Mourning a Brother Lost

Last evening, March 30^th, Firefighter Brian Carey of the Homewood Fire Department, Homewood, Illinois, died in the line of duty. His partner, Karra Kopas, was seriously burned, and has a hard recovery ahead of her. Brian was a 28 year-old young man; Karra is a 21 year-old young woman.

It will be some time before the investigation into this incident reveals details of what happened. Based on the published reports in the Chicago Tribune, and the Southtown Star newspapers it sounds like there was a flashover. The crews on scene had one elderly resident out of the building and knew there was a wheel-chair bound man still inside.

I feel I can say this right now today, without a full investigation or report, that Brian Carey died living up to the fire service virtues of Honor, Courage, and Duty. Karra is going to have to suffer through treatments, and the recovery that comes from critical burns, for living with every ounce of her character our mission: To Save Lives and Property.

Brian and Karra are examples of the Fire Service Warriors I am proud to call my brothers and sisters. It is their obvious selflessness, courage, and sense of duty that I believe we need to honor in the fire service.

The calling of the Warrior is not for everyone. It requires selflessness and self-control that are not encouraged in this 21^st Century world. We live in a culture that promotes luxury as being a "right" and hardships as something that are beneath us. The Warrior, be he a Fire Service Warrior or one of our fellow Warriors in the Military or Law Enforcement know this isn't the case. Hardships are the reality of the world. Having the strength to accept the way of a Warrior is an acceptance of the difficult and the dangerous. It is accepting a life of hardship, pain, and continual self-control.

It requires a certain heroic quality just to accept a position that you know will place you in harms way, keep you from your family at the holidays, and force you to confront physical and mental challenges. You will be wet, cold, and tired far more often than you want to. You will likely be injured at some point in your career. Think of the words of Chief Edward Croker, FDNY, who said:

"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."

 

This is why true Warriors have been revered as long as stories of their exploits have been recounted. It is written that in 500B.C. Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher said,

Of every 100 men, 10 should not even be here, 80 are nothing more than targets. Nine of them are real fighters. We are lucky to have them, they the battle make. Ah but the one. One of them is a warrior and he will bring the others back.

 

Brian died last night living that very role, the role of the "one". My thoughts and prayers are with his family (his natural family and his fire service family) as they confront his loss. I hope that they can find solace in the fact that he died a hero's death, trying to rescue a neighbor who he had sworn an oath to protect. Brian has joined the heroes who have gone ahead.

Karra, my thoughts and prayers are with you as you recover. You are a Fire Service Warrior. You lived your duty and risked your life to try and save your neighbor. Stay strong, stay positive, and get back to the firehouse.

 

The Ready Position

I just got the official word that PennWell Publishing/Fire Engineering Books will be publishing my book. Now I just need to finish it! Hopefully you all will get your chance to buy "The Ready Position" at FDIC 2011!

Twitter

I'm now on Twitter.  You can follow my occasionally witty musings by following this link to ChrisFSW

Quick Update

Just a quick update.  I am working daily on completing The Ready Position, a book length treatment of my thoughts on the world of a Fire Service Warrior.

I have scheduled five 3-hour sessions of Fireground Tactical Decision Making.  These are all closed classes for specific agencies.  I may put together an open-enrollment course for June.  Details to follow.

Be Safe.

Fireground Tactical Decison Making Classes

I've formalize the process a bit for Departments that want to host a Fireground Tactical Decision Making Class.

The course is available in a one hour and forty-five minute session, that is the same class that will be presented at the Fire Department Instructor's Conference this year.  This is a perfect shift drill.  The Shift Drill format costs $215.00 per session for groups of up to 30 students in the Chicago area.  Students will receive a copy of the PowerPoint Handouts, and a Certificate of Attendance.  Discounted rate of $600.00 for Departments that book three consecutive shift days.

Custom sessions can be crafted for larger groups, or to incorporate your Department's Standard Operating Guidelines, or Tactical Scenarios, at affordable rates.  For agencies outside the Chicago Metro-Area (more than 30 miles one-way drive) email me for a quote.

Please contact me to schedule courses or talk about options for a custom session.

To Absent Friends

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? Possibly, if the level of training in Firefighter Survival and Rescue that is now widely available had been taught back then.

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 prefer to think of it as old fashioned Stoicism; I do not worry about that which I cannot control.

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. I don’t even think that Mayor in Brazil who outlawed death can avoid it. 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.

That is one of my biggest problems with where the fire service has headed since 9/11. People call the deaths of those 343 brave men tragic. It wasn't tragic, it was honorable. The deaths of the innocent men and women who died in the twin towers, or on Flight 93 were tragic. They had little choice in the events that unfolded. Those brave members of the FDNY on duty that day knew that they were entering a building that could very well kill them. They selflessly, and without any hesitation, climbed those stairwells to engage in a battle to save lives, as the bodies of people trapped above the fire crashed into the streets around them. They saved thousands of people that day, and they died as heroes.

I hope that the work I do, the idea of promoting the culture of the Fire Service Warrior, is a fitting way of honoring Tony, Pat and the thousands of selfless, courageous, and honorable brothers and sisters who have left us too soon. So tonight I will hoist a glass to the memory of Tony, and honor him and my brothers and sisters who have paid the ultimate price.

God Speed, Brother. You are missed.

Virtues Survey

I am asking interested firefighters to complete my Virtue Survey . Please rate the seven virtues of: Honor, Courage, Loyalty, Respect, Integrity, Duty, and Selflessness from most to least important. Thank you in advance for your help.

Be Safe

More Fireground Tactical Decison Making Classes

Well, I have scheduled 5 more confirmed Fireground Tactical Decision Making Classes before FDIC> They are closed classes, but I am officially taking the show on the road now. Currently I am offering a two-hour or three-hour course design as a Shift Drill or Weekly Drill. If you are interested in hosting please email me for details.

Be Safe.

Brother Burned in Alabama

The following was sent out on the Secret List, and can be found on the Firefighter Close Calls website.

"Hey,
A Duncanville (Alabama) Volunteer Firefighter is in the burn unit following serious injuries he received while operating at a dwelling fire Wednesday night. Firefighter Casey Hinsey, 29, was burned on his hands, arm, neck and face and remains at the UAB Burn Center in Birmingham as of this morning. Smoke was showing when Firefighters entered the house around 1800 (Wednesday night) and it reportedly flashed over while members were operating inside. FF Hinsey became disoriented and had to be pulled out of the house by other firefighters. Updates to follow on our home page."

