One of the catchphrases currently making the rounds in the fire service and even in economics is "risk analysis." Risk analysis offers valuable lessons to firefighters out in the real world. Utilizing proactive risk analysis requires skill and practitioners must absorb lessons from training, education and experience. But you'll reap the benefits of it from the moment prior to stepping onto the rig to the moment you are back in the firehouse.

Rolling out the door, you are performing risk analysis. What is the potential for harm and what are the consequences? In the apparatus response alone firefighters face weather conditions, other drivers and the safe handling of the rig itself. The consequences are all too familiar. How do you minimize them?

On the fireground, risk analysis saves lives, stabilizes the incident and can help protect property. Let's say you arrive at a single-story ranch house with flames showing from the garage area on the Delta side of the structure. The house sits on a slight hill, perhaps 9 feet above grade, and the driveway naturally slopes to the road.

What is the potential for harm based on the limited information you have been given? Learning to use risk analysis with bits of information creates a skill set useful when more information arrives via communications. Train with limited information and switch to excessive information — the difference is palpable.

So, back to the ranch house:

1. The garage area is burning. The storage of flammables and everything imaginable in the garage is a constant source of worry for firefighters.

2. The house sits on a small hill with a slight slope to the driveway. Where do you park the apparatus? If you put it in front of the driveway or on the downhill slope of the road, a pool of flammable liquids could run off from the garage and put the apparatus, and the operator, in extreme danger.

Other factors come into play in fluid situations, but this briefly gives you an idea of how risk analysis works to help you spot potential harm. Eyes and ears receive a vast amount of input, and properly deciphering it and placing the information in order is essential in firefighting, not to say flying and medicine as well.

Let’s look at another component. Using risk analysis, how can you manage the fireground? The allocation of resources to various jobs on the fireground takes skill and is often underappreciated. A mental triage has to take place.

You pull up to a three-story, senior living facility. Heavy smoke is issuing from the A/D corner of the structure. At the window adjacent to the smoke, an arm can be seen waving back and forth. Further to the left, at the A/B corner another person is waving and screaming for rescue. Based on the information given what is priority A?

Risk analysis tells us the party directly adjacent to the fire is in more danger than the occupant at A/B. A rescue is affected for the A/D victim and the other is led safely down a stairwell. It’s fast, but using risk analysis you were able to determine what the priority was in this scenario.

Superior methods for firefighters to "triage" the fireground have yet to be developed. Holding out hope for the perfect system removes the best system currently in use; proactive risk analysis is essential to fireground success.

Risk analysis, used and understood properly, is a key component in real world firefighting. Understanding it prior to arrival on the fireground facilitates a rapid response, almost second nature to those who practice it.