Mourn the death of yet another young volunteer firefighter.

Extend your condolences to his family, friends and fire department.

Read the story about his last few minutes on this Earth (http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/topics/pennsylvania-department-mourns).

Then read the rather spirited discussion surrounding the details of his death (http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/topics/yeah-suredont-bother-wearing).

And when you are through with all of that, I want you to get upset and downright angry because; FIVE years after the nation’s fire departments were asked to take the seatbelt pledge by then Acting United States Fire Administrator Charlie Dickinson, firefighters are still dying from not wearing them.

From apparatus crashes to accidents in personally-owned vehicles (POVs) while enroot, the message is getting missed and it’s another missed opportunity to educate our firefighters on one of the most basic firefighter safety principles-the wearing of seat belts.

The National Seat Belt Pledge is very straight forward and states: “I pledge to wear my seat belt whenever I am riding in fire department vehicles or any moving vehicle. I further pledge to ensure that all firefighters riding with me wear their seat belts”.

How many times have we responded to a motor vehicle accident (MVA) and found life-less victims lying outside of the vehicle and on the ground, knowing full well that seat belts may have made a difference?

I responded to a call some years ago and found all FIVE family members ejected from their sport utility vehicle (SUV). Three of the five didn’t survive.

How can we stand in front of our citizens as public safety champions if we aren’t willing to practice what we preach?

We love going to school assemblies and “scaring” young adults into following safe practices; yet, we don’t do as we say? Hypocrisy comes to mind.

It’s not heroic to die imitating a human cannonball. It is senseless, because it is easily preventable.

There is no excuse-none, zip, nada; for not wearing your seat belt.

Don’t give me that crap about it won’t go around you with your gear on. They make seat belts to fit those of you who are “big boned”.

Dr. Burton Clark wrote a very good article after Firefighter Joe Torkos died from being ejected during an apparatus accident. He said: “…we cannot point a finger at anyone; we cannot put the blame on someone else or something else; so there are no headlines. Not using seat belts is our own fault; we have no excuses; we are the flaw”.

However; a quick Internet search on this subject will find a couple of interesting trends: (1) Families are suing fire departments for not enforcing their seat belt policy and (2) Officers are being criminally charged for not ensuring that their crew was seat belted at the time of their accident. Neither will bring back the deceased firefighter(s), but I think that it points to a growing frustration over not following a very basic safety principle.

So, what is your excuse?

Do you need to see a seat belt policy?

Here is one suggested by the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), the United States Fire Administration (USFA) and the National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC). It reads: “All personnel must be seated and belted whenever the vehicle (either department or personal) is in motion for department business. The driver and/or officer shall ensure by voice and personnel reply that seat belts are properly fastened. The driver will only proceed when it can be confirmed that all members are seated and belted. The only exception to the use of seat belts while a vehicle is in motion is a situation where a person is providing direct patient care (EMS) and there is no reasonable restraint system available. Utilize a progressive disciplinary system holding the violator and the supervisor responsible to ensure compliance with the seat belt policy, reflecting the serious and potential life-threatening consequences of failure to comply”.

Now that you have a policy…

ENFORCE IT!

TCSS.

The article is protected by federal copyright law under The Adventures of Jake and Vinnie© umbrella. It is written and submitted by Art Goodrich a.k.a. ChiefReason. This article or any other article submitted under The Adventures of Jake and Vinnie© umbrella cannot be reproduced in ANY form without the expressed, written permission of the author. Violations are punishable by applicable laws.

Please visit: www.fireemsblogs.com and my blog www.chiefreasonart.com.

The website article can be read here: http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/topics/niosh-investigation-report-26

I just finished reading the NIOSH report on the February 23, 2008 apparatus rollover that took the life of 33 year-old Shane Stewart of the Ault-Pierce, Colorado Fire Protection District. The NIOSH report can be read here: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/fire/reports/face200805.html.

The report states that Captain Shane Stewart died after being ejected from the cab and was then rolled over by the apparatus. He was declared dead from multiple traumatic injuries at the scene.

Though it is true that the failure to wear the seat belt was front and center stage in this report, it also raised an issue that I had not seen or even considered before I read this report. There was an issue with the cab compartment “layout”.

It appears that the driver of this unit could NOT reach the mobile radio unit from the drivers’ seat with the seatbelt on! If this were common knowledge, then the experienced driver might not bother to put the seatbelt on at all and the less experienced might attempt to unbelt while enroot to the scene, if he wanted to talk on the unit’s mobile radio. (It should be noted that investigators conducted several tests, using several different drivers to reach these conclusions.)

When going to an incident scene, an apparatus driver should just drive; right?

The second person in the cab should be operating the radio; right?

How many departments have ever called back to the station to request another rig, knowing that it would come with just a driver, even though your SOP may state “a minimum of two per unit” or whatever that minimum is?

