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.

 

 

Fire Ground Tactical Decision Making

"You don't have time to think up there. If you think, you're dead." – Maverick

 

    My wife hates the fact that I make decisions in 30 seconds or less. She thinks about options, analyzes, I would say agonizes, and in general hates to be rushed to judgment. When we first met she did not understand how, if I was presented with a list of three options, I would pick something before she even finished reading the list. I finally explained it to her like this: In my job I have to make decisions in a fraction of a second, and I have to trust my life with those decisions. When you look at life that way it tends to stream line the thought process.

Firefighters must master the ability to take a mental snapshot of the situation presented to them and use that to make critical tactical decisions. Our business boils down to making decisions in a high stress environment with life and death consequences. It does not matter if you are talking about a structure fire, a heart attack, or a technical rescue incident. The reality of operating under those circumstances can be overwhelming, especially for a firefighter just starting out. If we want our people to thrive in that kind of chaotic, stressful environment, it is imperative to train them in Fire Ground Tactical Decision Making.

Every one of us in the fire service has worked with someone who was always cool and collected, and always seemed to know what the fire was doing a second or two before the fire itself did. Usually those are the experienced members, the "Salty Dogs", who have been around the block and have a chest full of war stories to share. There is no question that experience is the single best way to master the art and science of sizing up a situation and making your tactical decisions. Experience comes with time though, and we are not responding to the numbers of Structure Fires that we have in the past. How do we develop experience in a firefighter who may only respond to a handful of structure fires a year? We develop our experience through Training. Obviously Training is our "answer" for a lot of situations. Training our members to be skilled in the art of tactical decision making must be a particular focus though, if it is going to be successful, and it must rest on a solid foundation.

Combat Decision Making

    There is a concept that Fighter Pilots and Special Operations Warriors understand well called the Boyd Loop. We can prepare ourselves to make better decisions on the fire ground if we examine it, and use the concept in our training.

    The Boyd Loop is named for Col. John Boyd, of the US Air Force, a fighter pilot who wanted to understand how best to turn a tactical engagement in his favor. The decision making system that he developed has come to be known as the Boyd Loop, or the OODA Loop.

    OODA stands for: OBSERVE; ORIENT; DECIDE; ACT. The four steps in the Boyd Loop.

Observation is the process of gathering data. This is where you are using your senses to get information about what is happening. The key is that you need to develop a filter, so that you are not trying to gather too much information. You need to focus on the critical information for your assignment and let the rest of the chaos become a fuzzy part of the backdrop.

Orientation is the process of synthesizing the available information and your personal mindset to deal with the problem. Put another way, this is taking your finely honed skills as a firefighter and matching them up to what you have observed about the task at hand.

Decision is where the rubber meets the road. It is taking the information and analysis and setting the best course of tactical action to achieve the strategic goal. You are using your Standard Operating Guidelines (SOGs), your training and your knowledge of the current fire ground situation to decide what you are going to do.

Action is what it is all about. Firefighters are pretty much task oriented creatures. We exist to "do" things on the fire ground. The other steps in the Loop have gotten us to this point.

It is important to remember that the OODA Loop is not a linear process. It is a dynamic cycle that starts when we are dispatched and, hopefully, continues until we have finished critiquing the incident. We do not simply pull up in front of the fire building, see that there is a fire on the first floor, recognize that because we are on the Engine today and assigned as the pipe-man that we will be pulling a hose line, decide to pull the line and then go put the fire out. That is an example of using the Boyd, or OODA, Loop, but we don't stop there. As we continue the fight we are constantly gathering more data, orienting ourselves to the threats that are developing, deciding on a course of action and then acting upon it.

If we use the Boyd Loop successfully, what happens is that we actually give ourselves more time to think. We are using a smooth and efficient thought process that allows us to maintain our focus and at the same time devote a portion of our conscious mind to continually working its way through the OODA Loop.

Laying the Foundation

    In order for our members to be able to apply the Boyd Loop successfully there are a few prerequisites that come in handy: well designed and exercised SOGs for Engine and Truck Company Operations, and a solid grounding in fundamental fire ground skills. Most of our departments are already functioning with these prerequisites in place. For those who do not, it isn't impossible to master fire ground decision making, but it becomes considerably more complicated.

    Why are Engine and Truck Company SOGs important? As a firefighter, like a computer, you only have so much "RAM" to work with. If you have to devote your mental energy to figuring out what tool to bring, or what your individual priorities need to be, you are behind in the Loop already, and you are at a disadvantage when it comes to maintaining situational awareness. Our SOGs should help limit the number of times we need to go through the Loop. They act as a flow chart for our common decisions. If you pull up in front of a structure fire, what is your assignment? What are your tools? If this is not spelled out ahead of time when we get on scene one of the first trips through the Loop has to be "wasted" on choosing a tool. The topic of riding positions and tool assignments has been covered in great detail by many fire service authors. I'm not going to start speculating what tool the firefighter behind the officer on the third arriving Engine should have. Those specifics need to be worked out based on your jurisdiction, with a nod toward what your "bread and butter" fires involve. If our SOGs are designed to provide clear direction about essential fire ground tasks we save our personnel a trip through the Loop.

    In the same manner, having a standing guideline for an Incident Action Plan spells out our strategic goals, which frees the initial arriving Officers from having to make trip after trip through the Loop. Building SOGs ahead of time, which function in a similar way to EMS Standing Medical Orders, cuts down on the amount of thinking you have to devote to a given problem. It is much like going to a restaurant. You walk into a "steak place" with every intention of ordering a rib eye, medium rare, with a baked potato, and a pint. The only decision to make is picking an appetizer. The waiter hands you a menu and what do you do? You Look At Everything On It! You knew what you were going to order, but because there were options in front of you, you still take the time to see what they are. Time is not of the essence when ordering dinner, usually, but the same dynamic applies on the fire ground. If you have a huge menu to pick from, because the SOGs didn't lay a foundation for picking the right "meal", then you waste time filtering through everything that you have learned to eliminate options that are not relevant to the situation at hand. Well designed SOGs that our firefighters have trained on, and exercised to make sure they work, help to reduce the time needed in the Observe, Orient and Direct stages of the Boyd Loop.

