The Fire Service Warrior

©2007, 2009 Christopher Brennan

    

According to Webster's Dictionary a "Warrior" is "a man engaged in or experienced in warfare". I don't particularly agree with that definition. Through out history wars have been fought by peasants or conscripts for the most part, men, and sometimes women, who were forced to go and fight for, or over, someone else's land. To me the term Warrior has a connotation of the legendary 300 Spartans, the Knights of the Middle Ages, Rodger's Rangers of the French and Indian War, or the elite men of the Special Operations Command today. In my mind a Warrior is a dedicated professional, who selflessly volunteers to place himself between his neighbor and a threat. That threat could come from a foreign nation, a terrorist cell, a criminal, or even the effects of unrestrained fire. There are Warriors in the Military, in Law Enforcement and in the Fire Service. Having a Warrior's mind-set though isn't something that just happens. It isn't issued to you when you get your uniform. YOU must make a choice to be a Warrior. YOU must view your life, and your responsibilities, through the prism of the Fire Service Warrior.

This article is about a philosophy, a mind-set that allows you to measure your experience against a set of guideposts. It is my view of what each and every one of us who calls ourselves a fireman should aspire to. I'm going to use the word fireman here rather than the more gender neutral firefighter. You the reader need to be able to distinguish a particular meaning in what I'm saying. For my purposes a firefighter is someone who has a job working for the fire department, but may not have a love for the job that inspires them to be the best. We all have met people who are just in this job for the badge, the pension, or the time off. A fireman on the other hand is anyone, male or female, who has chosen to embrace the ideals of the Fire Service Warrior. A woman or a man who has raised their hand to say, "When this primal energy we call fire endangers you, your family, your home or community, call on me."

In order to accept that there is, and should be, a Warrior culture in the fire service you must first accept that firefighting is a form of warfare. Firefighting is combat. It is not a battle against another person, but it is combat none the less. A Fireman places himself in a position where he must risk his life to protect his community. That calling, that selfless willingness to place one's neighbors ahead of oneself is rooted in the same noble drive as our Warriors who defend our nation on foreign shores. The risk is the same. You are risking all that you, and your family, hold dear, you are risking your life, to protect those who cannot protect themselves. At times in our history the relative degree of risk has varied; during times of war our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines have born a much greater share of the risk, but in times of tranquility it is our public servants who have shouldered the burden of securing our homeland.

There are those who may not have looked at the idea of Fire Departments being engaged in combat before. There are bound to be individuals who would philosophically disagree with the very implication that firefighting is combat. Yes, the fire service has assumed many roles beyond "just" fighting fires. Most Fire Departments around the country provide Emergency Medical Services; respond to Hazardous Materials and Technical Rescue Incidents, and provide other services to aid their "customers", their neighbors, who they have sworn to protect. It is a reality that those same neighbors see us first, and foremost, as being there to crawl down a dark, hot, dangerous hallway that is being ravaged by the effects of unrestrained fire to save their loved ones, to protect their property, and to salvage their possessions.

If we look at both the statistics and the environment that a firefighter may find him or herself in I believe that the analogy is not only appropriate, but essential if the Fire Service, and the public we serve, are to understand the role we play in our communities. In 2007 there were 118 Line of Duty Deaths (LODD) reported to the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA). Additionally the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has estimated that 83,400 firefighters were injured in the line of duty in 2006, with more than half of those injuries, 53%, occurred on the Fire Ground.

This should not come as a shock but Firefighting is a dangerous profession. We take a young man and send him into a building were most of the time he wont be able to see, he cannot breath the air, which is filled with toxic gases, the temperatures he will have to work in can reach 1200° Fahrenheit at the ceiling, and he is wrapped in a coat, pants, boots, gloves, hood, helmet and self contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) that hinder his dexterity, his mobility, his verbal communication and his ability to maintain an awareness of the environment around him. Oh, and as an added element that most pervasive of physical forces, Gravity, is constantly exerting its pull on the structure that our Warrior is doing battle in so that if the building has been sufficiently weakened by the effects of the fire it is likely to collapse on him. If you don't see that as being "combat" then I think you are being naïve. Why is it important to acknowledge the correlation between the fire ground and the realm of combat, though? Simply put, if you do not see yourself as being engaged in battle then you are unprepared to accept the serious and challenging path that it takes to become a Fire Service Warrior.

