| Editor’s note: What do you think of the report? How can the safety culture be changed? Have your say at the FireRescue1 Forums or the Member Comments section at the end of this article. |
By Jamie Thompson
FireRescue1 News Editor
 Summit attendees were split into various breakout groups. |
EMMITSBURG, Md. — The safety culture in the fire service is the dominant factor that must be addressed to reduce firefighter fatalities, according to a new report.
The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation released the document Friday following the National Firefighter Life Safety Summit in Novato, Calif., earlier this year.
More than 200 fire service leaders attended the event, which focused on strategies to implement the goals of the 16 Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives.
The initiatives were drawn up at the inaugural summit in Tampa, Fla., in 2004.
At the second meeting in Novato in March, participants were broken up into six breakout discussion groups — health and wellness, prevention, structural, wildfire, training/research, and vehicle — that each covered several of the 16 initiatives.
“The central conclusions of the 2007 summit were very similar to the conclusions
of the first summit in 2004,” the report said.
“The issue of safety culture, which sometimes supports undesirable and unsafe behaviors, is the dominant factor that must be addressed in order to accomplish the desired reduction in firefighter fatalities.”
The need for a cultural change features heavily in the report and relate to seven of the Life Safety Initiatives.
Cultural changes occur gradually as perceptions and expectations evolve, the report said, but the direction of change can be driven by values.
It went on to add that summit participants emphasized the importance of steering the process by setting the appropriate expectations and ensuring that every member of the fire department is fully aware of them.
The key recommendations covering the need to change the fire service culture are:
- Actively promote a safety culture within the fire department:
a. Define the roles, responsibilities, and expectations of each position in the
organization in relation to the safety culture.
b. Provide initial and continuing safety culture education for all organizational
levels. - Assign individuals with the appropriate attitudes and skills to the training division to promote and reinforce the desired cultural change. Safety and risk management should a main focus of all training activities from recruit to veterans.
- Integrate safety and risk management into every activity of the fire department as important and visible organizational values.
- Implement a pledge of support for LACK: Leadership, Accountability, Communication, and Knowledge.
- Develop a system of appropriate incentives and disincentives to produce positive results.
- Reward and recognize safe behaviors and practices. Stop rewarding unsafe and inappropriate behaviors.
- Challenge the cultural definition of “hero.”
- Develop and implement a program that instructs all firefighters about the
importance of their personal responsibility for their own safety and survival.
The 16 Life Safety Initiatives are part of efforts to reduce line-of-duty deaths by 25 percent by 2009 and 50 percent by 2014.
“The 2007 summit itself is testimony to the desire of fire service leadership to continue on its righteous path to both encourage and provide tools for fire department and firefighter safety,” the report said.
Related Resources: Full report: Novato National Firefighter Life Safety Summit |