Training Like the Astronauts

BY ANDREW BECK

When the nine firefighters in Charleston, South Carolina, lost their lives in the Sofa Super Store fire on June 18, 2007, everyone stopped and contemplated the largest loss of life in the American fire service since the 9/11 attacks. This loss of those nine firefighters prompted a number of reports that many firefighters and chiefs read closely to understand how that accident could have been prevented. The tragedy caused many in the American fire service to reevaluate their strategies, tactics, and response to many “routine” calls.

When the space shuttle Columbia broke up during reentry on February 1, 2003, it also became one of those defining moments in which everyone remembered where they were when they heard about it. The video images of the orbiter debris streaking across a blue sky were difficult to watch and spurred many to determine how that accident could have been prevented as well.

At first glance, you might not think that these two incidents have much in common, but there are certainly more similarities than differences between a fire company and the flight deck of the shuttle. In both situations, there is a small crew of people, one person is in charge, and all are working on a common task. Both crews are working in a time-compressed environment, and a mistake by anyone could doom the entire crew. Communication can be difficult or impeded by barriers. Interactions with a machine can cause a loss of situational awareness. There are clearly connections between the fire service and aviation. The National Firefighter Near Miss Program borrowed its format from the aviation industry, and although crew resource management may be new to us, the aviation industry has been using it since the 1970s. Using this system, the United States Coast Guard and Bell Helicopters have reduced pilot and flight crew injuries and errors by as much as 70 percent. 

COLUMBIA CREW SURVIVAL REPORT 

Like the reports after the Charleston accident, the recent release of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 400-page Columbia Crew Survival Report has some solid lessons for the fire service.¹ It discusses how the orbiter held up, how the crew’s equipment performed, where it ultimately ended up, as well as the crew and orbiter’s final moments. The report is one of the most detailed attempts undertaken in recent history to learn from an accident. The staff at NASA had an incredible amount of information through which to sift and all the while was reminded that they were reviewing an incident that claimed close friends and colleagues.

In preparing the report, among other things the NASA team looked at was the astronaut training program. In this intense program, a crew must be trained for a particular mission in only nine months. The training covers orbiter systems knowledge, mission tasks, and emergency procedures.

NASA looked at the training program to determine what could be done differently to prepare astronauts to work safely and survive an emergency. It was discovered that crew members were rarely trained on a flight scenario from which they could not recover. Since training time was limited and each shuttle system has a robust design with redundancy, it was felt that the likelihood of a complete failure was remote. Most flight simulator training involves scenarios with specific and recoverable solutions for the commander and pilot to recognize and execute. In a few isolated cases, the crew may end up in an unrecoverable scenario, but at that point, the simulator stops and the crew’s and the flight control team’s missteps are evaluated. Unfortunately, the opportunity for the crew to fully transition themselves into survival mode is often missed.

Crew egress training was conducted on a different day, in a different simulator. Astronauts would buckle into a shuttle mockup that had no flight simulation capabilities, and the instructor would then have them go through the motions of preparing for and executing an emergency procedure, such as a bailout. This involved little discussion about the decision and transition from solving the problem to bailing out. Crews became conditioned to solve the problem rather than to look at the big picture and begin to try to survive the situation. The connection between solving the problem and surviving it was never there.

In contrast, the pilots came from military backgrounds, where each aircraft has ejection parameters. Crews regularly train on these and must annually requalify on ejection knowledge, skills, and abilities throughout their career. They read like “if, then” statements, allowing the flight crews to know ahead of time when they must stop trying to fix the problem, and focus on survival.

The Columbia accident was 100-percent unsurvivable—there is nothing the crew could have done to survive this scenario. The next time might be different, however, and training might mean the difference between survival and death. NASA wants to learn from the mistakes as it moves into new and more advanced modes of space flight. 

MAYDAY PARAMETERS 

In the fire service, we teach firefighters to call a Mayday when they hit a Mayday parameter—e.g., they fall, they become entrapped or lost, or their low-air alarm activates. We put them in a maze, simulate Mayday situations, have them call a Mayday, and set off their personal alert safety system (PASS). Many times, this is it. They crawl out of the maze, and the training ends. On another day, in another training evolution, firefighters crawl in a room with limited visibility and practice search and interior attack. Many times, they never encounter a Mayday situation. That training is separate, and we do little to integrate the two.