The experience of the Fire Service Warrior is different than the commonly understood "Warrior" of the Military or Law Enforcement communities. Both the solider and the police officer have as opponents their fellow man, another human being, and as such have a very personal context to their conflicts. The enemy of the Fire Service Warrior is unrestrained fire. That enemy is personified by firemen and by poets as being a thinking thing. We give fire the anthropomorphic qualities one might find in an Orwellian novel. To quote Robert De Niro's character in Backdraft, "It's a living thing, Brian. It breathes, it eats, and it hates. The only way to beat it is to think like it; to know that this flame will spread this way across the door and up across the ceiling, not because of the physics of flammable liquids, but because it wants to." It is a catchy turn of a phrase, but there is not a fireman who, when battling to quench a stubborn fire, hasn't felt as though he was fighting a living beast. Fire isn't a thinking thing, it doesn't have an intellect, but it does have a drive. It has potential. The very nature of the chemical chain reaction that allows fire to spring into existence also drives it to consume all it can. As long as physics and chemistry come together in a way that will cause organic material to decompose and release fuel into a properly balanced environment of oxygen and heat the fire will continue. It will continue until we kill it.

As a fireman, a Fire Service Warrior, you have a responsibility to yourself and to society. The relationship between Warriors and the society they protect can be described in many ways, but the most appropriate I have heard is the way Dave Grossman, author of On Combat, describes it. He refers to the relationship as one of Sheep Dogs to the Sheep. The Warrior is the Sheep-Dog, there to manage the heard and to protect the sheep from the wolves. For us the "wolves" are the dangers that our neighbors, the Sheep, face everyday. It may be the danger that comes from not being able to treat a life threatening illness or injury, the threat posed by a spilled toxic chemical, or the danger of a building which is being consumed by fire. Regardless of the nature of the threat we must approach the situation with seriousness and focus.

    To be a Fire Service Warrior, we must approach each day with a focus. Whether we are cleaning tools, presenting a public education class, treating a asthma attack, or fighting a structure fire we owe it to ourselves and to our neighbors, our "customers" if you prefer, to be 100% present in the moment. Why? We, as firemen, have a sacred duty to protect society. We need to break that duty down to understand how the Fire Service Warrior deals with the two responsibilities.

First, we have our duty to ourselves. By "ourselves" I mean you as an individual, and the collective whole of the Fire Service Team. If you are not devoting 100% of your focus to the job that you are performing, then you are placing your life in danger. When you place your life in harms way you must be fully immersed in the intense and vital experience of the moment. The Fire Service Warrior must embrace the emotional, psychological and physical elements that he will confront at each and every fire. If you have not dedicated yourself to mastering your responses to these three elements, then you are increasing your chances of being hurt or killed. Why? By ignoring, or downplaying the threats that you may face you will not have suitably prepared yourself for them.

Emotionally there is a stress that we all experience when it comes to confronting some of the "horrors" that are the day to day reality of our profession. Now, this doesn't mean that we all break down because we confront emotionally challenging moments. Some of us are very empathetic; we literally feel the emotion of the people being affected by the incident: the patient or their loved ones. Others are sympathetic; we can relate their pain to ourselves but do not have a visceral experience of feeling it. It is important for each of us to understand how we react. We will all face an incident, or have an experience, that pushes the buttons of our emotional stress. The worst thing we can do is think that it won't happen. If we ignore our humanity, and pretend to be some kind of emotionless robot, we are depriving ourselves of the ability to cope. We learn how to confront challenging emotional situations by thinking about them before they occur. Just like mentally rehearsing the steps you will take if you have an SCBA emergency, mentally rehearsing how you will confront emotional challenges prepares you. Once the emotionally stressful moment occurs you have to live with it and hopeful deal with it in a healthy way. None of us are big on acknowledging our emotions. It isn't "manly" to say that something scared you or made you sad. That is perfectly reasonable. Acknowledging the emotional pain of a situation puts a nick in the armor that we all wear to hold it together when things are difficult. The reality is that we need to open up to one another. When people meet me and find out I am a fireman the inevitably they ask, "What was the worst thing you've ever seen?" I'm unwilling to answer that question. To me it is inconceivable that someone who has never had the experience of someone dying in their hands, or carrying a dead child, or having to pull a mangled body from a car wreck can fathom the totality of any experience I might share. It is simply an auditory "gawker". The only people I am willing to share those stories with are my brother and sister Warriors. That "family" knows what it feels like, smells like and looks like. Lt. Col. Grossman in On Combat says that "Pain shared is pain divided." This is why it is important to sit around the kitchen table after one of "those" calls and talk. A well timed tailboard talk, or kitchen table conversation, may do more good in the long run than a "debriefing" at a latter date. In Critical Incident Stress Management CISM) circles our tailboard talk serves that purposes of "defusing" the incident. It may prevent negative thoughts and emotions from taking hold. It gives the crew a chance to review what happened, what went well and what can be learned. Hopefully our firemen operated according to their training, their Standard Operating Guidelines (SOGs) and made appropriate tactical decisions. If this occurred and a life was still lost then the guys and gals can take reassurance that they did their jobs as they were expected to. The leader must reinforce that no matter how much we wish it were so we will not save everyone. To some extent we must all have faith that what is meant to be, will be.