A straight stretch of road in good weather conditions and travelling at approximately 45 mph in a tanker is NOT a recipe for an accident.

In this incident, it appears that things went terribly wrong when the driver attempted to reach towards the radio to change to the fire ground frequency.  Even with a hands-free system, changing channels would require the radio operator to reach.

So, the location of the mobile radio in the cab becomes very important.

Anything that distracts the driver from his primary duty of driving is cause for concern, but, as the sole occupant as in this case, you still need to communicate.

Could the driver have used Dispatch as a relay to the fire ground, which, in this case, was a medical call requesting a landing zone set up for a med-evac helicopter, instead of attempting to change channels while enroot?

I don’t have the answer for that.

Could the driver have used a portable radio with lapel mike instead of the mobile radio? I don’t know what type of radio system they have, so I can’t answer it.

Does driving and shifting gears with a floor-mounted shifter create a distraction that is different than driving and changing channels or even talking on a radio? The report would lead us to believe that a second person in the cab should handle all non-driving tasks.

So, if some believe that a driver should keep both hands on the steering wheels at all times, then all trucks will have to be built with automatic transmissions.

Would a hard-fast SOP that requires two persons minimum per rig be a solution? I would have to say “yes”, because, if you have a driver who is driving AND shifting gears; then add to that, the radio tasks, then I believe that the drivers’ focus would be diminished.

Would you locate the radio in closer proximity to the driver? Would you have it done professionally or would you do it yourselves to save money? Are you aware that even though you do the work that you must still be in compliance with NFPA 1901?

Would you consider hands-free, voice activated headsets with a radio frequency protocol that allows for apparatus drivers to communicate without switching channels while driving?

My final point is that we have to make sure that apparatus drivers are trained and tested at least twice a year in the apparatus that they will be expected to operate and done in accordance with NFPA 1002, 1451, 1500 and 1901.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration exempts the occupants of fire trucks and rescue vehicles from wearing seatbelts when moving and I believe that this goes back to the days when we could ride on the tailboards and in open cabs, so that law needs changed so that it parallels the many initiatives by our national organizations to get everyone to buckle up.

Everyone who spoke of Captain Shane Stewart said that he wore his seatbelt religiously. See news article here: http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20080223/NEWS/866066115.

He left behind a wife and two small children.

Let’s honor him and his family by learning from him.

TCSS.

This article is protected by federal copyright laws and cannot be reproduced in any form without the expressed permission of the author or his legal representative.

Please visit: www.fireemsblogs.com and my blog at: www.chiefreasonart.com.

May I take your order?

Firefighter: What is your special today?

Today, we are offering all you can risk. The price is a serious injury. If anyone else in your group gets a serious injury, your names will go into a drawing for a chance at a firefighter funeral; compliments of the house…that was gone before you got there!

Firefighter: Cool. Then, I’d like to start off with not wearing my seatbelt while en route to the scene. Can I substitute anything for that?

Yes; you can substitute entering a lightweight structure with heavy fire showing or driving apparatus through intersections without slowing down.

Firefighter: Do you have any recommendations?

Well; entering lightweight structures with heavy fire showing is very popular.

Firefighter: Can I get a radio that doesn’t work to go with that?

Yes, you can; but might I also recommend drinking alcohol and then responding?

Firefighter: I don’t know; I want to leave some room for dessert. Can you warm it up for me?

Absolutely. We will heat it to flashover.

Firefighter: Excellent. Can I get tunnel vision?

It is our specialty. Your dessert?

Firefighter: Can I have a heart attack?

You’ll have it in no time.

Please note that this monologue is dripping with a heavy dose of sarcasm, but is used to drive the point of this blog.

It would seem that our fire services’ “risk menu” continues to grow.

But, now more than ever, the fire service has taken steps to address unsafe behavior that results in taking “unnecessary risks”. Unsafe behavior that is not corrected in other occupations can get you fired for not following policies and procedures. In our profession, unsafe behavior can get you worse than unemployed; it can get you killed!

Is risk-taking unsafe behavior? If engineering, administrative or personal protection controls haven’t been taken, then yes; it is unsafe behavior.

If it gets to the level of knowing that a safe job analysis is required, but hasn’t been done, then everyone from the firefighter to the chief have failed to identify risks.

I posted a blog about building a risk assessment plan together and had a scant four (4) replies with recommendations contained in them. http://www.firefighternation.com/profiles/blogs/building-a-risk-assessment

We tell ourselves THAT isn’t going to happen to us…and then IT DOES!

With each firefighter death comes our outrage.

Another death; MORE outrage!

It is as if we are apathetic to protecting our personal safety.

When we lose another firefighter, we take the time to offer our condolences; as we should.

But, we should also take the time to take the initiative to CHANGE.

