Every firefighter has that call. The one that still tightens your chest just thinking about it.
The fireground has a way of humbling even the most seasoned crews, serving up unpredictable, unscripted moments that no training scenario ever fully captures.
| RESOURCE: What Firefighters Want in 2025: Aggressive + safe tactics
This year, FireRescue1’s “What Firefighters Want” survey didn’t ask for war stories or folklore; it asked for the raw, unfiltered, personal experiences firefighters actually faced in the past year — the ones that test preparation, decision-making and leadership in real time.
Specifically, firefighters were asked to identify the significant events they experienced in the past 12 months and whether those events led to changes within their organizations.
What firefighters shared tells a story about what’s happening at 2 a.m. inside smoke-charged hallways, behind the wheel responding Code 3 or during aggressive interior operations.
It also tells a story about how departments, for better or worse, respond when those real-world events expose vulnerabilities.
Let’s take a deeper look at what firefighters experienced this year.
Low-air alarm activations
The most frequently reported event was the activation of low-air alarms. Nearly 38% of firefighters hit reserve air on a fireground in the last 12 months. To some, it’s routine. To others, it’s the moment when the hallway suddenly feels a little longer than it did going in.
Low-air doesn’t always signal poor decision-making or disorganization. In fact, it can reflect a range of operational realities.
Modern structure fires burn faster, hotter and create environments that push bottle consumption faster than many firefighters expect. Advancing hoselines through high-heat flow paths accelerates breathing rates dramatically. Even seasoned interior firefighters can see their consumption spike when conditions shift mid-operation.
Staffing levels affect how quickly line advancement occurs. A two-person crew advancing a line into a large residence will consume air differently than a fully staffed engine with coordinated movement. Slower movement equals longer interior time, which equals more air burned.
Increasing complexity inside structures. I think this is a real player, as large open-concept floor plans mean crews may have to travel farther to locate the fire. Longer travel distances translate to more air consumed before water is even applied.
The point isn’t to scold firefighters for hearing their low-air alarm. It’s to understand why the alarm is sounding so frequently and how fire dynamics and staffing realities influence air management more than we sometimes admit.
Close calls and near misses
Thirty percent of respondents reported a near miss or close call this year. These are the non-headline moments — the missed collapse by two steps, the unexpected fire blowing over a crew’s helmet, the hoseline snag at the worst possible time.
Close calls often arise from factors that have nothing to do with skill or experience. Instead, they tend to reflect the reality that the fireground does not care how prepared you think you are.
Situational awareness erodes under stress, especially during fast-moving fires where conditions evolve second by second. Even strong crews can experience tunnel vision when faced with multiple tasks at once.
Building construction is changing faster than our instincts. Lightweight materials, engineered trusses, synthetic fuel loads and open floor plans make predictable collapse zones less predictable. A firefighter who grew up on legacy construction could walk into modern fire conditions that behave nothing like what their training suggested or tried to replicate.
Communication barriers are key. Radio congestion, overlapping transmissions or simply too much noise can create moments where critical information doesn’t get shared fast enough. Even a five-second delay can create a near miss when conditions deteriorate at the speed of physics, not policy.
Close calls don’t mean firefighters are operating recklessly. They often mean they’re operating in an unforgiving environment that is evolving faster than traditional training models.
Medical emergencies or injuries
Nearly a quarter (24%) of respondents experienced a medical emergency or injury in the past year. While we often focus exclusively on the fireground hazards, these injuries frequently occur during routine operations.
Fatigue plays a much larger role than many leaders acknowledge. Long shifts, heavy call volume, rising EMS demands and the cumulative strain of interrupted sleep make firefighters less resilient physically and cognitively meaning injuries are more likely even in seemingly benign tasks.
Environmental conditions, particularly heat stress, remain a major contributor. Modern gear protects firefighters from high temperatures externally, but it also traps heat internally. Firefighters often don’t realize they’re overheating until symptoms surface rapidly.
And then there’s the issue of speed. Firefighters are used to moving fast — pulling lines, forcing doors, throwing ladders. When adrenaline takes over, movement becomes less precise, which makes slips, falls and strains more likely.
Most injuries aren’t because firefighters are careless. They’re because firefighters are human and operating under pressure in environments that punish even small lapses.
Disorientation inside a structure
If you ask interior firefighters what scares them most, many won’t say flashover or collapse. They’ll say losing orientation — and 7% of firefighters report having that exact experience.
In zero visibility, a single missed turn or overlooked piece of furniture can change everything. Disorientation often results from a combination of factors:
- Visibility collapse occurs quickly in modern fires not gradually. Synthetic materials produce dense, choking smoke that renders lights nearly useless. One second you can see the next room; the next, your world shrinks to two inches.
- Radio traffic overload can delay key location updates. When crews miss those updates, they don’t always realize they’ve drifted off course. Combine that with the instinct to push a little farther. To reach the last bedroom, to check one more space, to get deeper than planned, and all of a sudden, crews push into areas they didn’t fully map in their mental picture.
The most experienced interior firefighters know that disorientation is not about fear; it’s about the speed at which things can go wrong.
Maydays
Maydays are the fire service’s most stressful events both for the firefighter calling it and for everyone hearing it on the radio. But the total number reported is meaningful: 6% of firefighters had a mayday event in the past year.
Most maydays result from three core situations:
- Disorientation
- Entanglement or collapse
- Air emergencies
But behind each situation is usually a chain of smaller events. Communication challenges, rapid condition changes and misjudged layouts that culminate in the need for help. Maydays aren’t failures. They are indicators that our environment continues to evolve, and our tactics must evolve with them.
Flashover/backdraft and apparatus crashes
Flashover/backdraft events and apparatus crashes saw 4% of respondents reporting these experiences.
Flashovers and backdrafts often reflect modern fire dynamics — hotter fuel loads, faster ignition, and misunderstood ventilation timing. They also highlight how “legacy instincts” can become liabilities in modern environments.
Apparatus crashes are their own category of risk, frequently influenced by urgency, traffic unpredictability, fatigue or insufficient driver/operator experience.
Both categories remind us that we risk our lives both on scene and en route.
Did these experiences lead to organizational change?
Here’s where the data shifts from operational to cultural. When asked if these incidents led to a department-wide change:
- 53% said no
- 12% said yes
- 32% said they don’t know
That “don’t know” is critical.
It’s possible that change did occur but the firefighter who lived the event wasn’t aware of it. And when firefighters don’t know whether their experience made a difference, the message they internalize is simple: “We moved on.”
Most firefighters don’t expect their near miss to rewrite the department’s playbook. But they do expect leaders to acknowledge the incident, communicate lessons learned and demonstrate that their experience matters beyond the debrief.
When organizations fail to close that communication loop, they lose credibility — not because they didn’t act but because they didn’t share their actions.
Experience should lead to evolution
The fireground teaches relentlessly. Every alarm activation, every injury, every close call and, yes, every mayday is an opportunity to strengthen operations and leadership culture.
Firefighters want leaders who take real experiences seriously, who treat close calls as gifts instead of embarrassments, and who communicate change in a way that honors the people who lived the moment.