Psychologically we must understand the effects of fear on our abilities. In my article "You Want Me To Do What?" I address the psychology of fear and the affect it has on our breathing, our heart rate and our ability to perform. Fear is a distraction. It is that part of your psyche that is like a crying child, it pulls your focus. Allowing yourself to be distracted by fear, allowing yourself to be afraid, is the first step in losing control. When you surrender to being afraid you lose control of your heart rate, your breathing and your ability to reason in the moment. You may literally become paralyzed by fear. A Fire Service Warrior must approach life threatening situations, which would cause fear in "normal" people, in a "Zen" like way. Firefighting should be an altered state of consciousness. The alert of the station alarm, or the pager on your belt, should mentally trigger your understanding that something outside of your normal existence is about to occur. In religious rituals the sound of the organ music, the lighting of candles, and the invocations of the celebrant are sub-conscious triggers that tell your midbrain that something "special" is going on. Those triggers are supposed to have sacred meaning which cause your mind to focus and set aside the "unimportant" thoughts. That initial dispatch should be the same thing. That should be the trigger that shuts off your thoughts about the fight you had with your spouse, how your kid is doing in school, and even of your parent who is dying in a hospital bed. You can come back to those thoughts later. They are important, but they are completely irrelevant right now. The initial dispatch should trigger your mind to focus on the task at hand. Learning to do this can be challenging though. We all get consumed in our thoughts. Learning to flip a switch to shut out those other concerns will come only with practice. I teach the process this way.

1. Don't move for a second or two. Picture the address in your head. Remind yourself what kind of buildings you have over there. Try and picture the block.
   
2. SLOWLY get up and WALK to the apparatus. If you jump up and run to the rig you get your heart rate up and allow that dump of adrenaline to engage your fight or flight response.
   
3. While walking to the apparatus being using the Tactical Breathing Exercise ("You Want Me To Do What?) Inhale for a four second count, hold it for four seconds, exhale for a four second count and hold it for four seconds. Get your breathing and heart rate under control. DON'T PANIC.
   
4. Don your Personal Protective Clothing. This should be a ritual itself. You should do it the same way every single time. I put my feet into my boots, one at a time, and pull up my bunker pants. Then I fasten my pants and pull the "postman" tabs tight to cintch the waist of the pants. I put on my Truckman's belt, my Vulcan light hangs on my right side. I don my hood and leave it up. I don my radio strap, and snap the sway strap to the ring on the right side of my pants. I don my coat, snap the closures so that my radio microphone is outside my collar, and then close the storm flap. I step up into the rig and slip into my SCBA.
   
5. In route I make sure my portable radio is switched to the primary fire ground radio. I ensure that the straps of my SCBA are snug and free of twists. I think about my riding assignment, my tool assignment and what my job will be. Then I just continue with the tactical breathing exercise and try to shut my brain down until I am on scene or hear the size-up of the first arriving company.
   

If you are the Driver/Operator you will have a different process; you will be thinking about your route to the fire, where the other responding companies are coming from, where you are likely going to have to position your apparatus. The Officer has a different process; he will be considering which SOGs affect his "short-list" of Tactical Decisions, how the time of day and the weather will affect the fire, and what Box number to call if he needs additional manpower. By giving yourself a ritual to follow you keep control over how your brain responds.