If you don’t have a clearly written process for safely executing your duties as a firefighter, then you haven’t been doing your job. You have simply been LUCKY!

Do you want to leave your LIFE in the hands of Murphy? Because, Murphy and his law will be there every time the tones drop.

Stop believing that there is no need to change our culture because it hasn’t happened to you.

Recognize the positives and the negatives.

Reward the positives and share its success.

But, fix the negatives, because THAT is what will get you hurt or worse; DEAD!

Would you like something from the menu?

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.

The following link is worth your time and is the subject of this blog.

http://www.iafc.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=306

Now; try to work through my sarcasm as you read this.

There is this novel idea being floated that WE, as firefighters, need to take some personal responsibility for our OWN safety. What a surprise!

What I am about to say has a target. Some of you might be offended by my remarks, because you have been one who has always been a champion for safety. So, enjoy this blog for its entertainment value then.

But for the rest of you; when did everything that happens to you become someone else’s fault?

When did it become someone else’s responsibility to watch over you?

When did you resolve that you weren’t accountable for your actions any longer?

Why are you a master at playing the “blame game”?

Why do you believe that the easy way out is the only way out?

And last; why aren’t you willing to grow up, step up, suck it up and get up off of your “C” sector and make the right decisions for YOU, instead of leaving your safety in the hands of someone uncaring, unqualified or indifferent to the whole idea that firefighting, despite inherent risks, can be done more safely?

I am not talking about sanitizing it to paralyzing proportions. I am talking about educating yourselves and integrating that seamlessly into your firefighting tasks. It really doesn’t take any longer to do a job safely as it does to take needless risks.

If you have learned about building construction and fire behavior, you are well ahead of the safety curve when dealing with a structural fire. Risk vs. benefit will be at the front of your thought process. You will be assisting your officers with making good decisions when deciding interior vs. exterior tactics and with that, you will be creating a culture that will insure to everyone that safety is the first priority. It isn’t safe if YOU say it isn’t safe. It will not be up for discussion or debate.

Getting to the scene isn’t half the battle; it is much more important than that. Not only should your personal safety be of the utmost importance, but also the safety of the other motorists; your customers. Operating the vehicle with due caution is the only option that you have if you are the apparatus driver. You cannot sit in the drivers’ seat and assume or predict what the other motorists are going to do. Therefore, you cannot drive with disregard for others who share the road and you have to remember the valuable “resources” that you are hauling to a scene.

If you are a passenger in said vehicle, then you’d better be belted in. There isn’t an excuse that is reasonable or acceptable for NOT wearing your seat belt. Aren’t we all getting tired and frustrated by reading “ejected from the vehicle”? How many more have to die before it sinks in that not wearing your seatbelt is a dangerous and unnecessary risk? Why should we have to rely on someone else to tell you to wear it? Why won’t you wear it, unless someone tells you to?

We talk about how foolish and stupid it was to ride the tailboard in days gone by, but yet; we don’t wear seatbelts, SCBAs or safety harnesses when we should. We have all kinds of reasons and lip service for not doing it, even though we know that it will save lives.

Chief BillyG was recently quoted in an article on the IAFC safety initiatives:

Deputy Chief Billy Goldfeder, chair of the IAFC’s Safety, Health and Survival (SHS) Section said, “While some firefighter injury and death cannot be avoided, so much of it can be, and it so often falls to each of us taking responsibility for ourselves and each other. A very critical factor in success is the role of fire officers and chiefs developing policy, providing training and enforcing the policy based on training to each and every member. The IAFC SHS Section proactively leads and supports any department, anywhere, in accomplishing these goals.”

I love Billy to death for his immeasurable contributions to the fire service, but when making that statement, he is thinking like a firefighter and not like a safety guy, because a safety guy will NOT accept less that ZERO for injuries or fatalities. You see; in my world of safety, accidents aren’t accidental; they are caused. When looking at the causes, you have to look at if they are preventable and if so, make the necessary changes to avoid repeating them.

I am also a realist. I have been a safety professional and a risk manager for 16 years. I was active in the fire service for 22 years. I know that we cannot be engaged in the types of activities that are required of us and NOT take a calculated risk which could end in some unintended results; injury being one of them. But then; that is why your basic risk vs. benefit is done in the first place. THAT will at least force you to consider the bad stuff before declaring your EAP.

So; though I am not a “Safety Sally”, I am an advocate for reducing unnecessary risks. We have to prevent the injuries that are preventable. Don’t wait for someone else to do that for you. Take ownership. Take responsibility. Take the time to do it as safely as possible under the circumstances or in spite of them.

Don’t find yourself lying in a hospital bed asking yourself, “How did I get to this point?”

TCSS.

Art

The article as submitted is protected by federal copyright under The Adventures of Jake and Vinnie© umbrella. It cannot be re-produced by any means without the expressed permission of Art Goodrich aka ChiefReason.