    Let's say that my assignment is to be the Outside Vent Man (OVM). Our SOGs take care of focusing me on what I need to observe, the orientation I am going to take, and they streamline the decision making process for me because I should know what my specific initial response tasks are. By having tool assignments married to a fire ground assignment I have reduced the confusion even further. I arrive on the scene of a structure fire and observe a two-story, ordinary construction, single-family residence with fire showing from the Division B/C corner. My SOGs orient me to take a 24-foot extension ladder, a Halligan Bar and a Pike Pole to Division C; throw that ladder to the second floor in a manner that allows it to be used for rescue; ventilate the fire room with my pike pole upon being notified that the attack Engine is prepared to make entry; and then open any exterior doors on the Division C side and make a primary search from the exterior, without entering an IDLH atmosphere, until I have met up with my partner, whose initial task was to mirror my actions in the front of the building. How difficult is working through the OODA Loop going to be? It should be pretty straight forward. The only element of my assignment that may require more brain power is choosing the right window to ladder on the second floor. I am able to think about (ORIENT) that as I am making my size-up and triaging the building.

    To make my way around to Division C, I choose to go down the Division D side of the building. As I pass between the building on fire and the Division D exposure (I'd call it a gangway, but using NIMS terminology makes this accessible to everyone) I OBSERVE a woman hanging out of a second floor window in need of rescue. What do I do now? Go through the Loop. I OBSERVE a condition. I ORIENT myself with my understanding of the circumstances as I know them from our SOGs and the current situation: there is a life safety risk; our SOGs say it is the job of the Second Truck to ladder the Division D side; the Second Truck is on scene. Now I have to DECIED. Do I abandon my assignment of opening up in Division C to rescue the woman, or do I make a quick radio call, "Command from Truck 1 OVM, I've got people hanging out second floor windows on the D Side. I'm continuing to the C side"? ( See Figure 1) Do you DECIDE to do something different if the second truck is a mutual-aid company that you know is five minutes out? There is no one right answer. Your decisions must be predicated on the observations you make, based on the current conditions, and the orientation you have assumed. Once you make your decision, it is time to ACT.

Having a solid grounding in fundamental fire ground skills is the key to reducing the amount of "static" in the action phase of the Loop. You have made it around to the D side without encountering any situations which may cause you to divert from your SOG based assignment. Your first task is to throw a 24-foot ground ladder to a second floor window so that in can be used for rescue. Can you do it? Do you know how to throw a ladder by yourself? Do you have the strength? Do you know where it is supposed to go for rescue? If you don't then you are once again slowing down in the Loop. Now you have to take a trip through the Loop to figure out how you are going to accomplish the task at hand.

The basics should be so ingrained in you that there is no need to "waste" any time in the Boyd Loop thinking about them. They are called "fundamentals" for a reason. They are fundamental to being able to do your job. If you are prepared through regular training how to throw a ladder, perform a VES, stretch a hose line, man a 2¹/₂" exposure line by yourself, or any other fire ground task, you are speeding up how long it takes to get through the Loop. You are compressing time by removing unnecessary items from the menu and giving your brain more time to focus on those things that are 100 percent specific to the situation you are in: sizing up the building, reading the smoke, observing the effects of your fellow firefighters' actions. Muscle memory is your friend. It works for Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, and combat marksmen. It will work for you.

Developing Fire Ground Tactical Decision Making Skills

    Even if you have good SOGs and are an all-star firemen your ability to use the Boyd Loop to make tactical decisions on the fire ground will be limited if you do not practice with it. Think of it this way, your brain and your butt are both muscles and if the only exercise they get is sitting in a recliner watching Maury or Dr. Phil, how prepared do you think either of them will be when it comes time to go to work? There is a quote from Braveheart that fits perfectly, "The good lord tells me he can get me out of this one, but he's pretty sure you're ******". So, how do we incorporate using the Boyd Loop into training?

    First and foremost our training needs to go beyond just teaching the SOGs and the fundamental skills. Once your people know what their assignments are and how to perform them, then the training needs to get more challenging. Both complexity and speed must be increased if your firefighters are going to continue to develop. Have the scenario thrown in where the OVM has to decide what to do about the lady hanging out the second floor window. Have your folks pull up in front of your tower, or an acquired structure, or even someone else's firehouse if that is your only option, for a simulated fire and have a role-player in front of the building pointing to a 2^nd floor window saying, "My 5 year-old is in the room, get him". What do they do? How do they move through the OODA cycle to get to acting on the problem? Build these unexpected developments into your scenario based training. Throw in an evacuation drill every now and again. The late Francis Brannigan wrote continually about how every sailor in the Navy is taught how to abandon ship. How many of us are practicing how to make an orderly tactical retreat if the air-horns start blasting?

There are bound to be guys and gals who resist challenging training, or training in general. It is important to remember that there are two reasons for this: first, they are worried about being embarrassed, and second they do not understand why it is vital. Embarrassment tends to arise from not feeling secure in your ability to perform the required task. Not understanding the importance of the training comes from seeing the department's values as incoherent or inconsistent. Fixing those underlying issues probably needs to be a priority. Remind them that just because you have been a firefighter for 10 years doesn't mean you know it all, or are perfect. Every professional sports team out there practices all season long. They are making millions of dollars because they are so good at what they do, and they still practice. Members of the Navy SEALs and Army Delta Force train constantly. Use these examples of professionals, in very exclusive organizations, as models for why we as firefighters need to take training seriously.