Physically we have to be prepared to confront the strength, stamina and agility challenges that firefighting present. Firefighting is a full-contact sport. Firefighters, as opposed to firemen, tend to downplay this. Why? There are a bunch of out of shape firefighters, and if they were to acknowledge the physical nature of the job they have they would have to do something about it. It is far easier to sit in the recliner, the "ass magnet" and watch TV, than it is to pursue a rigorous fitness regime. If we examine the actually work load of firefighting we might approach things in a different way. Firefighters expend metabolic energy, measured in Metabolic Equivalent Levels (METS), at the same level as Navy SEALs do. How many people in your firehouse would cut it as Navy SEALs? I probably wouldn't, I hate running, and can't swim too well, but I recognize the level of effort and physical strain that I will have to expend and try to hit the gym to make sure I am prepared. You need to find a resource for developing a fitness program that can improve your ability on the fire ground. I cannot say enough about the work of Coach Greg Glassman and the folks at www.Crossfit.com. They provide, free of charge, a Work Out of the Day (WOD) on their website and an immeasurable amount of free information about fitness training. If you want to have a fitness model suited to a Warrior lifestyle check them out.

Being prepared emotional, psychologically and physically to do our job is a critical aspect of fulfilling our duty. The elements we have addressed so far lay a foundation to help us meet the responsibility we have to our-self and our brother and sister Fire Service Warriors. We must now take up the duty we have to our neighbors, the people we have a sworn duty to protect.

The standard Fire Service risk assessment criteria heard over and over again is a variation on: "Risk a lot to save a lot; risk a little to save little; risk nothing to save nothing." Who decides what is "a lot" though? Obviously if you have a good working fire and as you pull up Mom is on the front lawn saying that her five year-old is trapped in his bedroom, most of us would say that is "a lot". A life is on the line, and as long as the building seems even moderately tenable we are going to try and make the grab and get the kid out. In the same vain we can all find some agreement that a building that is obviously vacant, no squatters, homeless people, or "security" to worry about, removed from any exposure is a situation that we are going to try and "risk nothing". There is no reason for us to be committing our people to fighting this fire from the inside. Sure, it is "fun", and we don't get many fires, but that is a dangerous level of bravado that cannot be tolerated. There is no reason to put anyone's life on the line for a building that should get bulldozed anyway. Our two examples are pretty clear-cut, black-and-white, examples of making those risk assessment decisions. Life doesn't often present us with a ton of clear-cut choices though. Let's consider a more likely scenario.

It is three o'clock in the afternoon, and you arrive on scene of a two story, wood frame building with heavy fire volume on the first floor, and turbulent, brown/black smoke venting from the second floor windows. You can see from the front lawn that the fire has involved the rear half of the building and is beginning to compromise the interior stairs. Neighbors are screaming from across the street that "the kids are home from school!" What do you do? Offensive Interior Attack; Vent Enter Search; Exposure Protection? There is no right answer. It depends on your department's capabilities, first in manpower, and standard operating guidelines.

If we use our "normal" risk management criteria, the real question is "what is the value?" Is this a "risk a lot" moment to you? Is this a "risk a little" moment? We all have to make this decision. It doesn't matter if you are the probie with six months on the job, or the 20-year Battalion Chief, you need to decided: what is this worth? Is it worth your life? Is it worth the lives of your firefighters? How you make that decision is going to be based on your values, your experience, and most importantly your view of what is an acceptable risk.

