calculated risk is somewhat predictable because you weighed the possible outcomes of the situation and acted based on the hazard severity. Ultimately, all situations can be classified in the calculated risk category.
The outcome of any incident should be based on your incident size-up. If you make a poor size-up and don’t take the time to use the information, the incident’s outcome will be unpredictable and possibly negative. A thorough size-up will mean a more calculated risk, resulting in a reduced level of unpredictability.
Fireground hazards are some of the most obvious and deadliest ones you will encounter. After all, 55 percent of all fire service injuries occur at the scene of an incident. Many can be avoided just by watching out for the obvious hazards. Potential collapse indicators [e.g., cracking mortar and weakened structural components (see photo 3)] tell you to operate out of the collapse zone. Snakelike flames and intense, low heat tell you to cool the room and vent so you can get out before it flashes over. You know this information pretty well.
At some point, you have to go beyond the normal thinking pattern and point out some hazards that you do not regularly experience but that could happen, because someday they will happen. A thorough incident size-up will answer many of your questions before you even enter the property. By stopping at an incident and taking a quick “time out” to look around, not just for victims or fire but for potential hazards, you can eliminate many dangers. This is “looking through the fire,” a perfect opportunity to look where the fire will spread, consider your environment (wind, temperature, etc.), and ask yourself a few questions: Why is the fire spreading that way? Does it look like it originated in that room? Does the basement smoke mean structural floor damage? Or, why is that guy hiding behind that tree? By identifying these early foreshadowing events, you can start a lookout for potential problems. If you train yourself and your partners to always have a lookout no matter how minor the situation, then, when that lookout is really needed, it will already be in place. Identifying potential fireground hazards before they become real hazards can only help make the incident safer.
Preincident planning is supposed to provide accurate information about a certain building or operation. How many of us actually read the preplans? Yeah, the preplan book comes out if something goes bad; until then, it’s only mistaken for the map book on the way.
A preplan is an excellent tool if the right information is included. Of course, it should always provide useful information regarding the utilities, construction, occupancy, etc. Maybe a little “gossip” on the plan would help encourage you to use it. Imagine how important it is to know that a vacant building is used by kids as a skate park after midnight or that an old grocery store has a lot of kids loitering after school. Such “gossip” might just help you to “look through the fire.”
With or without a preincident fire plan, some common firefighting concepts can mitigate devastating hazards that may occur and help to limit the loss of life:
- Rescue takes priority when staffing is insufficient to effect rescue and extinguishment simultaneously.
- Remove those in greatest danger first.
- Perform the tasks that protect the greatest number of lives first when staffing is insufficient to perform all needed tasks.
- Don’t unduly endanger firefighters’ lives when there is no threat to occupants or the general public.
Life is hazardous, and becoming a firefighter makes it even more so. Every time we turn around, some new hazard has jumped onboard, and we have to be ready for it. By taking a moment to stand back and look at the entire picture, you can study the hazard and take a calculated risk in responding. Sometimes the outcome will be negative-that’s the monster-but with a little more time and research, you will eliminate the unpredictable.
I challenge you to travel throughout your coverage area during a typical day and look beyond the structures. Look at the property surroundings; at the normal activity of the occupants; and, ultimately, for hidden hazards you can’t see at 0200 hours. Pretty soon, it will become habit to point out situations that can be added to the gossip board-I mean preplan, of course.
T.J. STECK is an 11-year veteran of the Elizabeth (CO) Fire District and a division chief in charge of fire prevention and training. He has taught firefighters in a four-state region through the Colorado Firefighters Academy.
