By Matt Holke,
Training Officer Orange County Fire Authority - California

The Orange County Fire Authority hosted a Firefighter Safety Conference in February 2009. Three hundred firefighters attended the conference and twenty six were trained as Courage to Be Safe (SM) instructors. Most in attendance were from the Orange County Fire Authority; however firefighters from nineteen other fire departments also participated.

All in all nearly 6000 firefighters were represented in this effort to reduce the number of firefighter injuries and deaths by changing the culture of the fire service.

Keynote speaker Paul LeSage, Assistant Chief of Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue, spoke about and demonstrated some real applications and ways to implement practices that relate to the 16 Life Safety Initiatives. Chief LeSage started with Life Safety Initiative #1 "Define and advocate the need for a cultural change within the fire service relating to safety; incorporating leadership, management, supervision, accountability and personal responsibility." A "just culture" was introduced and defined as an alternative where, mistakes are not the same as bad behavior and both are handled with a case by case process. A realization that not one right answer will solve everything and trust and honesty are the foundation and where subordinates are allowed to doubt, inquire, and update on situational changes. Another acronym introduced along with this subject was Probe, Alert, Challenge, and Emergency Intervention (PACE). In no way was it advocated that the boss is not in charge, nor that we should not continue to fight fire aggressively, but, the principles of Crew Resource Management and High Reliability Organizations may seem that way to the traditional fire service. While we trade accuracy for speed, there are ways to receive more input and observations that provide the incident commander ability to make informed decisions.

Relating to Life Safety Initiatives #2 and #9 we can change the traditional approach of incident investigations. Trying to identify a single, defining cause and to then hold someone responsible has consequently led to reluctance in reporting. We should analyze our systems, circumstances, education, training, and human factors. Avoid our desire to simplify the explanation, accept no easy answers, and look deep into root causes. Causes such as: were the consequences as intended, were procedures available, relevant, and correct, and were there deficiencies in training, selection, or experience. Acceptance of organizational practices as contributing factors must be looked at and dealt with. If after a complete and thorough investigation with all causal factors evaluated and a person or persons are at fault then they too must be given appropriate consequences.

Situational awareness is a common term, yet firefighters continue to be injured on the job. Life Safety Initiatives #3 and #4 are trying to combat this continuing problem. Chief LeSage laid out some real world ways to improve on situational awareness. As firefighters we trade speed for accuracy. As firefighters gain experience, we tend to use less classroom education and policies in our decisions. In trading speed for accuracy we make our decisions with the limited information we can gather and overlay that to other similar events. To improve on our safety we need to utilize both by using collective situational awareness (Crew Resource Management). Failure points to these events are rank structure, "can-do" attitude, time pressures, expertise and leadership, and layers of policy and procedures. These very things are the strengths of the fire service, but they can also be our weakness.

The story of our fire department is our culture. We may have a policy to wear our seatbelt whenever the apparatus is moving, but our story may be to get out of the station quick and finish dressing while inside a fast moving piece of fire apparatus. We may have a policy for two-in two-out unless a rescue exception is present, but we may expect everyone to go inside all of the time in any building. We may say every firefighter should speak up about unsafe acts, but our story is don't question your boss. What is your story? Everyone Goes Home®