Once the drills are done, do a hot-wash on the tailboard and talk about what went well and what can be learned. How direct those sessions are will depend on your corporate culture. My belief is that sparing someone's feelings is less important than making sure that a dangerous error in a critical fire ground task is fixed. To quote my good friend Lt. John Tabisz, of the Darien Woodridge Fire Protection District, "We aren't delivering pizzas here." I will make this caveat though, if you are criticizing the person, and not the action, you are going in the wrong direction and will alienate people.

Beyond departmental or company level training though, each of us needs to do our own training: Mental Rehearsals. You need to spend time thinking about what you will do if you are presented with a particular circumstance. Pick a building in your district and think about how you would handle various situations. I play the "what if" game constantly, and I find it helps me make decisions on the fire ground more smoothly. My wife got passed being bothered by the fact that I was willing to pick out tuxedos for our wedding after looking in one store for less than a minute. She understood it was part of how I look at the world. She still has trouble getting over the fact that when we walk up to the door of a house I have not been in before I look down both sides and take a guess at where the kitchen, baths and bedrooms are. It's a little pop quiz I can give myself to mentally rehearse my size-up skills. You should be able to figure out what the basic layout of a building is by giving it a quick look as you walk up. We will not get to walk through every building in our district, but by spending time exercising that part of your mental tool box, you will be better equipped to figure it out in the moment. What would you do if you sudden fell through a floor? Are you training in calling a Mayday? It's the evolutionary step that takes us beyond our SCBA Emergency Procedures and prepares us to respond in a situation that has a huge potential to be mentally overwhelming. Mental rehearsals give us a low stress opportunity to work through various challenging situations we may have to confront. Thinking through what your actions will be if you find yourself in trouble will help reduce the stress if you suddenly find yourself lost, disoriented or trapped in a fire building. Mark Twain once said, "It takes me three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech." It makes sense if you think about it. You are not going to respond well the first time you see a problem. That is why we drill. It's why we need to practice applying the OODA Loop in our training. You can build your experience bank by analyzing possible situations, performing mental rehearsals, and conducting challenging scenario-based training.

There is no single way to learn any skill in the fire service. Fire Ground Tactical Decision Making is a complex process that is a synthesis of your experience, your training, your situational awareness, and your comfort level. The physical and psychological stresses of firefighting impact every one of us differently, and need to be addressed separately. Hopefully being introduced to the Boyd Loop, and taking the time to think about how your organization teaches decision making, you will be better prepared to confront the challenging environment of the fire ground. By ensuring that your firefighters have well planned SOGs, a solid foundation in the fundamentals of fire ground tasks, and have had the opportunity to be challenged with real-world scenario driven training you will prepare them to make critical, life or death, fire ground decisions.

    
 

 

 

    
 

 

 

 

You Want Me To Do What?

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."

– Mark Twain

Human beings have a natural apprehension when it comes to fire. This natural impulse to flee from an unrestrained fire is perfectly normal. It is an essential skill for survival. Fire is one of the most essential tools that we as human beings possess, and it also has the potential to be one of the most destructive. The need to respect this "creature" is a cornerstone for being able to safely use fire in the myriad of ways that we do.

As parents we recognize the need to teach our children to avoid situations which may cause them harm. This training begins with essential survival skills ranging from "don't put anything in your mouth that isn't food," to "stay away from the stove, it's hot." When we are dealing with children who are younger than seven years old, when the child's level of cognitive ability is still developing, most of this training takes the form of a conditioned response. If the child starts to approach the stove or campfire they receive a sharp, loud yell from the parent, and in many cases a slap on the hand. The idea is straight forward: scare them and stop them in their tracks, or show them that going near the dangerous thing has painful consequences. There is no other way to teach our young children to avoid these dangerous situations. However this early, and often stern, method of imprinting a behavioral pattern also leads to individuals developing an apprehension of fire. As we mature we are taught how to safely use fire: to cook; to heat our homes; to create structures which were unimaginable to our ancient ancestors. Our early fear of fire is transformed into an understandable respect for fire and its power, but underneath that respect is the unchangeable imprint left upon our three-year old psyche of mom or dad slapping out hand when we reached for the stove.

Firefighters must behave in an abnormal way when they choose to enter a building that is on fire. Choosing to disregard the normal psychological response to fire by entering a burning structure causes an understandable stress reaction even in an experienced fireman. In order to operate safely and effectively on the fire ground we must understand the psychological and physiological reactions which affect our performance, and how to manage our stress responses. This is the part where I need to lay a foundation. It may seem a bit complicated, but understanding how your body reacts and why you respond in certain ways will help you to develop the skills to control your response.

The Physiology

    Firefighting requires that an individual willingly enter an environment which poses a threat to his health and welfare, and while in that environment engage in strenuous physical activity while being hampered by the very protective clothing that is necessary to keep him from being burned, and disregard the undercurrent of fear which tells him he needs to flee. He must physically perform at the level of a Navy SEAL while maintaining situational awareness, anticipating the next steps to complete his assigned task and providing progress reports to his supervisor. Firefighting takes a toll on the firefighter both physically and psychologically.

Through out the late 1990s and the early part of the 21^st century a significant body of research has been conducted on the physiological effects of firefighting. Some of the most comprehensive work has been conducted by Dr. Denise Smith and Dr. Steve Petruzzello, collogues of mine at the Illinois Fire Service Institute. Their research continues, and is adding to the understanding that we must have of just how the human body reacts to the effects of firefighting.

