Remember when the first Ebola patients were found in the United States?
The general population lost its collective mind and the emergency response community scrambled to figure out how to best treat suspected Ebola patients without becoming patients themselves.
It was a new, scary unknown threat that garnered a lot of attention. That attention probably saved some lives. It’s easy to focus on and sometimes overreact to a new threat; it’s those we’ve grown accustom to that are easy to dismiss.
In the past week we’ve had a couple reminders about the all-too-familiar dangers when working a roadside scene.
The first involves a firefighter directing traffic at a crash scene where a motorist blew past blocking rigs, hit the firefighter and sped off. He was apprehended.
The second is a near-miss that was caught on surveillance cameras. That driver races through an emergency zone with frustrated firefighters trying to capture her attention. She finally stopped. That was the second such near-miss in two days for that department.
As much as that video angers us, or should, there’s nothing new in it. We’ve all been on that scene, and many that were worse.
And with the unpredictability of drivers and the inability to leave a too-dangerous scene — as we would an interior attack — there is no easy, quick fix for roadside risk. It’s one thing that duct tape can’t fix.
The long-term, macro solution is to educate motorists, stiffen penalties for infractions and incorporate best practices on scene. All of these take money, collaboration and time.
On the individual firefighter, micro level, the solution is better training to shift the odds toward a safe roadside scene. The Emergency Responder Safety Institute is a good starting point.
Despite how easy it is to sign up and that its certificate-issuing training modules are free, I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d not done either. That is, until today.
I signed up last night and set aside an hour first thing this morning to go through one of the modules. It’s something I should have done long ago. I’ve heard good things about this program and my experience supports that.
Reining in firefighter injuries and deaths will be done in a series of small and large steps. Roadside safety is an important facet in the safety mix.
Roadside safety involves a lot of uncontrollable factors from weather to nature of the call to driver behavior. There are things we can control and eliminating any complacency is the first step to shifting the odds in our favor; it’s one every firefighter can take.
Roadside injury poses a greater threat to us than something like Ebola. The only way to reduce it is to meet it with the same level of enthusiasm.
