Fireground Tactical Decision Making - Part 2

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.