Skip to content

Archives for injuries

See all posts in the network tagged with injuries

FIRE Act; Time to Cut and Run?

No comments

After reading Mike Ward’s latest blog and an article that he highlighted (http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/upload/wm_2499.pdf), the little guy in my head got busy.

 

First of all, I am one of those who have felt strongly that fire departments should be a local issue. I have never held that local fire departments should be subsidized by the federal government because as we have seen with the “stimulus” money, the money comes with strings attached.

 

But, like so many others, I feel that, if my tax dollars are going to pay for someone else’s fire department, then I might as well be one of those other fire departments.

 

When FIRE Act first hit the scene in 2001, I honestly thought that our most destitute departments would be getting money.

 

Then, when I read down the names of successful fire departments, it read like a “who’s who”. Many names did not strike me as “destitute”.

 

I inquired and was told that it was a “competitive” grant. Oh, so if I can find the winning combination of data and blah-blah, I could ‘win’ a grant?

 

So far, we have only been successful in 2007. The funny thing is that we were awarded a grant for (12) SCBAs. Last year, we applied for the air compressor to fill them and were rejected. It doesn’t make any sense, but I digress.

 

Again, though I feel that funding should be a local issue, I have to take exception to Muhlhausen’s reasoning for discontinuing the program.

 

It is his contention that the program be ended because it has not reduced civilian and firefighter injuries or deaths. That isn’t exactly true and it would depend on whose data you use.

 

I found a study at the FEMA website that captures this information. NFPA and NIOSH are slightly different with their totals.

 

Muhlhausen might have a valid point were it not for the fact that heart attacks have been and continues to be the #1 killer of firefighters. From 2001 – 2007, heart attacks accounted for 48% of all firefighter fatalities.

 

Let’s compare 2001-the first year of the Act-to 2007.

 

In 2001, there were 1,734,500 fires; 3,745 civilian deaths; 20,300 civilian injuries; $10.5 billion in property losses; 105 firefighter deaths and 41,395 firefighter injuries. Note that 2001 doesn’t reflect the events of the 9/11 attacks.

 

In 2007, there were 1,557,500 fires; 3,430 civilian deaths; 17,675 civilian injuries; $14.6 billion in property losses; 118 firefighter deaths and 38,340 firefighter injuries.

 

If you average the years (2001 – 2006), you would see that: prior to 2007, we averaged 1,633,583 fires; 3,645 civilian deaths; 18,175 civilian injuries; $10.8 billion in property losses; 110 firefighter deaths and 40,057 firefighter injuries.

 

In 2007, by category, there was a 5% decrease in the number of fires; 6% decrease in civilian deaths; 3% decrease in civilian injuries; 26% increase in property losses; 7% increase in firefighter deaths and 4% decrease in firefighter injuries.

 

So, Muhlhausen’s conclusion that the FIRE Act program has not reduced fire casualties is not accurate and is not consistent with the program’s original, stated purpose.

 

In addition, Muhlhausen’s conclusion that the FIRE Act program is ineffective is flawed, because, clearly, he hasn’t spoken to the departments who have gotten the grant.

 

Though I don’t believe that the program is ineffective, it is certainly somewhat frustrating because you are not provided with an explanation as to why your grant application was denied. Were we to know that, it would enhance our chances of writing a more compelling grant and improve our chances of being successful.

 

What is clear after you read Muhlhausen’s article is that you cannot rest a decision to discontinue the program upon numbers alone.

 

How is it that you can look at FIRE Act and see the difference that it has made to local fire departments and believe that the money given to banks, insurance companies and car companies will make them more “effective”?

 

Don’t be ridiculous!

 

TCSS.

Art

 

The article as submitted is published under The Adventures of Jake and Vinnie© umbrella and is the intellectual property of Art Goodrich a.k.a. xchief22 and ChiefReason. It is protected by federal copyright laws and cannot be re-printed in any form without expressed permission from the author. You may read other works by the author at www.chiefreasonart.com

Posted by chiefreason on July 6, 2009 • Filed under: My Size Up • Tagged: , , , ,

Is It Complacency or Lack of Work?

No comments

Shannon Pieper’s blog on complacency http://www.firefighternation.com/profiles/blogs/routley-at-egh-summit got the little guy in my head excited. He had me googling all kinds of articles on complacency, statistical data and anything else that might have me whirling around in a frenzy of legal paper, pen and alternative metal music.

 

I found several perspectives on complacency, its causes, its cures and in a wide venue.

 

One theory that is out there, according to David W. Folk is that: occasionally, there is a level of complacency present prior to the occurrence of a serious accident. Then, during a span of time following an accident, complacency will eventually return accident prevention efforts to pre-accident levels.