First Published 8/17/08

From the secretlist:

In the USFA’s 2007 study, it includes information on the hazards to firefighters and seatbelt use. In 2007, 27 Firefighter fatalities resulted from vehicle-related incidents. In 19 of the 27 incidents where seatbelt status was known, 11 Firefighters were confirmed as not wearing seatbelts at the time of the event.

Here is the USFA overview of the 118 Firefighters that died while on duty in 2007:
=68 volunteer Firefighters and 50 career Firefighters died while on duty.
=There were 7 Firefighter fatality incidents where 2 or more Firefighters were killed, claiming a total of 21 firefighters’ lives.
=11 Firefighters were killed during activities involving brush, grass, or wild land firefighting, the lowest in over a decade.
=Activities related to emergency incidents resulted in the deaths of 76 Firefighters.
=38 Firefighters engaging in activities at the scene of a fire.
=26 Firefighters responding to or returning from emergency incidents.
=11 Firefighters were engaged in training activities.
=15 Firefighters after the conclusion of their on-duty activity.
=Heart attacks were the most frequent cause of death for 2007, with 52 Firefighter deaths.

Here is a link to the USFA report: http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/fireservice/fatalities/statistics/report.shtm

Here is a link to the NFPA report: http://www.iaff.org/08News/PDF/NFPAReport.pdf

So; is anyone else surprised by the 2007 stats?

If you are, why? Have you been living in a cave? On a desert island? Or are you like most that just read about it, shrug and go about your business? Why should you care, as long as you aren’t a part of the statistics?

You don’t like it much when someone like me says “it’s a black eye on the entire national fire service”.

You come right back with “that’s not the way we do things here. We do it right. We have SOGs. We require background checks and yearly physicals. We do drivers’ training. We have an exercise room. We offer healthy alternatives in the food vending machines”. And on and on…

That is all well and good and that is exactly why you should be the most pissed off when you see that 27% of all 2007 fatalities were the result of not getting to or from the scene without dying; be it by apparatus or POV. You should be especially miffed because, of those, over 10% died because they were not wearing seatbelts. And every time the public reads something like that, they scratch their heads. They are of the mind that WE should be the standard bearer for seatbelts.

Half of the 2007 firefighter fatalities were the results of heart attacks. That can’t be right! We are taking better care of ourselves. We understand the relationship of good physical and mental health to firefighting. Eating right and exercise is the cry of the new generation. Hoo ah!

The problem is that there are still many in the service and especially in the volunteer service that are in high risk categories, are older, are obese, out of shape and out of touch with the strenuous requirements of the job. They treat their bodies the same way they treat their commitment to their fellow firefighters-half assed and half hearted.

“I just want to help my community” doesn’t mean that you have to die for it and certainly not from a natural cause brought on by years of biscuits, cigarettes, beers, cheese fries and vegging on the couch while the wife mows the lawn. You have taken years to destroy a perfectly healthy heart to the point that just the pager going off sends you into cardiac arrest. If you make it to the incident, carrying the Jaws 75 feet to the vehicle will drop you to your knees. And if you make it back to the station, you’ll die there before your buddies can get out of their bunker pants.

Are you mad yet? Careful; you might have a heart attack. There’s more.

We are quick to single out a segment in our fire service who struggle with drugs and alcohol. I have always been a strong proponent about the penalties to firefighters who are caught using and abusing while on duty. I still believe that.

I also believe that they should be given every opportunity to repair their problem with a program to assist them.

What I don’t believe we should do is subsidize their bad choices with our tax money. Which is why I support the denial of benefits to any public safety officer who is found to have a verifiable quantity of illicit drugs or alcohol in their system at the time of their deaths. WE do not punish the survivors; the firefighter did THAT when they chose the path that they did.

I want to extend the legislation to include other acts not covered by good, common sense.

I want benefits/grants denied for:

Not wearing seatbelts while responding to or from an incident; regardless of whether you are in apparatus or POV.

Not wearing SCBA while participating in salvage and overhaul operations.

Not wearing full turnout gear when common sense is absent; yet should dictate that it be worn.

Departments who will not conduct a background check on their members.

Departments who will not require a pre-employment physical for new hires and yearly physicals for current members.

Departments who will not adopt NFPA as the “authority having jurisdiction”.

Chief Officers who will not look out for the best interests of their men and women and REQUIRE them to follow the SOGs, rules, regulations, laws and the common sense that God gave them.

Now; I know many will want to split hairs. I am sure that there are many others if given to thought, but these are the ones that are mudding my mind at the moment and as always, I can come back after due thought and post another blog.

In the meantime, eat right, exercise; get your sleep and BUCKLE UP when you are in a vehicle, wherever that may be.

TCSS.