BY BOBBY HALTON
Because the fireground is a very dangerous work environment, we are continuously focused on how to reduce its dangers and the deaths and injuries associated with them. We see this same focus in our most valued institutions. The National Fire Academy has been charged with reducing firefighter injuries and deaths as its core mission.
At FDIC we have class after class that addresses how we can do our work without losing anyone or getting anyone hurt. We have created mottos and designed monuments to help us remember the sacrifices others have made. We will always honor these heroes. We remember their deeds and recount the events that claimed their lives while revering their memories. We must analyze the events for what they saw, felt, thought, and did before they died. They are memorialized for how they lived, not how they died.
I look forward to the next Life Safety Initiative meeting. However, I will always believe that the most important thing you can say or put on your helmet is “Train every day so that everybody goes home.” That says it all. This slogan reminds us not only that we are our brothers’ keepers but also that we are responsible for ourselves. It reminds us that we have to keep working at being ready, totally ready every day. It also reminds us that, unfortunately, even when everything is done right and everyone does his job, in our business, not everyone goes home all the time.
Where do we go from here? I was reminded by a friend recently that Fire Engineering needed to be “about the ‘everyday Joe Firefighter’-about our needs and to keep the focus on keeping safe and teaching/reinforcing the basics of doing our jobs.” It made me remember what my mentor said, “If you want to know how the team is going to do at the big one, look at how it is doing right now at the “everyday basic stuff.” Two good friends, both with great advice.
Today, there is no true science to explain what real firefighting is. Simply put, the world and almost everything including the fireground can be messy, unpredictable, and chaotic. I see it this way in highly dynamic environments like firefighting: We function on a fine boundary, sometimes referred to as a “critical boundary,” which holds together as long as everything and everyone functions in somewhat predictable, if not unnatural, ways. One of the characteristics of the fireground is that a small change in one of the conditions, often too small to notice, can lead to radically different results.
Think about it like this: At many intersections, thousands of cars a day stream through; eventually two or three hit and people die. Take that to the fireground: Every day we mess with energized buildings and water; every day we enter extremely charged disorienting and dynamic environments; sometimes we lose orientation for a second and recover; some days we get lost and die.
We should take inspiration from another group of Americans whose job routinely places them on critical boundaries, our astronauts. This group also believes that “to train every day so that everyone goes home” makes perfect sense. After Challenger exploded, NASA exhaustively researched all of the details of that event. Then, Columbia disintegrated on reentry. Such accidents are inherent to working in that environment. NASA probably now knows everything there is to know about these two accidents; unfortunately, that will not stop the third mishap.
After the Columbia tragedy, a Lockheed employee, Dan Canin, wrote the following e-mail. He said, “Every precaution and material science known to man has been applied to the problem of making the thermal protection system work. It is a known risk. The tiles are soft, and every astronaut knows that if the wrong ones are damaged, the shuttle burns up. But the odds against it are pretty good, especially when compared with the rewards of being an astronaut. So, they are willing to take the chance. In fact, they fight for it-as a lot of us would. But getting the public to buy this is a lot tougher, especially a public that expects every risk in their lives to be [mitigated] to zero. It will be interesting to see if NASA tries to take on this challenge, explaining to the public that doing bold things is not about an engineering risk to zero. [Stuff] happens, and if we just want to restrict ourselves to things where [stuff] can’t happen, we’re not going to do anything very interesting.”
So, should we just pack it in and run amuck freelancing with reckless abandon at every fire? No. But let’s also start getting involved in the standards process rather than living with standards that have been developed never anticipating dynamic operations along critical boundaries. Let’s stop exposing what we know is impossible in regard to firefighter injuries and fatalities. We will reduce injuries and deaths, but totally eliminating those risks is, unfortunately, impossible.
Like astronauts, we have to work along critical boundaries. Like astronauts, we accept the risks because the rewards are so great. We celebrate the lives of those who fall, because we know every possible safety tool and every piece of relevant training was applied and practiced every day. We celebrate their lives because we know how hard they worked to ensure their own safety and survivability.