 

The fire service has built strong training programs that require the tasks to be done over and over again to produce the mastered skills.

 

Folk also states in “The Workplace Complacency Trend in Accident Prevention”: However; when we perform tasks repetitiously, there is a tendency to become bored or complacent and we begin to perform them almost subconsciously. In an accident prevention program, a repetitious task has the tendency to create a lack of interest and complacency.

 

In other words; as we learn the safe way to perform repetitious and dangerous tasks, we are already growing complacent.

 

Before we go further, let me define “complacency” with the help of Dictionary.com. Complacency is “the feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.”

 

Keep this definition handy, as it will be central to the focus of this blog.

 

Are we growing complacency in our young recruits?

 

Earlier I mentioned repetition as a cause of complacency. That is, of course, if some departments are actually training. Are we training at a level that will fill the gap between what we learn and our call volume? That is; with departments that have less than a couple of calls a week (lack of work), are their training programs bridging to preparedness?

 

We’ll come back to that as we look at a “lack of work” as a cause of serious accidents with our firefighters.

 

Getting back to our young recruits; I was amazed at the number of articles that suggested that technology provided by parents was causing complacency in the next generation.

 

Tim O’Dell stated in “Are We Creating A Complacent Generation” that: My children have a television, a PC, DVD players and music centers in each of their bedrooms. At their age, I only had a television and record deck, which the whole family shared. So, why do my children need to struggle to get anything?

 

Let’s face it; that describes a pretty universal picture doesn’t it?

 

He continues: It is inevitable that young people today have Life easier than their parents and I believe the next generation will have it easier again. In this type of climate, complacency is bound to set in and young people will be inclined to sit back and let the world look after itself.”

 

This raises two thoughts in my mind: (1) Insert “young recruits” for “young people” and “officers/instructors” for “parents” and you have an interesting analogy and (2) Are we missing an important psychological indicator for their future behavior that is through no fault of their own?

 

O’Dell concludes: …modern living is creating a complacent generation, but I also think we need to accept some of the blame. As parents, we need to instill the need for hard work into our children, teach them that the good things in Life need to be striven for. If we don’t, then they will simply sit back and wait for things to happen. Is it really the attitude we want to nurture in future generations?

 

I don’t know if his last thought is profound, but it’s damned close. I also know that some of us raised our children to work hard and to strive for the good things in Life.

 

But, going forward, can you look at recruits as we always have or as O’Dell describes our future generation?

 

Drew Price, on the same question states: …our society is partly to blame for creating a somewhat complacent generation. We eventually destroy our children’s intrinsic value of learning, replacing it with a set of values that revolves around rewards and punishment. As students progress through school, they gradually become less enthusiastic about learning, because they are no longer learning for the sake of learning; they are learning to receive grades, to satisfy Mom and Dad, to satisfy teachers, but the intrinsic value no longer remains. Instead, students act to either earn a reward or avoid a punishment.

 

Think about that last statement.

 

How is our training structured? Are recruits receiving too much “clinical” training and not enough “street smarts” and are we expecting classroom training to translate into street smarts and punishing them if it doesn’t?

 

Fast forward to the NOW!

 

If this underlying, undetected complacency hasn’t been discovered and addressed in the early stages of our firefighters’ evolvement, then is it any wonder that we are seeing more injuries and no significant drop in LODDs?

 

Is complacency being cultivated somewhere between our training and our call volume or a lack of it?

 

If our training is not filling the gap between it and low call volume (Lack of Work), then the fire-ground discipline will break into complacency when there is a call.

 

I will end with words from my friend, Paul Grimwood: Systemic Failure: Various tactical and command failings have directly evolved from a triangle of complacency that is rife throughout the Fire Service. The result has been catastrophic system failure in numerous situations that have ended in tragedy. This issue is at the very root of the vast majority of traumatic fire-ground deaths and injuries amongst firefighters.

1. Lack of firefighting experience

2. Inadequate firefighter and command training

3. Complacency (Lack of discipline)

 

So; would you all at least think about it?

 

TCSS.

Art

 

The article as submitted is published under The Adventures of Jake and Vinnie© umbrella and is the intellectual property of Art Goodrich a.k.a. xchief22 and ChiefReason. It is protected by federal copyright laws and cannot be re-printed in any form without expressed permission from the author.

Posted by chiefreason on March 11, 2009 • Filed under: My Size Up • Tagged: , , ,

Can We Put Risk Out of Business?