I can tell you this though: those people standing across the street expect us to go in there, and kick ass. They expect us to be willing to hang it out there, and try, even though it seems kind of "iffy". That is why they pay our salaries. That is why the public looks up to us. That is why we have a reputation that: politicians, corporations, and our local cops all would die for. We are the guys who make those selfless choices and do everything we can to save those things that are near and dear to our community. People love firemen. It seems corny, like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but it really is true. They love us because we are the guys who do things no one else will. They love us because we rush into the very building they are rushing out of. We have to remember though that we didn't earn that reputation. Not one little kid who comes up to a fireman on the street knows that you are a good Nozzleman. No one knows if you, personally, are a good fireman or a total mutt. The reputation we enjoy was earned by the firefighters who came before us. They earned it with their blood, sweat, tears and many of their lives. We owe it to the legacy of those who have given everything to honor their memory. We owe it to our citizens to either live up to their expectations, or tell them exactly what we will and will-not do.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say this: We ARE supposed to risk our lives. Taking risks is part of the gig. You wouldn't join the Marine Corps and then say, "Hey, what do you mean you're sending me to Iraq? I didn't sign up for that!" Yes, in fact you did. No one put a gun to your head and said, "You will be a fireman." You picked this job. You stood up, raised your hand, and said "Pick Me!" If you are a career firemen you probably studied your but off to get certified as a firefighter, paramedic, or earn a degree, took a half dozen hiring tests, and did everything you could to get hired. You did not just wakeup one morning and find out that you were in a job where someone expected you to risk your life. The Fire Service Warrior has a moral obligation to his neighbors, to the community he has sworn to protect. It is not enough to say that you want to help people. In my opinion there is no room for "Parade Day" firefighters. None of us have the budgets to be a social club for people who want to play at being firemen, and I feel that it is an insult to the memory of my fallen brothers and sisters for anyone to receive the honor of the reputation they earned with out paying into the kitty for future generations.

Honoring the commitment we have made to our communities means that we must be proficient in our jobs and capable of tackling the difficult tasks that we are responsible for. The Fire Service Warrior must approach the study of his craft with a passion. He must strive to know all he can about his trade. When we train recruits entering the fire service we do so in an incremental way: Safety, SCBA, Fire Behavior, Building Construction, Forcible Entry and Ventilation are all taught as separate skills. To an extent it has to be this way. There is so much information for the new firefighter, who aspires to become a fireman, to master that it needs to be broken down. The challenge is that once you graduate from the recruit academy you have to put it all together. The fire ground is a dangerous, dynamic place, where multiple tasks must take place in a coordinated manner.

The world of the fireman has many factors which will effect his survival. One of our primary concerns must be the building we are fighting fire in; its construction, general state of repair and the contents inside it. In the classic text, The Art of War, Sun Tzu, a warrior philosopher who lived more than 2,000 years ago in China, tells us "Therefore those who do not know the plans of competitors cannot prepare alliances. Those who do not know the lay of the land cannot maneuver their forces." We must master building construction. The manner in which a building has been constructed has the single greatest effect on how fire will travel. It sets the stage for everything that we are going to do, and yet is one thing that we have the least amount of control over. We will often be conducting our battle in a building that we have never been in before. We have no control over the intentional or accidental acts of the builder, owner, occupant or arsonist, which change the intended use of the structure, or reduce its natural ability to resist the spread of fire. We must have an understanding of how the homes, taxpayers and commercial buildings in our district have been constructed, though if we are going to try to reduce the threat that the building itself poses.

We must also have a clear understanding of fire behavior. We have our strategy and tactics, and we need to approach the fire as though it does too. The "strategy" of fire is simple; to keep burning as long as the chemical chain reaction can continue. Understanding fire behavior allows us to understand the "tactics" of the fire. We cannot effectively match our tactics to the fire if we don't understand the tactic the fire will take. There are many factors that we must take into consideration when evaluating fire behavior. On a basic level we must be able to recognize what stage of development the fire is in. Most of us were "raised" with incipient, free-burning and smoldering as the stages that a fire progressed through. Now, we are teaching our recruits about the ignition, growth, fully developed and decay stages. Knowing what stage the fire is in, whether you refer to it as "free-burning" or "fully developed", provides a critical understanding of what might possible happen on the fire ground. If we are in the growth stage of fire development we should be prepared that we might have conditions which could lead to a flashover. If we have entered the decay stage we need to recognize that there is the potential for backdraft conditions to occur. Beyond understanding the stage of fire development we must understand how to read smoke conditions. Dave Dodson has done an amazing job of teaching the fire service about the "Art of Reading Smoke". The three key factors in reading smoke are the volume, velocity and density of smoke issuing from a structure. Understanding the relationship of these factors to fire behavior can help us stay out of situations which may rapidly deteriorate, or help us instinctively "know" where to find the fire and how to extinguish it.