Once again, this is a preliminary report, but if it is accurate it highlights again that we need to control the environment of a fire building or it is going to kill us. I live in Cook County so I like to follow the philosophy of "Vent Early, Vent Often." I'll be talking about this a bit more in the future.

Be safe.

The Ready Position – A Fire Service Warrior’s Personal Condition

    "Be Prepared" is the motto of the Boy Scouts, and it is a theory that firefighters the world over should ascribe to. As a firefighter, being prepared means placing yourself into a Ready Position, being prepared for the physical and psychological stresses that you will face each and every day. The Ready Position is an idealized state of Personal Condition. Personal Condition is a term that is used in a variety of ways in the psychology/sociology communities to represent what a person "brings to the table".

For my purposes Personal Condition will be defined as "a firefighter's ability to respond to the psychological and physiological stresses of firefighting as governed by his training, experience, and belief systems." Regardless of how prepared we are on any given day, or given response, we all have a Personal Condition. For the Fire Service Warrior, the Ready Position is "the state of readiness where a fireman is at the peak ability to emotionally, cognitively and physically perform offensive operations on the fireground." When you are in the Ready Position you are prepared for the known general conditions that are present at every emergency response and for the unknowable specifics that you must process on your arrival. If the Ready Position is our ideal condition we will call the opposite end of the spectrum unprepared. Along the way we hit milestones in our readiness. Each one of us falls somewhere along this continuum on any given day. Our goal must be to strive for the Ready Position every day, and on every call.

Physical Readiness

    For the Fire Service Warrior the "easier" state of readiness to achieve is that of Physical Readiness. I use the term easier with tongue firmly in cheek. The level of physical fitness that is required to prepare for the physiological stress of the fireground is anything but easy, but compared to the demands of forging mental readiness it is simpler to track and measure.

I've said before, firefighting is combat. Like combat, firefighting requires us to engage in physically and psychologically stressful tasks. The effects on the body are multifold. The exertion of firefighting is equivalent to the metabolic effort engaged in by Navy SEALs and professional Boxers. To effectively combat the effects of physiological and psychological stress firefighters should maintain a level of physical fitness that is commonly associated with elite athletes.

    Firefighting is not the same as running marathons however. A significant portion of what we are called upon to do demands strenuous muscular effort. Forcing doors, pulling ceilings, raising ladders, advancing hoselines, and carrying victims all require muscular strength and endurance. In order to properly prepare for the physical challenges, a fireman needs to couple strength training with metabolic training.

Training for the Physical Battle

 

    In order to develop the strength required for firefighting we need to examine the kind of work we do as firefighters and what types of exercises will be most beneficial. As firefighters, we perform motions that are rarely mimicked by isolation exercises. Our efforts require the use of multiple muscle groups working together. Let's examine the act of pulling a drywall ceiling. Essentially you can "pull" or "push" using a pike pole to bring the ceiling down. If you take a minute and think about what hurts when you finish pulling several rooms of ceiling you being to realize you are using a significant number of muscles, including the "quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, abdominals, torso rotators, lower back stabilizers, deltoids, trapezius, triceps, biceps, and muscles of the forearm and hand (grip)". These muscles are being used at the same time and in the eccentric, concentric, and isometric movements. This "simple" act of pulling ceiling requires the Central Nervous System to coordinate all of these movements, and you need to have sufficient strength, endurance, and flexibility to perform the action.

The need to develop effective physical fitness in the Fire Service has been recognized. The International Fire Chiefs and the International Association of Firefighters have partnered to create the "Wellness-Fitness Initiative" (WFI) to promote physical fitness and mental wellness. An outgrowth of the WFI movement has been the Candidate Physical Ability Test (CPAT). The CPAT is designed as a screening tool to see if prospective candidates have the basic physical ability to perform essential fireground tasks. The "Peer Fitness Trainer" program is another means that the Wellness Fitness Initiative has developed to promote physical fitness. Peer Fitness Trainers are certified by the American Council on Exercise as Personal Trainers with a specific background in the fitness methods advocated by the WFI.

Outside of the "official" fire service fitness programs, there are fitness "movements" that have caught on in the fire service, law enforcement and military community. One in particular is CrossFit. CrossFit is a fitness philosophy and community founded by Greg and Laura Glassman. Their fitness methodology can best be summed up as "broad, general and inclusive" and is marked by their fitness prescription of "constantly varied, high intensity, functional movements." To accomplish this goal the CrossFit community advocates training in functional lifting using power-lifting and Olympic-lifting movements, gymnastics skills, and interval type training. They also use their trademark "Girls" and "Hero" workouts, which are generally couplets and triplets of movements involving both strength and "cardio" movements performed for time. Fire Departments and firemen around the country are using CrossFit's methods and work-outs to prepare for the physical challenges of the job.

There are many methods out there for getting fit; the key is picking one that focuses on the skills of the fireman: lift, carry, pull, push and chop; with the intensity that mimics that of the fireground. While developing the fitness level of a Navy SEAL, a Boxer, or an Olympic Cyclist may seem extreme, the facts support our need to do so. One of the roadblocks to getting firemen to train the way they should is the fact that an exercise program that is sufficiently intense to prepare you adequately for the rigors of firefighting HURTS. Squatting, Pressing, and Dead Lifting weights heavy enough to develop the strength needed to grasp the SCBA harness straps of a downed firefighter and drag him from a building is going to be hard work.

Maybe you feel like you don't need to have the strength to drag a 300# firefighter from a building unaided. You're wrong. You should be able to at least BEGIN to rescue your partner if he or she suddenly becomes incapacitated inside a structure fire. Yes, you are going to call a RIT Team, you are going to have help eventually, but you cannot just sit there and wait. Beyond the possibility of having to rescue your partner there are the very real physical demands that "normal" operations place on our bodies. Published literature has shown that firefighters performing fire ground operations during interior structural firefighting commonly reach heart rates of 164bpm to 183bpm.
This is a significant work load. The fitter you are, the greater work capacity you have; the greater your work capacity, the more controlled your heart rate and breathing will be while performing strenuous fireground tasks. In short, the fitter you are the more likely you are to survive on the fireground.