Studying the physiological effects of firefighting is challenging because of the multiple variables which have to be considered: firefighters range in age from 18 to 70 years old; not every firefighter starts with a common level of physical fitness; differences in heredity and the way you were raised all play a factor in how your body will respond to the stresses that are place on it.

There are some conclusions that are consistently repeated across several studies. During firefighting operations firefighters reach their maximal, or near maximal heart, rate. Maximum heart rate is measured by subtracting an individual's age from 220 (i.e. the maximum heart rate for a 31 year old is 220-31=189 beats per minute [bpm]). Studies evaluating the heart rate of firefighters performing fire ground operations during interior structural firefighting operations show that heart rates between 164.1bpm to 183.5bpm are common.
In other words a 31 year old firefighter will be functioning at between 86.8% and 97% of his maximum heart rate while operating inside a structure fire. This level of physical exertion has multiple effects on the individual firefighter.

First the firefighter is increasing the level of thermal stress on the body because of the metabolic action required to perform the required actions. This metabolic stress can best be measured by the metabolic equivalent level (MET). One MET is the amount of energy/oxygen that your body uses while sitting quietly. Based upon studies by Barbara Ainsworth of the University of South Carolina firefighters can expend 12 METS of energy while conducting firefighting operations. This is the same level of energy expenditure seen in Navy SEALs, and professional boxers. As a comparison your body is working at roughly 13 METs if you are running 7.5 miles per hour (an 8:00 minute mile) at a 1% incline.

Second the firefighter must contend with an increase in thermal stress on the body from the elevated temperatures found inside a structure. Ambient air temperatures can rise above 449°F inside a burning building. At this level of ambient temperature the firefighter would not survive with out his protective ensemble of turnout gear and SCBA.

Third the firefighter must contend with the limitations placed upon his body by the very personal protective equipment that he needs to survive in the building. The National Fire Protection Association standard on firefighter safety, NFPA 1500, specifies that all firefighters shall use Coat, Pants, Boots, Gloves, Helmet and Protective Hood in conjunction with their SCBA. These elements of protective gear reduce the risk of the firefighter being burned through the use of fire resistant materials and layered structures. The unwanted effect of these garments is that the firefighter is less able to relieve heat stress through perspiration, as the insulating properties which prevent heat from burning him also trap his radiated body heat.

All of these aspects have been quantified through study into the physiology of firefighting. We can use the accepted standard of 98.6°F as the "normal" human body temperature. One study has shown that on average the tympanic temperature of firefighters completing 16 minutes of firefighting activity were elevated to 104.1°F, after operating in an atmosphere varying between 170.1°F and 199.9°F This physiological effect has been shown to reduce the heart's stroke volume, the amount blood the heart can pump in one contraction, and increase the dilation of blood vessels closest to the skin. These two factors can lead to a dangerous drop in blood pressure. This has potentially significant consequences, and it can be assumed that a number of the firefighter LODD which fall under the "Stress/Exertion" category are a result of this cardiac compromise.

If we assume that a firefighter equipped with the common "30 minute" SCBA cylinder is able to perform 16 minutes of work prior to exiting the fire building we can expect that he will exit the building with a body core temperature of 104°F and a pulse rate of 175bpm. Interestingly, research has shown that despite this level of physical exertion firefighters do not show a corresponding psychophysical effect.

The studies of Denise Smith and Steven Petruzzello have incorporated an evaluation of Rate of Perceived Exertion based upon the Borg scale. These studies examine the RPE based on physiological and psychophysical factors, but they do not take into consideration the purely psychological aspects. Based upon their research we can see that firefighters will rate their exertion as being "hard", a rate of perceived exertion that we would expect to see for a person with a heart rate of 150bpm, yet the recorded heart rates recorded should have elicited a response of "very hard" to "extremely hard". There is no clear clinical explanation for this variation. A component that must be considered is the subjective nature of measuring effort based upon the Borg Scale; it is all in the mind of the individual what "hard" means to him or her. Additionally we need to consider that the thermal stress, dehydration and the previously discussed cardiac compromise may affect the ability of the individual responder to accurately assess the level of exertion.

These physiological and psychophysical effects can be seen as having an effect on cognitive function as well. In the Smith's and Petruzzello's 1998 study subjects were assessed for their cognitive function after each of their three trials. Subjects were evaluated based upon their response time and degree of accuracy using a Continuous Performance Test. Response time decreased across all three trials. The authors' conclusion was that this could be attributed to the ability for neural signals to be transmitted more quickly across the warmed nervous system. The Continuous Performance Test used required the subjects to determine if a displayed number was a 0 or 9, or a number between 1 and 8. While this does provide some understanding of the basic response time of the nervous system, it is not an accurate predictor of how the individual's ability to analyze and respond to multiple sensory inputs while functioning in the fire environment. Even the United States Fire Administration acknowledges this, "The physical and mental demands associated with firefighting and other emergency operations exceed those of virtually any other occupation."

The Psychology

People assume that firemen aren't afraid of running into burning buildings. My experience has been to the contrary. When new candidates start in the fire service they have an understandable apprehension of what they are going to be called upon to do. We know that we are raised to have a fear of fire. That fear needs to be controlled however if we expect our firefighters to perform. In order to be able to control your psychological responses you need to understand the effect that fear and anxiety have on you.

The psychological responses of firefighters to the environment and activities they face are an aspect of firefighting has not received a great deal of focus from researchers. We can use the work of researchers like Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, Bruce Siddle and Loren Christensen in to the psychology of men in combat to develop an understanding of some of the effects psychological stress that firefighters can be expected to cope with.

An understanding of the psychological reactions we confront must start with a brief understanding of our nervous system. Every person's nervous system is comprised of two main components: the somatic nervous system, which is responsible for the actions of our voluntary muscular movements; and the autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for all of the functions that our body needs to perform automatically. It is primarily the role of the autonomic nervous system that we are concerned with.