See the similarities? It is little wonder that firefighters get stuck, use up their entire tank of air trying to free themselves, and never alert anyone else that they are in trouble. They were probably never trained on how to make that decision and call for help.

Our brains use a “tray of slides” to make decisions. Scientists refer to it as recognition-primed decision making (RPDM). When we are in a stressful situation, we quickly look to past experiences to try to find a solution. When we train, we frontload these slides in a firefighter’s head, so they can be pulled out later. The slides have to be pretty similar to the current situation, however, or the whole process falls apart. If our training is not accurate, then the skill we learned will most likely not be retrieved when it is needed most.

I spoke to a police officer who had been involved in a shooting, asking him what he remembered about the situation. He said that he did not remember making the decision to pull the trigger—he remembered just before and just after the shot. It is a good example of RPDM and a tribute to the realistic training in which he had participated. His brain recognized a situation and, in the midst of probably the biggest stress of his life, he found the appropriate slide and acted decisively.

When do you train for calling a Mayday? Do you do it on a different day in a different place, not where you carry out other interior firefighting training? If so, you might not be building the slides correctly. You need to integrate Mayday parameters into training that involves self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) or interior operations. If you do not, firefighters may not make the connection when it counts the most.

The National Fire Academy offers two courses addressing firefighter Mayday doctrine: Q133, Firefighter Safety: Calling the Mayday, a two-hour program covering the cognitive and affective learning domain of firefighter Mayday doctrine; and H134, Calling the Mayday: Hands-on Training for Firefighters, an eight-hour course that covers the psychomotor learning domain of firefighter Mayday doctrine. These materials are based on the military methodology used to develop and teach fighter pilots ejection doctrine. The United States Fire Administration Publications Office offers a free training CD to fire departments.^2,3

In 2005, Burton Clark of the National Fire Academy studied the feasibility of incorporating Mayday situations into live fire training and concluded, “It was determined that adding the Mayday situations during live fire and smoke evolutions in burn building (this cannot be done in acquired structures) with two dedicated instructors did not add any additional risk factors to the students. It must be remembered that these students were 100% competent and confident in their knowledge, skills, and abilities to call Mayday before being confronted with Mayday parameters under live fire conditions. Being confronted with a Mayday parameter during live fire must not be imposed on an untrained or unprepared firefighter, regardless of their years of experience, because the resulting stress may trigger an uncontrolled, incorrect, and possibly dangerous response.”⁴

Just as military flight crews must recertify their ejection training annually, firefighters need to recertify their Mayday training annually. Presently “… there are no national or state standards related to required continuing recertification of firefighters to ensure their continued Mayday competency throughout their career.”⁵

The space program has produced a number of spinoffs that we use in the fire service, including fire-retardant fabrics; as the shuttle program comes to a close, it’s a good time to look at all of them. The contributions from the Columbia Crew Survival Reportmight be one of the more important.

Fight like you train, and train like you fight. We have all heard it before, and it is true. NASA has learned the lesson, the aviation industry has learned the lesson, and now it is our turn. Make sure you train realistically every time. The training will involve more sweat, but the payback just may come when you need it most. 

Endnotes 

1. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report, (NASA/SP-2008-565), www.nasa.gov/pdf/298870main_SP-2008-565.pdf: 326 (text page 3-64), retrieved 11/2/10.

2. United States Fire Administration, Q133, Firefighter Safety: Calling the Mayday, http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/applications/nfacourses/catalog/details/517.

3. United States Fire Administration, H134, Calling the Mayday: Hands-on Training for Firefighters, http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/applications/nfacourses/catalog/details/537.

4. Personal interview with Dr. Burton Clark, September 22, 2010.

5. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Firefighter Fatality Investigation Report F2009-11, “Career Probationary Fire Fighter and Captain Die as a Result of Rapid Fire Progression in a Wind-Driven Residential Structure Fire – Texas.” April 8, 2010, www.cdc.gov/niosh/fire/pdfs/face200911.pdf.

ANDREW BECK is the training officer and a shift firefighter/EMT for the Mandan City (ND) Fire Department. He is an instructor for the Courage to Be Safe Program, provides presentations at the North Dakota State Fire School, and is trained in aviation crew resource management and flight physiology. Previously, he served as a wildland firefighter with the United States Forest Service and United States Fish and Wildlife Service.