Measuring Your Progress

You need to be able to perform to a standard that measures your ability, be it the Candidate Physical Ability Test (CPAT), the CrossFit work out of the day (WOD) Fran, or a program of your own design. Numbers don't lie. You can measure the success of your fitness program by recording defined parameters over the course of time. Test yourself: hop on the treadmill in full turn out gear, with your SCBA, and walk at 4 miles per hour, until your low air alarm activates. How many minutes were you on air? What was your resting heart rate when you began? What was your heart rate one minute after finishing? Now, engage in your planned exercise program for six weeks to eight weeks. Retest yourself. Did your numbers improve? If they did you are on the right track, and if they didn't you are probably not working out efficiently. However you measure your efforts the key is to see progress. By using the research into the metabolic energy that firefighters typically expend as a yard stick you can evaluate your personal level of fitness against a standard and determine if you are preparing for the challenges of firefighting.

Mental Readiness

Firefighting challenges us mentally as well physically. In discussing hoe we prepare for the mental aspects of firefighting we are grouping two key areas of psychology under one umbrella. We must be prepared for the impact of stress on our cognitive abilities, as well as our emotional health.

    When you consider the environment that firemen operate in there are two primary "action states". You are either "at rest", around the firehouse or conducting a non-emergency routine assignment or you are "working", engaged in mitigating an emergency that is putting someone's life in danger and may kill or injure you. I'm going to restate for the sake of understanding that I am addressing fireground operations for the most part. For many departments EMS, and Fire Prevention are the bulk of their daily duties, with "still alarm" type incidents, rubbish fires, auto fires, and the like, filling in the rest of the day. Few departments are responding to a structure fire every day, and those that are generally see that duty spread across various companies. This reality should emphasize our need to think about how we prepare for the mental challenges found in firefighting. That preparation will carry over into being prepared for any eventuality.

    One of our challenges in preparing for the mental impact of emergency response is that we do not have a set-aside time to "put our game face on". We rapidly shift from one state of being to another when a call is dispatched. Being mentally prepared, therefore, must be continually strived for.

    To be ready for our "Action State" we must have a solid foundation in Situational Awareness and Fireground Tactical Decision Making. These skills cannot be underestimated. Utilizing a mental model like the Boyd Loop focuses you as you Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. This system helps you control how your brain processes information. The most effective way of confronting a difficult situation is to have a procedure to fall back on. In the fire service we have procedures and guidelines that tell us when we are going to perform maintenance on our apparatus, what tool we will take based on our riding assignment, and checklists for how to call a MAYDAY. You can choose to incorporate the Boyd Loop into your personal condition as a way of gathering and interpreting information on the fireground. By doing this regularly you will have a mental model that you can use if you suddenly find yourself in a truly life threatening situation, like a sudden change in conditions that may lead to disorientation.

Challenges

The mental challenges that we find on the fireground come from several sources. First we have the anxiety brought on by behaving in an abnormal fashion. It is not "normal" to run into a burning building, and our brains recognize this. Secondly there is the stress associated with confronting traumatic circumstances. The reality of being a firefighter is that you will deal with people in their worst moments, you will be faced with the dead and the dying, and you will have to untangle broken, mangled, and maimed people. It is imperative that we develop a means of forging mental readiness for these potentially difficult situations.

    Preparing for the effects of fear induced anxiety requires an understanding of how our body responds to psychological stress. When we face a life threatening situation our body engages the well known "fight or flight" response. This is the body marshaling resources to protect itself and causes a shift from parasympathetic to the sympathetic nervous system. An uncontrolled SNS reaction can lead directly to a chain reaction of negative consequences that impair the cognitive function, and the ability to use your senses to gather information from the world around you. Controlling your breathing, as a biofeedback technique, can help slow an anxiety induced elevated heart rate and allow you to regain your cognitive function.

     Preparing for the emotional challenges of firefighting is another important aspect of mental readiness. From personal experience and non-scientific observations of literally thousands of firefighters, police officers and military members around the world I have come to the conclusion that how an individual views him or her-self is the key factor in coping with the emotionally stressful elements of our profession. We each view the world through a prism that gathers outside information and compares it to our view of the world. In Boyd Theory his is a synthesis that occurs in the Orientation phase. For the sake of clarity I am going to use the term Life Stance to describe the synthesis of philosophical and religious learning that you have to frame your concept of life.

Stoicism

Stoicism is one way, practiced by warriors for thousands of years, to deal with stressful situations. Stoicism is "indifference to pleasure or pain." The idea of the stoics was to accept that there are things we cannot control and to not be affected by them. Epictetus, a stoic sage whose teachings were recorded by his students, says in The Handbook, "Some things are in our control and others not." He goes on to say "Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions". His meaning is that we do not get to choose if we will be 6'2" or 5'3"; we do not get to control if we are born into wealth or poverty; we have no say in how others will interpret our actions.

    We do have the ability to choose how we will respond to the actions of others, and to the circumstances we are faced with. Say you are assigned to the first due Truck Company on the scene of a structure fire in a single family home. In the bedroom just off the fire room you find the unconscious body of a 7 year-old girl. You notify command and remove her from the building to a waiting EMS unit. After the fire you find out that she was pronounced dead at the hospital. How will you choose to respond? Some people will shrug the situation off as "unavoidable" or "not my fault" others will become emotionally stressed by the situation.

    

    Epictetus would likely say: "Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible; else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death that it is terrible." In other words the death of the girl should not affect you, unless you had personal control over it. Did you perform your job within the scope of your training and to the best of your ability? Were you physically and mentally prepared for your assignment? Did you know your riding position, tool assignment, and role based on Department Standard Operating Guidelines? If you can answer yes to these questions then there is little likelihood that you had control over ANY of the circumstances that lead to the young girl's death. The zealous stoic would say that you should be unaffected by this; it was not within your control. The ideal of stoicism is very different from the reality of human emotion and interaction. Anyone who is emotionally healthy will be affected by the death of a seven year-old. Even though children die everyday the normal person will see this as a "bad", "upsetting", "unnatural" occurrence. The reason for this is we see children as being innocent, incomplete, and full of potential. The death of a young child seems wrong to us because that child hasn't had a chance to become something greater. These are all reasonable reactions. The key is to have developed a "dimmer switch" that helps us not become emotionally handicapped by our reactions to the daily horrors we face. Our training, experience, and or life stance all impact our ability to handle the emotional stress of our position in a healthy way.