The autonomic nervous system functions through the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). These two systems send signals to your organs, muscles, and brain directing actions, and they work in opposite directions. The SNS is responsible for increasing your heart rate and respiratory rate, diverts blood flow away from your skin through constricting blood vessels, and other actions that would be considered a part of our body's "Fight" response. The PNS has the opposite effect, it slows your heart rate when the need to move large quantities of oxygen have been reduced, and moderates your digestion, and you bowl and bladder control. The PNS is your body at "Rest".

During high stress situations like combat, your body switches its resources from the PNS to the SNS: your pupils dilate to enhance your vision, your heart rate increases to move a greater quantity of oxygen to the large muscles needed to fight or flee and you peripheral circulatory system contracts so that if you are cut you will bleed less. The downside to this sudden switch is that things such as bowel and bladder control can be quickly lost. You can urinate or defecate right on the spot. This is something that isn't often understood, and it isn't something talked about often, but it does happen. In The American Soldier, a study of the actions of soldiers in World War II, one quarter of all soldiers reported the loss of bowel or bladder control in combat. Responders who survived the September 11^th, 2001attacks on the World Trade Center reported numerous cases of uncontrolled loss of bowel and bladder control.

For firefighters the single most important side effect of the SNS taking primacy is the increase in heart rate. Emergencies are not scheduled events. When the alarm bell rings your heart rate begins to increase. Controlling that initial adrenaline dump is critical. The effects of an increasing heart rate because of anxiety have been documented by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and Bruce Siddle. The chart below is based on their published work.

Heart Rate	Physiological Reaction
60 BPM
80 BPM	Normal resting Heart Rate
90 BPM
115 BPM	Fine motor skill detriorates
120 BPM
145 BPM	Complex motor skills deteriorate
150 BPM
175 BPM	Cognitive processing deteriorates Loss of peripheral vision (Tunnel vision) Loss of depth perception Loss of near vision Auditory exclusion
Above 175 BPM	Irrational fight or flee
	Freezing
	Submissive Behavior
	Voiding of bladder and bowel

It is important to remember that these effects are only for stress induced heart rate increases, they do not apply to heart rate increases due to physical activity. Also, the heart rates should not be taken as concrete numbers. As always when we are dealing with people there is individual variation.

The "WHITE" zone is the level of anxiety and ability that we experience during our typical resting mode. We progress from "WHITE" to "YELLOW" as our heart rate begins to climb towards 115BPM. As your heart rate nears 120BPM you enter the "RED" Zone, where a loss of fine motor control begins to occur. Entering the "GREY" zone we are moving into a "panic" mode: cognitive ability, vision and auditory senses are all degrading quickly. If the heart rate exceeds 175BPM the psyche and the body essentially, "give up", and either flee or are unable to react.

The firefighter works in an environment where he may face an increase in his heart rate from both exertion and from anxiety. There is no conclusive study that has analyzed the effects of combining the effects of heart rate increase from exertion and a sudden increase in heart rate due to SNS stimulation. It is reasonable to expect that a experienced firefighter who is conducting interior operations, working on his first or second air-bottle will have his heart rate somewhere around the 160 to 180 beat-per-minute range. He will not likely be experiencing any significant psychological challenges, or a loss of cognitive function that impairs his ability to maintain his situation awareness. However if conditions suddenly and unexpectedly deteriorate, he may rapidly go from being calm and collected in the "Yellow Zone" to the "Black Zone" with out any warning.

There is some research we can examine though that can give us an insight into what happens when firefighters become disoriented. The Firefighter Disorientation Study examines the role that disorientation plays in firefighter fatalities. In 100 percent of the cases studied conditions changed suddenly from manageable for aggressive interior operations to prolonged periods of zero visibility conditions. We can expect that those rapid changes would bring about an understandable anxiety reaction. A flood of adrenaline, a quick shift from feeling in control of the situation to being overwhelmed by the conditions would all lead to the sudden surge of the SNS reaction. Couple that SNS surge with a near maximal heart rate and our firefighter is going to move into the "Black" Zone, and have a nearly overwhelming flight response. The dilemma is that when that flight response kicks in the cognitive function shuts down. Rather than calmly thinking, "I need to get my Company together, and turn us around here to follow this hose line out," the survival brain centers kick in and we will only do what we have practiced before. It we've never trained on what to do to maintain Company Integrity and maintain Situational Awareness under rapidly deteriorating conditions, panic will take over, we will become disoriented and those combined forces will result in us likely becoming a fatality.

Our goal must be to develop a training program and a philosophy that will help us stay in the "Yellow Zone", even under those circumstances where the "normal" fireman would be expected to suddenly jump into the "Grey" or "Black" zones. It requires a personal commitment to understanding yourself, your mind and body, and training yourself and your brothers and sisters to have the will to survive. It means becoming a Fire Service Warrior.

Conquering the Fight or Flight Response

    Developing survival skills has received quite a bit of attention from our brother and sister warriors in the Military and Law Enforcement Communities. Like us they can find themselves in a life threatening situation with little or no "warm up time". We have already drawn a comparison between the physical work load of firefighting and that of a Navy SEAL; let's see if we can learn some lessons from their survival skills as well. The SEAL, who is patrolling along the streets of Iraq, or the mountains of Afghanistan, is aware of the possibility of coming under attack; he is operating in condition "Yellow", alert and ready to respond. If he begins to take small arms fire from one or two enemy fighters, he has time to recognize and respond to the threat. He should be able to maintain himself in the "Yellow" zone. However if his patrol is suddenly hit by an Improvised Explosive Device (IEDs), or ambushed by a numerically superior force, the chances are that he could rapidly shift into condition "Grey" or "Black". The way the SEAL prepare for those sudden unexpected life threatening encounters is through Immediate Action Drills (IADs). In the IAD the entire platoon responds immediately by using one of several tactics which have been practiced hundreds of times, until the response becomes automatic. There is no need for the cognitive function to operate at 100 percent, because the response has become conditioned. It gives the SEAL Operator the tools to respond instantly and then get his cognitive reasoning back into the mix.