No comments

In the NIOSH Alert Preventing Deaths and Injuries of Firefighters When Fighting Fires in Unoccupied Structures (http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/review/public/141/pdfs/DraftAlertUnoccupiedStructures.pdf), there are several references made to risk assessment, developing and enforcing risk management plans and then training the firefighters, safety officers and incident commanders to the plan.

 

This is accomplished by creating SOPs/SOGs specific to risk management.

 

What I want to point out straight off the git go is that every incident is going to be different in some ways, but your process for assessing risk should be the same every time. It is not one of those “if you don’t see this, then skip steps 3 and 4”. No; you should measure risk the same way every time and THAT, along with a proper size up will determine your tactics.

 

In Paul Grimwood’s latest book, Euro Firefighter, he discusses risk management at length.

 

I believe that it is by design that it appears in the very beginning of the book to underscore its importance to a successful outcome.

 

A clear distinction is drawn between what is a size up and what is risk assessment, because they are NOT one and the same.

 

According to Grimwood: The purpose of size up is to efficiently deploy my forces to achieve life and property protection and to have sufficient resources on-scene.

 

The purpose of risk assessment is to establish the level and types of exposure to risk that personnel may encounter and to decide how these hazards might be managed, controlled, prevented or ‘balanced against the potential for gains’.

 

When you look at common factors associated with firefighter deaths, is it any wonder that more focus and a sense of urgency is placed upon properly assessing risk?

 

When you place your people inside a structure with radios that don’t work, radios that might be on the wrong channel or worse, no radio at all, then you haven’t properly assessed risk.

 

If you have anyone at the incident and PASS devices have not been activated, then your risk management plan has failed, because training your department in the proper use and maintenance of their personal protective equipment is also a part of that plan.

 

When you think about the goal of the incident commander, it is to get the job done and get it done safely. Conversely, the goal of the safety officer is to do it safely and to still get the job done. Firefighters should be empowered to communicate any condition that compromises their safety.

 

Recently, I read an excellent article on risk assessment in Professional Safety magazine, a monthly magazine published by the American Society of Safety Engineers. The article was written by Jerry D. Loghry and Chad B. Veach.

 

What caught my attention was a part of the article that discussed “probability of loss”. It stated that probability is measured as the number of times in which a particular event can result from a certain activity, divided by the number of all outcomes occurring from that activity.

 

I realize that it is a mathematical calculation, but think about it. If we are looking for empirical data that will ease our conscience and help to flush the bitter taste from our mouths because we would not take unnecessary risks with an unoccupied structure, then “probability of loss” is it!

 

If it sounds too “theoretical”, then think about this; Loghry and Veach also state a more basic concept, which is: The more ways an event can occur in given circumstances, the greater the probability that it will occur…The frequency of previous event occurrences can indicate a strong probability of future recurrences.

 

Does that make sense; the frequency of injuries at vacant/unoccupied structures can predict a strong probability that it will happen again?

 

Let’s look at a study that was done at Flint, MI in 2007. From Grimwood’s Euro Firefighter: Out of 767 total structure fires dispatched, 443 resulted in a report of actual structure fire. The 443 structure fires involved 264 occupied structures and 179 vacant structures. Vacant structure fires represented 40% of the department’s structure fire call volume.

 

The department’s injury rate at vacant structure fires is more than TRIPLE the national average reported by the NFPA.

 

62% of the department’s fire-ground injuries occurred at vacant structure fires.

 

79% of the cost from fire-ground injuries resulted from fires at vacant structures.

 

93% of the cost of injuries at fires in vacant structures occurred in buildings that were unsecured when firefighters arrived.

 

Fire-ground operations produced (21) injuries at vacant buildings.

 

(13) injuries occurred during fires at occupied buildings-whilst most injuries were minor by nature, the potential for serious injury or LODD clearly exists.

 

If THAT doesn’t get your attention, I don’t know what will.

 

My conclusion? The NIOSH Alert Preventing Deaths and Injuries of Firefighters When Fighting Fires in Unoccupied Structures (http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/review/public/141/pdfs/DraftAlertUnoccupiedStructures.pdf) must be taken seriously by every fire department in our country.

 

Drawing up a risk assessment plan with detailed SOPs/SOGs should start NOW!

 

If you would like to comment to NIOSH about the alert, please go to http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/review/public/141/comments.html.

 

TCSS.

 

The article as submitted is published under The Adventures of Jake and Vinnie© umbrella and is the intellectual property of Art Goodrich a.k.a. xchief22 and ChiefReason. It is protected by federal copyright laws and cannot be re-printed in any form without expressed permission from the author. You may read other works by the author at www.chiefreasonart.com.

Posted by chiefreason on February 16, 2009 • Filed under: My Size Up • Tagged: , , ,