Training is perhaps the "easiest" starting point. Our training occurs in three key ways: formal classes, company level, and individual study. Formal classes are the prevue of state regulatory agencies and fire departments. An organization can provide personnel an introduction to the emotional realities they will face. The adage "forewarned is forearmed" is entirely appropriate. There are departments that have veteran firefighters who have been burned, or injured, present their stories to recruit classes during Fire Academy. This is valuable because it takes the abstract idea of the dangers of the fireground and makes it real for the new recruits. An introduction to the psychological challenges that may be faced should occur during recruit training to enable the individual to begin forming a coping system. Training should detail common reactions to psychological stress, unhealthy behaviors to watch for, and offer strategies for coping with the emotional challenges of being a first responder. When it comes to dealing with emotionally challenging situations that occur during normal operations we can work with our people informally on a Company level. Having veteran personnel share situations like our example, in "kitchen table" sessions offers newer members a chance to learn from the experiences of more experienced members. When we look at preparing for the psychological stresses of firefighting we need to study ourselves and by ourselves to adequately prepare. Knowing yourself means having a clear understanding of how you respond to stress. As individuals we can study stoic philosophy, read about choice theory, or find another means of preparing for the expected stress of our position.

Experience is a more elusive tutor. I can't remember who first told me, "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." Truer words have never been spoken. You do not know how a situation will affect you until you have been through it. You build the foundation for how you cope with each successive exposure. Consider for a moment the stereotypical "inner-city fireman" who, because of repeated exposures to emotionally stressful circumstances, without a healthy coping skills, suffers "burn-out". What happens? He begins to hate the job he once loved and dreads having to go to work. Our experiences both in and out of the fire service lay a foundation for how we respond to stress.

Your life stance can be any religious, spiritual, or philosophical system, or combination of them all, you live your life by. It may be something that you were raised with, or it may be something you have chosen for yourself. Regardless of how you came by the prism you view the world through, you have one and it is uniquely yours. Understanding how that foundation impacts your thoughts and your response to stress will allow you to choose how to use that system, to live a healthy life style.

Choice and Self-Control

Most people will say that they just react and that they cannot do anything about it. This is where the lessons of the stoics can help us develop a means of controlling how we respond to emotionally challenging situations. You can choose how you will respond. The choices you make in response to the events that impact you or the way you are treated are 100% within your control. You can choose to relinquish control over your thoughts and your emotions by allowing yourself to react to the things that others do or say, but that is a choice. Rather than "react" we as individuals need to respond to the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" in a thoughtful and constructive manner.

At some point in each of our lives we have heard a co-worker, friend, lover, parent or partner say, "You make me feel (fill in emotion)", we have probably said it ourselves. The reality is that no one can make us feel anything, nor can we make anyone feel a particular emotion. I can MAKE you feel pain if I pick up a baseball bat and hit you in the head, but I can't make you feel worthless as a person. We choose to feel hurt or sad or worthless based upon the credence we give the words, or actions, of another person. That is a tremendous amount of personal power that we relinquish when we allow others to hold sway over us like that.

Choosing how you respond to an individual's words and actions directed specifically towards you is one step on the road of mastering your personal condition. Our example of the young girl is the next step in choosing how we will respond. This a circumstance where responding in a sympathetic manner is appropriate: you can acknowledge that the family of the girl must be devastated, while accepting that you are not responsible for her death. You did your job to the best of your ability to rapidly locate and remove her from the structure. You transferred her to the best available medical treatment. You acted in accordance with the accepted practices of your organization and within the scope of your training. You can "choose" to feel personally responsible, or you can accept that people everyday die. Some people die in horrible ways like suffocating in a fire, others "peacefully" in their sleep. Some people die as children, others live to be over a hundred years old. You have no control over who dies when, unless you specifically commit an act that kills them.

The Ready Position

In order to be in the Ready Position you must master both your physical and mental condition. Mastering these two primary components of your Personal Condition requires thoughtful analysis of yourself. The Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung is credited with saying, "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." This applies to how we approach our own physical and mental readiness. You have to understand your strengths as well as your limitations in order to maximize your abilities, and be prepared for the challenges of the fireground. Once you understand your personal condition you can see where you are along the path to the Ready Position. Then the real work begins. You will not get to the Ready Position by working on your strengths, but by focusing on your weaknesses. Diligent effort, focus, and study will prepare you for the physical and mental challenges you will face daily on and off the job.

 

    

Reader Feedback

I received an email today from Pat, who sat down to read my Mental Readiness post.

 

Wow - Christopher - from the photograph on your 'Mental Readiness' article - you appear to be a young man, not someone from the 1960's. I'm surprised you would use such a term as "firemen" or "fireman". 

We are not "police-men" or "fire-men" or "fisher-men" any more. You may not have a woman in the fire service - but there are women in the fire service. 

I didn't even bother reading the rest of the article for fear of other stereotypes.

Sincerely,

Pat

 

 

I really took some time to think about Pat's email. Pat's concern is a valid one. People use words everyday with out really thinking about how they may be understood by others. While I may mean a word to be taken in a certain context, a reader might not perceive it that way. One of the challenges I face as a writer is that I write the way I speak, but if you come in to the middle of my conversation you may be offended by something I say. Below is my reply to Pat's email.

 

Pat,

Thanks for the feedback. In an earlier post, which was also published by Fire Engineering, I wrote:

It is my view of what each and every one of us who call ourselves a fireman should aspire to. I am 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.

I realize that the word "fireman" has gender implications. Several women I know in the fire service are honored to use the term fireman to apply to themselves, and do so regularly. I debated painting a picture using "firefighter" and "employee of the fire department" instead of "fireman" and "firefighter." I felt that is was clumsy writing though, and did not flow as well. You are the first person who has raised this as a problem with me, and I hope you believe me when I say I am going to spend some time thinking about this. The difficulty as a writer is trying to find a happy balance between interesting narrative and communicating with the widest spectrum of readers.

I hope that my elaboration will assuage your concerns about stereotypes and that you will give the information a read and tell me what you think about the information presented. Thank you for emailing me. A lot of people would have just blackballed the info and ignored it, but never given the author a chance to learn from your thoughts. Be safe.

Chris

 

I was honored that Pat took the time to write. I am not all knowing, and I love to learn from the people who take the time to read this blog. Don't hesitate to email me. Pat, thanks again for writing.

 

Fireground Tactical Decision Making

I am presenting Fireground Tactical Decision Making this week for the duty crews in Itasca and Wood Dale. The class is going well, and I am getting great feedback.