    Firefighters can also develop the ability to control the fight or flight response. The majority of training to be a Fire Service Warrior will be discussed in Chapter Four, but the critical skills needed by every individual firefighter will be talked about here.

    We have talked about how the sympathetic nervous system controls the "Fight or Flight" response. What we must do is develop the skills to control that response. We must train ourselves to recognize and identify that our body has started to go into panic mode, and have developed a conditioned response that will kick in to regain control of our heart rate before we enter the "Black" zone. Conquering the Fight or Flight response requires conscious effort. You must take the time to train yourself before you go out on a call.

    In my opinion the single most important element of conditioning yourself to be able to control your fight or flight response was summed up in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; DON'T PANIC! It may seem like a simple thing, but being conscious of how you are responding to the conditions around you sets the stage for being in control of you SNS responses. If you are not conscious of how you are beginning to respond then it is inevitable that your heart rate is going to begin increasing before you are even aware of it. You will begin to move from condition "Yellow" to "Red" to "Grey" with out even realizing it. Making the effort to stay aware of how your body is responding sets the stage for controlling your SNS responses.

    The hard part is how do you develop this kind of skill set? We each come to the kitchen table in the morning with different levels of self awareness. We see it in ourselves and our brothers and sisters. Some folks are aware of everything they say before they say it; others are constantly putting their foot in their mouth. We all know that brother firefighter who when the Company Officer asks him, "What were you thinking?" the response is "Nothing." That person isn't lying. He acted with out making a conscious decision about what he was about to do or say.

To develop the ability to be aware of your responses you need to start off by looking at yourself and asking, "What kind of person am I?" Do you regularly speak with out thinking? Do you hear the question, "What were you thinking," and not have an answer? Or, are you the kind of person who is able to articulate your thought process, whether you were right or wrong? Developing that understanding takes self reflection and honesty. You need to start there. Once you can honestly understand yourself then you can being working on how to control those primal survival responses that spring from the mammalian brain that trigger your SNS responses.

I find the best place to begin is with mental rehearsal. Think about the situations you may find yourself in. Think about what aspects of the job you are strong in, and where you are weak. Every one of us has weaknesses. I hate heights. I am not the kind of fireman who finds rappelling from the top of a water tower fun. So I work on it. I climb ladders every chance I get. I hop up and run around on roofs. I will practice self-survival techniques like window bail-outs just so I can conquer that fear. You need to do the same thing with the situations you may find yourself in. Rehearse what you would do if something goes wrong.

Picture yourself crawling down a hallway with your partner to conduct a primary search of a room immediately adjacent to the fire room. The Engine crew has a line stretched to the top of the stairway and is holding the fire in check, leaving you with enough room to get ahead and conduct your search. You are in the lead. Are you doing a left or right hand search? What tools do you and your partner have with you? Which ones do you have? You get to the bedroom door and just before you turn to enter the room the second bedroom flashes over. What are you going to do? If you haven't gotten blown across the hall what hand do you need to put on the wall to retreat? Where is your partner at now? Who is leading the way out? If smoke conditions have suddenly gotten worse, or you did get blown away from the wall, how can you orient yourself to the way out?

These mental rehearsals are important. First it gets you to think about the fact that things can go wrong. None of us want to think that we can get hurt or killed. We try to protect ourselves psychologically by thinking about how things seem to always work out. Unless you have experienced a firefighter fatality, or been injured on the fire ground, it is perfectly normal to not think about the fact that you could be in a situation that could cost you your life. We need to confront the reality that even if we do everything right, the possibly of everything going to Hell exists in every fire building we enter. The second benefit of the mental rehearsal is it gives you the opportunity to "War Game" your options. Think about the various situations you may find yourself in. Go through every action on the fire ground that you could find yourself having to perform: operating the nozzle, being the back-up guy, forcing the front door, being the pump panel operator, being the turntable operator of the aerial, being assigned to vent the roof. Think about the problems that can come up. What if the engine pressure isn't climbing as you throttle up; how do you fix it? What if four people are hanging out the front of a building calling for help; who do you rescue first?

I think the great many of the guys and gals who their peers look to as being "Kick Ass Firemen" already do this. They may not call it mental rehearsal, or even be aware they are doing it, but they are likely doing it.

The second skill set to develop is the ability to control your breathing. Remember how when you were a kid and excited about something that you could hardly speak? What did you mom or dad say, "Take a deep breath and then tell me what happened?" How rapidly you breath has a direct effect on how rapidly your heart beats. Biofeedback is the art, or science according to some, of consciously altering the responses of your autonomic nervous system by being consciously aware of how your body is responding. Breath control is one aspect of biofeedback that I have found to work for me. By consciously slowing your breathing, by concentrating on breathing in a slow, rhythmic manner you can slow your heart rate.

I use a tactical breathing exercise to control my breathing when I recognize that my heart rate is beginning to elevate because of anxiety. I got this exercise from Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's fine book On Combat, which has been referenced before. When you recognize that you are entering a stressful situation, and anxiety is beginning to kick in take that deep breath that mom talked about to a new level.