We must be proficient in the skills we use on the fire ground. You have to know all there is to know about your SCBA: how it works, what to do if you have an emergency, how to take care of it. Our SCBA is the greatest tool we have for protecting ourselves and being able to take the risks that we have to in a calculated manner. In addition we have to know how to use our tools. What is the best way to pull ceiling if I have a plaster hook? How can I use my Halligan bar to remove a security door or the bars from windows? How do I decide what ladder to take if I need to make a rescue from the third floor? The only way to develop these skills is through training. With our recruit firefighters we conduct repetitive skills drills. They swing the axe a hundred times. They chock the door open every time they go through. They start the saw. We are building muscle memory. Muscle memory is the training with a skill until it becomes automatic, like signing your name. You repeat a particular skill hundreds, if not thousands, of times until you have so ingrained the steps that you don't have to think. Our skills drills during the academy give us this foundation, but we must continue to practice once we are "on the job". Tiger Woods may be the greatest golfer to ever live. He doesn't just pick up his clubs on Thursday and go play a tournament though. He plays every single day. He practices the act of hitting a ball every day. Our training program does that for us. If we confine our training to skills drills we would be far from proficient on the fire ground.

The skills that we learn must lead to scenario based training. We assign our people a riding position and a tool assignment and then give them a scenario they must accomplish. This is a learning tool. It allows them to understand where a particular skill may be used on the fire ground. It follows the natural flow of learning. Once the recruit has mastered the skills of donning and doffing his SCBA, his emergency procedures, and ways of reducing his profile through shifting or dumping his pack, then we can introduce him to the SCBA Confidence Maze. We take our recruit and send him and his partner into the maze. They must negotiate the obstacles they encounter: reduced profiles like a stud space in a wall; wire entanglements; simulated SCBA emergencies, like an Instructor turning off their cylinder valve. The point of these scenarios is to build confidence in the SCBA and the individual firefighter's skills. This should not be an easy evolution. When we introduce the scenario it is kept "tame", allow the recruit to go through the maze with a few obstacles, the natural reduced profiles, and simple wire traps. Once a basic understanding of the requirements is met then make them do it with a black out cover on their mask. As they become more proficient increase the challenges of the obstacles. If you have gotten folks who are highly capable go ahead and add heat. Each time we increase the difficulty our people will become more proficient in a skill.

Building on the individual skills and scenario training we need to develop Full Scale Exercise (FSEs). The FSE is where we let out people play for keeps. There are no "time-outs" unless we have a real emergency or injury. We give out assignments for the day and then let them handle what ever incidents we through at them. The FSE is where we can arrange for our firemen to arrive on scene of a building with fire, or simulated fire conditions, people hanging out of windows waiting to be rescued, access problems, and all of the challenges of the real fire ground. They have to figure it out. They must make tactical decisions, they must use their skills to solve the problems. The Chief's have to give the strategic goals, the Company Officer's must make the tactical decisions and direct their people and the Firemen must perform. These exercises should not be easy. They should allow our people to experience the challenges of the fire ground in a realistic way. In the Roman Army it was said that dill should be bloodless battle and that battle should be bloody drill. Train like you fight, fight like you train is another way of expressing that. It is important though that the people who design the exercises never think of it as a chance to show how smart they are. Our exercises should be challenging, but they must be winnable. I can design an exercise scenario that you absolutely can not possible win. What do you learn from that? Absolutly nothing, except that I am a jerk.

We are best prepared to fulfill our duty to our neighbors by being prepared and proficient. The only way to develop that proficiency is by constantly challenge your-self as a fireman. You must train your mind, and you body, to be prepared for the challenges that you will face.

The role of the Fire Service Warrior is a noble one. It is volunteering to stand between your neighbors and the threat of unrestrained fire. It is not an easy calling to live up to though. It requires a disciplined mind. It requires focus and thoughtful action. It requires an awareness of self, and your commitment to the society you live in. The Fire Service Warrior immerses himself in the history, the tradition, the skills and the knowledge of his profession so that he may fulfill the duty he has assumed. It requires a mastery of your emotional, psychological and physical state. If you strive to live the life of a Fire Service Warrior you set an example for those who come after you and honor the memory of those who came before. For me this is a never ending process. There is always another book to read, another class to take, some way that I can improve myself and my ability. I hope that the ideas I have laid out can serve as guideposts for you as you find your way along the path of the Fire Service Warrior.