For anyone interested in hosting Fireground Tactical Decision Making at your department, it makes a great shift drill and will get your people thinking. Please leave a comment or email me at thefireservicewarrior@gmail.com and I will happily quote you a price.

Be Safe.

FDIC 2010

I am going to be presenting Fireground Tactical Decision Making at the Fire Department Instructor's Conference in Indianapolis this year. http://www.fdic.com/index.html

The class is an one hour and forty-five minute overview of key concepts in Situational Awareness, Disorientation, and John Boyd's OODA Loop Theory. The class culminates in several "practice" sessions where attendees will get to apply the concepts in Tactical Exercises.

I'm scheduled to present on Thursday, April 22nd at 1:30pm.

For those in the Chicago-Metro area, I will be conducting a pilot class next week January 19, 20 & 21. If you can't make FDIC, or would like a preview, email me or leave a comment. There are a limited number of spots available.

Hazardous Materials Response

Before I started writing on the the Fire Service Warrior topics I published several articles on Hazardous Materials response. Below is one that was published by Fire Engineering in the May 2004 issue.

First-due fire companies will initially recognize many haz-mat incidents. Your engine crew may be dispatched for the "odor investigation," for example, and arrive at a construction site to find a drum leaking an unknown substance. Your truck crew may be assigned to investigate an "unknown alarm" going off, called in by a cell phone caller, of course, and find that it is a chlorine alarm at a local pool. It is the first-due company that will initiate the haz-mat response team's (HMRT) action and set the stage for the incident.

Members who aren't certified haz-mat technicians sometimes feel that there is little they can do between calling for the response team and that team's arrival. That is far from true. Taking small but crucial steps in the first minutes will dramatically improve the course of the entire incident. What, then, can our first-due responders, our awareness- and operations-trained personnel, do to make
this situation better without exceeding the scope of their training? They can keep themselves and the local civilian population out of the hazardous area and establish the incident management system (IMS).

The entire article can be found online: Engine and Truck Company Initial Actions

Give it a look.

A Cold Day

I wrote this about four years ago, in my first year with my current department. I'm in the process of working on my article on "Personal Condition", hope to share that soon.

Well, yesterday was a decent day. We caught a few runs: a Gas Leak which turned out to be nothing; an automatic alarm, which we got held up on; a reported car fire that was bogus and then at 4:30 this morning or so we caught a working fire. The building was a 2 story coach-house (garage below with living space above) about 50x20. Near as I could tell the 1st floor was ordinary construction and the second floor was frame. We pulled up as the second engine. I went to the front and helped finish flaking out the first line. I managed to get the Lieutenant who was stretching the line to give me the pipe (nozzle) for the initial attack.

As far as I am concerned there is no better place to be on the fire ground then the pipeman on the first line. You are going in to do battle with the enemy. The enemy is two-fold though: 1st there is the fire, which is a living, breathing, eating thing that will kill you to death if you let it outsmart you. 2nd there is the building you're in. You're working inside of a structure that is being degraded and destroyed the entire time you are in it. Today I put my foot through a step at one point and nearly fell into a hole in the floor. That and of course the only thing holding the building up (it's "gravity resistance system") is being eaten away. So, there is of course some need to operate swiftly and with purpose if you're going to be headed inside one of these things.

So, I started to make the stairwell. Smoke had banked all the way down the stairs so we were on air (using our SCBA [Self Contained Breathing Apparatus] from the get go and visibility was about 6 inches or so. I just stared making my way up the stairs. I got about 6 or 8 steps up and started to see orange. The glow or heat from a fire is usually your guidepost because visibility is so bad. You don’t want to start flowing water unless you are actually hitting the fire because all you will do is disrupt the thermal balance and make things worse.

The idea behind this is that fire, smoke and the rest do follow the laws of physics and that heat and smoke rise. So, it is considerably hotter at the ceiling level then at the floor (at times 600 or 700 degree different). If you randomly apply cold water to the ceiling you cool the super heated gasses and cause them to "fall", which makes visibility even worse and pushes toxic products of combustion down to the floor level. That will cause harm to any unprotected civilians that your brothers are still searching for.

I was moving one stair at a time. Open up, darken the fire down, shut down move. It is a pretty straightforward sequence. Once I made the landing at the top of the stairs, though I had fire burning on both sides of me. I just sat at the top of the stairs for awhile working one side and then the other until finally the fire was knocked enough to be able to advance into the room to the right. We began working out way deeper into the building. There was fire continually lighting up behind us which made our advance a sort of one step forward, two steps back affair. You never allow fire to break out behind you. Things like that kill firemen.

We got a second line up on the roof outside the area we were fighting the fire in and they we able to darken down a section that we were unable to reach. It wasn't a very hot fire, but it was shitty smoke wise. Eventually I used up my first bottle (each bottle is in theory designed to last 30 minutes. When you are really working hard 17 or 18 is more typical if you’re in shape.). I beat feet outside, changed bottles and was right back in. By this point my gear is soaked, my gloves are soaked and being outside just means icing up. There was still enough fire and heat trapped in the building that it was a whole lot more comfortable in there. I was back in, pulling ceiling (which we do to expose void spaces). Between your drywall and the structural members above there is a space formed by the framing lumber. In this case it was a 2"x6" Rafter roof so every 16-24" on center there is a 2"x6" board running front to back but the ceiling was dropped about 2" below that leaving a clear open void running the entire top of the building (the rafters will run the shortest distance between outside walls, so that "orientation" changes from building to building.) Fire was running through this area pretty fiercely. We pulled ceiling through out. The bathroom was fun to operate in. The toilet was literally overflowing with shit. Abandoned buildings like this get their water shut off and other utilities disconnected, but they become shelters for squatters and the homeless, especially in weather like this. Once we found that the toilet had been... heavily used, so to speak, we started another search to make sure that we didn't have someone in the building.

Searching is a very difficult task. You can't see and then you are wearing full gear and heavy gloves. Your senses are reduced to that of a blind, deaf, half-nerve damaged moron. It's easy to mistake the body of a person as a pile of clothing or the cushions of a couch. A couple of guys started a secondary search (which is a fairly comprehensive search begun once the fire is mostly under control). We had done a primary search as we advanced the line (a primary is a RAPID search of likely areas to find someone: close to doors or windows; sleeping quarters; paths of egress. 70% of victims are found in these areas).