1. Inhale through your nose for a count of four. (One, two, three, four)
   
2. Hold your breath for a count of four. (One, two, three, four)
   
3. Exhale through your mouth for a count of four. (One, two, three, four)
   
4. Pause for a count of four. (One, two, three, four)
   

Repeat that series three times. You will feel your heart rate slow. You will feel the anxiety begin to ebb. You will be able to regain control of your SNS functions and give your cognitive ability the time to kick in. I've used this exercise dozens of times in the last several years when things get stressful. Whether it has been getting anxious before an interview, or trying to navigate through a complicated SCBA maze in zero visibility and high heat conditions.

The key is to use the tactical breathing exercise on a regular basis. You need to practice it. You need to put it together with the self awareness and the mental rehearsals so that when you are crawling down that hallway an conditions suddenly change you don't freak out, curl up in a ball and get ready to die. You will have the skills in place and the mental attitude to fight, and survive.

The Specter of Death

In the United States we kill roughly 100 firemen a year in the line of duty. Roughly 50% of those deaths are due to Heart Attacks, and another 25% are due to apparatus accidents, but that still leaves roughly 25 firemen a year who are dying because of something like being trapped, being disorientated, being struck by a wall or collapsing roof. We buried 106 Brothers and Sisters in 2005, and the United States Fire Administration has recorded 24 Firefighter fatalities so far in 2006. It's not the events like 9/11 which give me pause, but when you read about men like Robert Gallardy, a 47 year old Fire Capitan from PA who died from burns he suffered while conducting a training burn, or Lt. Curtis Meyran and FF John Bellew, who along with four other Brothers jumped from a sixth floor window of a New York City Tenement because they were steamed out. They died, and their bodies broke the falls of the four men who lived.

February 11th, 1998 my friend Tony Lockhart died when he became disoriented and ran out of air inside a tire shop at 106th and Western Ave. I was there. I got there after the fire had gone to shit and didn't find out Tony was missing until probably 20 minutes after I got there. I want to say that was about 11:00 p.m. I stayed that night until 2 a.m. or so when they recovered and removed Tony's body and the body of Pat King, another firemen who died in the same fire. Could Tony or Pat have been saved? Probably, if the level of training in Firefighter Survival and Rescue that is now widely available had been taught back then, but I know for me Tony's death served as a focal point of why one must take this job seriously. I can't say I've ever felt "Oh shit, I'm dead," in the moment of fighting a fire… for me I am so focused on doing what has to be done that there is little "fear", more a calculating though process. The fear comes afterwards. When you realize that putting your foot through a hole in the floor could have been really bad, or when you think about "What if…", "What if I hadn't gotten the hose unkinked?", "What if those guys hadn't gotten the windows taken out?"… those are the things that stick with you. Death is something that each of us needs to come to grips with in his own way. For me I have what some would say is a fatalistic attitude… if it's meant to be, then it's meant to be. I just assume that if it's my day then it won't matter if I'm crawling down a shitty hallway or that I choke on a piece of broccoli that is how things go. We all die. It isn't something to be feared, unless you live your life in fear. If you spend everyday afraid to live life to the fullest, afraid to embrace opportunities, to take chances and to live like you have nothing to loose then you will die scared and full of regret. To borrow a few lines from Jonathan Larson:

"… forget regret, or life is yours to miss… no day but today."

I love my job. I love what I do and if it is in the grand plan of the Universe that I should fall doing something that I believe is noble and honorable and love then I think that I will have achieved something few people ever do.

Where “Everyone Goes Home”, Goes Wrong

"Firemen are going to be killed right along. They know it, every man of them... firefighting is a hazardous occupation; it is dangerous on the face of it, tackling a burning building. The risks are plain.... Consequently, when a man becomes a fireman, his act of bravery has already been accomplished."

- FDNY Chief Edward F. Crocker 1908

Since September 11^th 2001 the Fire Service has been reeling. As a community, firefighters have been struggling to deal with the grief and sense of loss that accompanied the deaths of 343 of our brother in one fell swoop. I vividly recall being on duty that September morning. Just a shift day before, we had been talking about the incident during World War II when the B-24 Liberator bomber had flown into the Empire State Building. When we heard that a plane had flown into the World trade Center my first reaction was, "Wow, that's a weird coincidence." It was only when the second plane hit, as we watched live on CNN, that I realized the enormity of the situation. I remember later when the first tower fell saying to a co-worker, "We just lost a hundred guys," and his reaction was one of shock. He could not accept the idea that such a thing happened. In the days and weeks that followed we found out the true number. The Fire Department of the City of New York lost half again the number of firefighters who had been killed in the line of duty since the department was founded. That loss is one that as a community the fire service is still attempting to cope with. The number is so large and the cost nearly unimaginable that we are not yet able to fully comprehend the long term effects on our culture. We are just now coming to understand the heath effects on those responders who worked at "Ground Zero". Sadly we must accept that we will likely lose more of our own due to these long term effects.

One effect of these deaths that I have perceived is a growing trend toward risk aversion. I believe as a culture the Fire Service is less willing to risk lives to achieve our primary mission: to protect lives and property. This is my opinion.

    During the 1990's progressive Fire Service instructors and administrators saw the need to address firefighter fatalities. The out growth of that need was the development of programs such as "Get Out Alive", "Saving Our Own", and the implementation of Policies and guidelines requiring Rapid Intervention Teams. These were positive and proactive steps that recognized the inherent danger of firefighting and attempted to put in place training and response capabilities to aid in the reduction of firefighter fatalities. Since 9/11 however, the culture has embraced a new set of buzzwords: "Everyone Goes Home." The idea behind "Everyone Goes Home," is that every firefighter should return to his or her loved ones at the end of the shift. That is noble goal, but unfortunately it is a goal that is destined for failure.

