Brandon Everett is a good firefighter and an excellent young man. By all accounts, he's also a good father and a proud member of the Houston Fire Department. But as I began writing this, Brandon was on life support.
It happens daily and it hurts families, friends and the fire service: good men and women go to work, respond to an emergency and end up injured or worse. From the dawn of the fire service to the modern day, it remains a constant.
Thankfully, this week it emerged that Brandon's condition is improving after he was injured while tackling a house fire in Houston last month.
But the wider question remains of how do we reduce injuries and line-of-duty deaths? There are as many theories as there are lakes in Minnesota. However, from this author's perspective, focusing on tactics, strategy and risk analysis is a way every department can reduce the number of tragic situations.
From a small, one-station department to a major urban force numbering in the thousands, tactics and strategy, along with risk analysis, form an inexpensive "strategic triad." Both sword and shield, the triad protects firefighters because incident commanders and firefighters benefit from knowing more about the job.
Strategy is free. Learning tactics is free. The only investment is in time — and in deciding to change or fine tune your way of doing things based on new information.
Firefighting has evolved from "stick a line here and one there" to a robust, ever growing management system. Incident commanders are held accountable in most states for their actions. The days of one person being responsible for everything are now in the trash heap of history. It is time to evolve or face extinction.
Take for instance this situation: you arrive at a four-story building and are assigned to search the second floor. As the company officer you are leading three firefighters and your assignment is to search the floor and report back to command. During the course of your search, you are acclimated to the idea you are searching the third floor. Suddenly, command radios you and tells you to head to the fourth floor.
Arriving on the fourth floor, prior to starting your assignment, what would think about?
- Are you a floor closer to the fire floor?
- What is the additional time required to egress the building from the fourth floor?
- The ladders raised to the third floor, to give you a secondary means of escape, are still at the third floor. Or were they moved to coincide with your change of locations.
- What types of offices are on the new floor?
You get the point. There are hundreds of questions to answer, but you don't have time to think through each question. Instead, using the aforementioned triad, you are able to make decisions based on principles and ideas that are updated constantly. In fact, through risk analysis, as you ascend the stairs you may have to inform command you can't search the next floor because of collapse or heat.
Over the course of the next two months, we will look at strategy, tactics and risk analysis and discuss how you can take the ideas and implement them. Using real world scenarios, the information will bring to the forefront the need for change — not later, but now.