Three air-bottles and 2 hours later we had the fire knocked down and got into overhaul. Overhaul is a process of checking for hidden fire and extension. We pull furniture and piles of clothes apart... anything that is dense and may be hiding from view smoldering fire. We open walls and ceilings if it hasn't already been done and we wash everything down pretty thoroughly. The best way to make sure you don’t have a rekindle is to soak the living shit out of everything. By this point my first pair of gloves literally have so much water in them that I have water pooling up in the fingers. I dump those in the rig before we start overhaul because I know that my hands will start to freeze now that the building is cooling off. The building was a loss; whoever had been squatting there probably caused the fire with some kind of warming barrel, or by burning trash in the sink or tub to keep warm.

Picking up was a joy. It is now, at 9:55 CST 1, degree outside, so this morning it was probably a couple of digress below zero. The streets are covered in ice. I was one of the few guys who managed not to fall. My gear is soaked so I am turning into a popsicle just by being outside and the fingers on my second pair of now wet gloves keep freezing so I can't move them. I have to mash my hands together to force the ice on the fingers to break. We have to pick up all the hose and drain it and roll it. Normally we put the hose back on the rigs, but in weather like this everything goes back to the station to thaw first. 2nd Shift brought the pick-up out to load the frozen hose on and about 7:15 (which is 15 minutes after shift change) we all headed back. It took till 8:30 to get everything back in service. Bottles refilled with air, frozen 1-3/4" handlines thawed enough to hang in the hose tower, 5" supply line drained, thawed and cleaned to re-bed. Fortunately we had all of the 2nd shift guys and about half our shift that held over so it only took an hour or so to get the bulk of it done.

So, I am a bit tired, my fingers are still a little stiff and my back and arms are a little sore... I need a hot shower and something to eat, but I am satisfied. I love working in the ghetto. I wish there was some more politically correct term that would to justice to the town, but ghetto is it. It's falling apart and burning down. As a fireman it is a great place to go to really do the job and to continue to learn. The officers I work with are good teachers and patient. The guys are super supportive and encouraging. I've never before felt so welcome, so quickly to a new fire department. This is a group of men who I am proud to work with and touched when they call me brother. I'm very happy I made this choice. Cheers.

A Few Updates

Just to keep everyone in the loop Fire Engineering magazine will be publishing my article "You Want Me To Do What? - The Psychology and Physiology of Firefighting" in December's Print Issue. I also have received word that they are going to publish my Situational Awareness article in an issue next year. I'm sitting down to work on "The Ready Position - A Fireman's Personal Condition". More to come.

Situational Awareness Part 2

It's a Team Sport

    Firefighting is a team sport. We are not operating as individuals, and as such the actions of the Team are vital in our ability to maintain Situational Awareness. We accomplish this through the use of our SOGs, knowing what our teammates are doing based upon the situation. Think about a successful NFL Football Team. If the Offense has any hope of moving downfield and scoring a touchdown the guy calling the plays, be it the Head Coach (the I/C), the Offensive Coordinator (the Ops Section Chief) or the Quarterback (the Group Supervisor), has to rely on the each member of the team to perform his assigned mission without needing to be micromanaged. What happens when someone misunderstands the play that has been called? The Quarterback gets sacked, the pass gets intercepted, or the running back does not have a hole to run through. That well conceived plan is only as good as the execution of the individual team members. NFL teams play 16 games a year for sure, but they practice from the end of July till the beginning of September to make sure everyone knows the playbook. I'm going to use the Baltimore Ravens 2009 Training Camp Schedule as an example (they are the first Team listed on the NFL's website). They began practice for the season on July 28^th with twice a day practices. The first full-day that the players were off was August 14^th. During this time the team practiced 26 times, had team meetings and a pre-season game. These men work hard to make sure they are prepared physically before the season starts and then develop their ability to play as a team through difficult, realistic practices. Is your fire department training that hard? Do your companies know what everyone else on the fireground is going to be doing based on well developed SOGs and realistic scenario training?

    A key concept on the fireground is Implicit Coordination, the non-communicated coordination of action that takes place on the fireground. One study, Implicit Coordination in Firefighting Practice: Design Implications for Teaching Fire Emergency Responders, by Zachary O. Toups and Andruid Kerne of Texas A&M examines this in some detail. The authors examine how firefighters use "complementary communication modalities, well-defined roles, and shared experience histories to implicitly coordinate their actions." These aspects of Implicit Coordination allow firefighters to maintain a collective Situational Awareness, which the authors of the Texas A&M study team "Team Cognition". Team Cognition is an example of Distributed Cognition, "a theoretical framework for investigating how information is coordinated within systems of people, artifacts, and environments", that applies to small group actions, like a Fire Company, or a Football Team. In Team Cognition, or Team Situational Awareness as I call it, we are aware of the actions of the rest of the team based upon the audible and environmental cues we are receiving. If we do not have 100% knowledge of everything that is happening on the fireground because of direct observation, then we "fill in the blanks" using the cues we observe.

    As an example Tom and Bill are assigned to the Engine; Tom has the nozzle, Bill is the back-up man. They arrive on scene of a reported structure fire to find a working fire in what appears to be the kitchen of a one story ordinary house. They advance a cross-lay into the building based on SOG. As they make entry visibility is limited to about two or three inches above the floor. Tom moves forward into the structure and Bill remains just inside the front door feeding hose in. Tom and Bill work together every third shift, they have been to dozens of fires together, and they know the actions the other will take. As Tom is advancing the line Bill is listening to the staccato sound of the nozzle opening and closing as Tom ensures the ceiling isn't too hot, and as he sweeps the floor to ensure that it is intact and cool enough to crawl on. Tom's progress is not slowed because Bill knows that Tom moves in increments of four to five feet at a time, so he feeds ten feet of hose into the house each time he feels Tom advance. This is all accomplished with out a lot of talking back and forth, no screaming "Give me more line" or anything else. They are practicing Team Situational Awareness.