I believe that the recognition of a need to reduce firefighter line of duty deaths is an important realization for the fire service. There are approximately 100 firefighters who die in the line of duty each year; the fire service must strive to embrace a model which limits to the extent possible these losses. We must not lose sight of the fact, however, that no matter what we do as a culture we will never achieve the goal of "Everyone Goes Home." Firefighting is a dangerous profession, and one that no matter our best intentions, or the quality and efficacy of our training, apparatus, personnel and equipment, will continue to claim the lives of those men and women who choose to enter a building which is being ravaged by the effects of unrestrained fire. The fire service must come up with a better goal than, "Everyone Goes Home," or we will find ourselves tied to an objective which is unrealistic and unattainable, and will ultimately mean that any loss of life is a failure.

Poorly defined missions have plagued our culture. A classic example of this is U.S. involvement in Somalia during 1992 and 1993. The United States initially went into Somalia in December of 1992, the waning days of the first Bush administration, with the intention of providing humanitarian aid to a nation racked by starvation and forced into that condition by vying factions of warlords seeking to use food as a weapon to gain the allegiance of the general population. We did help to restore the supply of food to the underprivileged and malnourished. We used our military force to ensure that food would reach the starving, and were able to keep the warring factions in check by an overwhelming show of force.

Once we turned that mission over to the United Nations Peace Keeping Force, those successes began to be undone. The UN forces in Somalia were unable maintain the level of intimidation, for lack of a better term, that the US Marines had mustered up. The warlords began to strike at the UN peace keepers, including the mutilation of a group of Pakistani soldiers who had been ambushed.

The response by the Clinton Administration was to launch a campaign against Mohammed Farid Adid by Special Operations Forces. Adid was seen as being the most powerful of the warlords. It was believed that if his clan was unable to challenge the UN forces, and the Non-Governmental Organizations. That mission centered on capturing Adid. The attempt to achieve that goal lead up to the battle on October the 3^rd, 1993, which most people have become familiar with because of the movie, Black Hawk Down, based upon the book by the same name. Despite disrupting the ability of Adid's clan to starve it's own people, and despite the successful execution of multiple, complicated, high risk special operations missions that overall mission undertaken by the men of Task Force Ranger was a failure because it did not succeed in capturing Adid. A poorly defined mission statement resulted in what was otherwise a military achievement being labeled as a "failure".

That "failure" defined the manner in which the US military was used for the remainder of the Clinton administration, and arguably until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Our political leaders became risk adverse; afraid of the public reaction that would come from the loss of American lives. We became involved in the conflict in Bosnia, but prosecuted the bulk of our operations using airpower. We avoided becoming involved in the genocide in Rwanda out of a fear of the cost it would have had in lives. We allowed Saddam Hussein to interfere with the efforts of UN Arms Inspectors and target our aircraft enforcing the no fly zones, and Osama bin Laden to attack our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and bomb the USS Cole, all with token cruise missile strikes in response. Our leaders' fears of the public reaction to losing the lives of American Soldiers caused our nation to become risk adverse, and may have set the stage for the very terrorist attacks which engendered our new found risk adverse culture in the fire service. Reeling from a shocking, public loss of life caused our national leaders to recoil from using out troops in battle; that is the risk we face in focusing our sights on the goal "Everyone Goes Home".

The underlying goal behind "Everyone Goes Home," is a good one: to raise awareness of those conditions which are killing our firefighters and seek to reduce or eliminate the preventable causes of line of duty deaths. If we look at the line of duty death statistics from the United States Fire Administration (USFA) we can look at the situations and conditions where firefighters are loosing their lives. We must first address where our statistics come from. In 2003 President Bush signed into law the "Hometown Heroes Survivors Benefits Act". This piece of legislation redefined the criteria for the circumstances which are considered a "Line Of Duty Death". The USFA report Fire Fighter Fatalities in the United States in 2005, distinguishes between the two criteria. For our purposes we will look at the statistics with out the inclusion of those 16 firefighters who were included because of the "Hometown Heroes" law and restrict or study to the 99 LODDs which meet the older standard.

    Interpreting the USFA data shows us that 27.2% of those Fire Fighters killed in 2005, died while performing their job on the fire ground. Additionally, 23.2% died as a result of fatal injuries sustained responding to or returning from an incident, 24.2% dies as a result of other duty, non-emergency responses, 14.1% died during a training evolution, 6% died as a result of a non-fire emergency response, and 5% died after an incident after report feeling unwell.

Figure 1

 

    We can also examine the causes of fatal injuries and the relative percentage of fatalities caused by a particular injury.

 

Figure 2

 

So, if we choose to say that in a perfect word no firefighter would suffer a Heart Attack, Stroke or Heat Exhaustion, and that not a single firefighter would die in an apparatus accident we would still loose approximately 28 firefighters in the Line of Duty each year. Such an achievement would be incredible, to reduce Firefighter LODD by more than 70% would be something to celebrate, but if we take the goal, the words of "Everyone Goes Home" to heart it is still a failure.

I do not believe that the Fire Service should promote the idea or culture of "acceptable losses". We should strive to see that all of our members are trained to be the best they are capable of being, and given the best apparatus, personnel, and equipment to operate safely.

We must be ready and willing to accept that even with the best of intentions we will lose people. It is time to do is begin teaching our brothers and sisters to not die in vain. I've often heard it said, and have parroted myself words to the effect of, "We didn't start the fire. We will do everything we can, but this is not "my fault", I'm just here to help," and "No one signed a suicide pact when they filled out the application, did they?" Two considerations are vital to keep in mind as you approach a situation: 1. Remember that this is not your fault and 2. You do not have to "waste" you life on a losing proposition with little or nothing to gain. However, we must consider that in our role as public servants, or more appropriately servants of the public, we must take risks that others will not.

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 known vacant building, no squatters or homeless people to worry about, removed from any exposure is a "risk nothing" kind of situation. There is no reason for us to be committing our people to fighting this fire from the inside. Sure, it is "fun", and because 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 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.