Team Situational Awareness must extend beyond the Company level though to the whole of the Fireground team. We need to "see" the big picture through the inputs we are receiving from the entire operation. As the Nozzleman of the attack line I am using the senses I have at my disposal, to maintain my Situational Awareness, but I am also relying on cues from the other firefighters operating on scene. I am listening for the sounds of windows breaking, a saw on the roof, and radio communication about what is happening in front, behind, above, below and to either side of me. These cues are being monitored by me and my Company as we advance on the seat of the fire to ensure that the environment will remain tenable for us. At the same time other companies are taking their cues from us. The Truck searching the floor above the fire is listening for the sound of victims, but also for the sound of water hitting the ceiling level below them; cues that them to maintain the same Team Situational Awareness that I have: we are getting water on the fire and the ceiling isn't so hot that everything is turning to steam. They know that it is okay to continue with their assignment with out having to listen to a radio message from the Engine Officer or a direction from the Operations Chief to go ahead. You don't need to actually say in your mind, "because I hear water hitting the ceiling and falling to the floor the temperatures in here are tenable for us to continue our tactical advance to the seat of the fire," if you have "read the playbook", understand what is happening on the fireground, and can observe the cues that are presented. You are using Team Situational Awareness to help "Observe" what else is occurring within the structure and continue making critical decisions using the Boyd Loop.

There are causes of Fireground Fatalities that we may be unable to prevent. Developing the skills of our personnel to maintain Situational Awareness will give them a better chance of avoiding one risk factor that will more often than not lead to a fatality: disorientation. Realistic, challenging, scenario based training performed in single Company, Battalion and Mutual-Aid exercises allow firemen to develop the cognitive skills to maintain Situational Awareness and utilize the Boyd Loop to make life and death Fireground Tactical and Strategic Decisions.

Situational Awareness

    

The fire ground is a dynamic environment that is filled with threats to the fire fighter. These threats exist in a 360° "bubble", left and right, in front of and behind, and above and below the firefighter. In order to safely operate in this kind of environment we must develop the skill to maintain Situational Awareness (SA). The United States Coast Guard says that, "Situational Awareness is the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical elements of information about what is happening to the team with regards to the mission." In other words if you have Situational Awareness you constantly know what is happening around you, and where you are in relation to threats. Situational Awareness is a concept that is taught in many Warrior circles, particularly to Fighter Pilots. Fighter Pilots must operate in an environment where they maintain 100% awareness of where they are in relation to friendly and hostile aircraft, and be able to predict how an engagement will unfold. If they lose Situational Awareness they run the risk of a mid-air collision, of being shot down, or possibly of shooting down a friendly aircraft. None of these circumstances would be acceptable, so Pilots train constantly to maintain their SA. They do this in simulators, low risk virtual reality "games", as well as in actual flight operations.

As firefighters the need to maintain Situational Awareness should be obvious. Like the Fighter Pilot we operate in an environment where threats can come from any direction. We must know where we are with-in the "battle space", the fire building. We must know where we are in relation to the seat of the fire. We must know where the other members of our crew, and the larger fire suppression team, are. For a fireman a loss of Situational Awareness means that he no longer is aware of where he is in relation to the "bubble". There is a breakdown of his ability to monitor where he and his crew are in relation to the fire, or a safe egress. He is no longer able to accurately interpret the effectiveness of his actions, nor the effectiveness of the suppression and rescue efforts as a whole. A loss of Situational Awareness can lead directly to disorientation. Disorientation far too often leads to a Fire Fighter Line of Duty Death.

Situational Awareness is a cognitive skill; it can be taught. Depending on your fire service experience you may already be using an effective means of teaching situational awareness. The Wildland Firefighting community is very effective at developing the skills needed to properly maintain SA. The Structural Firefighting community teaches new recruits skills that help in developing and maintaining SA, but not as often with the deeper understanding of the cognitive process. We can begin the process of developing Situational Awareness in the classroom, by examining the elements that lead to maintaining or loosing "the bubble". Through classroom foundations we can develop an understanding how our brains collect and analyze data. The concepts presented in the classroom must be practiced in drill if they are to be used effectively on the fire ground. Even though we are saying that maintaining SA is essentially a cognitive ability it must be performed while physically being engaged in firefighting. It's like understanding the math behind friction loss calculations but being overwhelmed by the amount of activity on the first structure fire you pump; you can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you cannot use it effectively it is wasted. Being trained in Situational Awareness may mean life or death for some of our people.

The Elements of Situational Awareness

    To effectively train our personnel to remain Situationally Aware we have to start with laying out the elements that go into developing and maintaining SA on the fire ground. In order to have Situational Awareness you must be able to perceive a threat, comprehend the threat and predict what effect that threat may have on you. These elements: Perceive, Comprehend and Predict (or Project), form the cornerstone of maintaining complete Situational Awareness on the fire ground. We need to remember that Situational Awareness is a complex thought process and as such we need to break it down into manageable components when teaching it as a new skill.

Perception

    The first step in the cycle of maintaining SA is perception. If I am unable to perceive the conditions around me I am already at a disadvantage. A lack of perception is just another way to describe tunnel vision. In 12 years of attending fire service schools and teaching firemen, I have heard the statement: "Don't get tunnel vision" more times than I can count. The way I describe tunnel vision is that it is a cognitive focus on one particular aspect of a fire ground operation. That singular focus causes you to loose your perception of everything else that is happening around you. A lack of perception can start with the initial dispatch, your arrival on scene, or in the middle of an operation, because you have encountered a situation that begins to shift your heart rate from the "Yellow" zone into the upper regions of the "Red" or lower level "Grey" zones. We have to remember that the physiological effect of our heart rate being elevated because of anxiety has a direct effect on our ability to process cognitive information. Using techniques like four count "combat breathing" exercise to regain control of your heart rate are critical if you are to maintain the cognitive ability to perceive threats. Fighting the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) responses of anxiety becomes easier with training and experience. Teaching new firefighters, who hopefully aspire to be Fire Service Warriors, to control the SNS reaction will lay the foundation for them being able to maintain Situational Awareness.

Comprehend

    You can perceive a threat all you want, but if you cannot comprehend that it is a threat you can't do anything with the perception. Let's take pending Flashover conditions as an example. We understand that Flashover is violent event that is a regular occurrence at interior structural fires. There are signs that we can use as being indicative that flashover is likely: A great volume of turbulent smoke exiting a room (or the structure) is a sign that the heat inside is beginning to reach the point where flashover is near; Rollover and flame-over of the unburned smoke are also indicators that a flashover event is imminent. Do our people understand this? Can they comprehend these warning signs when they see them? If they see a significant volume of dense, turbulent smoke pouring from the doorway of a two-story frame at 1:00 p.m. can they articulate those facts, our will their thought process be, "that house is on fire"? One of the challenges that we all face is a lack of responses to structural fires and limited training time in burn buildings. As a whole the fire service is called on to deal with so many other tasks: EMS, HazMat, Technical Rescue, and Fire Prevention, that we are limited in our time and ability to develop our "Combat Senses". While all the aspects of our profession are important, and need to be practiced, we need to ensure that the high risk/low frequency skills of firefighting are practiced more frequently in a burning structure.

Predict (Project)

    Taking your comprehension of the perceived threats and predicting what the potential effects will be is the final element in having Situational Awareness. You have to perceive the smoke conditions, comprehend that they are indicators of impending flashover and then predict what will happen if you crawl head first into that doorway without taking some kind of action to mitigate the conditions first. So you pull-up in front of our two-story frame at 1:00 p.m. with dense, turbulent smoke exiting the structure and say to your partner, "Hey, that looks like it's getting ready to flash, let's hit it from the door way for a minute and until they pop the windows and we get some lift." You have the Situational Awareness that if you just crawl right into this threat environment you are going to get burned, and that you need to change the environment to make it "relatively safe".

Relative Safety

    Everything we do on the fire ground, or at any incident scene, is about maintaining "relative safety". We accept the fact that by crawling into a burning structure to extinguish a fire, or search for victims, or by going onto a roof to ventilate, or any of the other of suppression or support tasks we perform that we are doing something that is "unsafe". Our objective must be to maintain a "relative safety" by making decisions based on conditions that will allow us to accomplish our objectives without needlessly placing ourselves or our people into an untenable threat environment. Taking up our impending flashover example again if you are the Nozzleman, the Company Officer, or the Incident Commander you need to perceive, comprehend and predict what the effects of just having that initial attack line advance into the building will be. That Situational Awareness will allow you to choose a course of action that will help maintain the "relative safety" of the folks operating on the fire ground. If you're Standard Operating Guidelines (SOG) indicate that an aggressive interior attack is called for you must be agile enough in your thinking to realize that some kind of task must be accomplished first, to allow your objective to be met. You must change the environment so that it is tenable. By doing this you are using the Boyd Loop, the Observe, Orient, Decide and Act cycle I've talked about before, to choose the best course of action to mitigate the immediate threat and continue on with your mission. Situational Awareness is the skill set that allows you to perform the Observe and Orient functions of the Boyd Loop.

Disorientation

    The antithesis of Situational Awareness is Disorientation. Disorientation is the root cause of those Firefighter Fatalities identified by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as caused by being "Lost", and likely a contributing factor in those deaths caused by being "Caught/Trapped". In my article "You Want Me To Do What" I discussed the effect of anxiety reactions on increased Heart Rates and the impact those elevated Heart Rates have on the cognitive function. While there is no definitive reporting on the role anxiety reactions play in Fire Fighter Line of Duty Deaths (LODD), we can examine published reports of LODD and extrapolate how it may be related.

    For our purposes here I want to examine the NIOSH Firefighter Fatality Report F2008-34. On October 29, 2008 24 year-old Volunteer Fighter, Adam Cody Renfroe, became lost while operating inside a residential structure fire and was subsequently caught in a flashover. The cause of death was reported as smoke inhalation and burns but we must consider that Disorientation was the root cause. If Firefighter Renfroe had not become Disoriented he would not have become "Lost" and he may not have been caught by the subsequent flashover. In examining any LODD the last thing I want is to "blame the victim". It is important that we look at "mistakes" that were made though, and try to understand what cognitive process lead to the decisions that were made. Firefighter Renfroe had two years of experience with the Crossville Alabama Fire Department at the time of the incident; he had completed Department training on essential firefighter skills, but he had not been through Alabama's Volunteer Firefighter Certification Course. He was among the first three firefighters to arrive on the scene of the fire, and the "senior" man among the two firefighters who stretched the initial attack line.

    I can place myself into FF Renfroe's shoes. I've been a 24 year-old paid-on-call fireman. He entered the structure to do what he perceived was his job. He entered alone because he felt a sense of duty to act. His heart rate was already pounding from the adrenaline rush. We've all had this experience, you're either excited or terrified by what you are faced with. When he crawled in through the carport door to begin his fire attack he found himself in an incredibly difficult set of circumstances. The initial reports transcribed in the NIOSH report say that there was thick black smoke coming from the roof. The initial attack line was stretched, and "The victim and FF2, on air, walked into the structure through the carport door. They were approximately two feet inside the structure and were met by thick, rolling black smoke, but no fire. Quickly, they exited through the carport door taking cross-lay #1 with them". FF Renfroe then sent his partner, a member with six months experience, back to get a flashlight. NIOSH investigators state "FF2, still on air, entered back into the house through the carport door but could not see his hands or feet just inside the door." So, this young man, with minimal training, but a huge desire to do what he believed was right, entered an environment that rapid sent his heart rate skyrocketing into the "Grey" or "Black" zones. He exited, with his partner, but then reentered on his own? Why? We can never be certain. We can postulate though that when FF Renfroe, and his partner, entered the structure the first time that the response of his sympathetic nervous system (SNS) was engaged and his heart rate elevated in response to the perceived threat (the conditions). As we consider disorientation as a key factor in firefighters becoming lost we see that when the heart rate, as a result of anxiety, approaches 175 beats per minute that cognitive processing deteriorates, tunnel vision begins to occur, and there is often a perceived slowing of time. Why did he reenter the structure then with out his partner? Again there is no way to be certain, but a likely circumstance is that his SNS response caused him to perceive that it his partner was gone for an extended period of time and that the fire was getting beyond the point where it could be controlled. His SNS was screaming "Fight" because his personal condition, his assessment of himself, dictated putting the fire out. Unfortunately the circumstances of his position did not provide him with the knowledge, skills, or experience to fully perceive, comprehend and predict the possible outcomes of entering the structure. We must examine LODDs like those of Adam Cody Renfroe if we are to fully understand the importance of Situational Awareness and the critical role that Disorientation plays in Firefighter fatalities.

Training Situational Awareness

    The ability to maintain Situational Awareness is reliant on our training, our judgment and our personal condition. These factors must come together every time we are going to perform a high-risk evolution: structural firefighting, wildland firefighting, collapse or high angle rescue, or any of the wide arrays of emergencies we are called upon to mitigate. A lack of competency, or even a temporary lack of focus, can lead to a chain of events that may be catastrophic or even fatal.

Judgment

 

Judgment is defined as "the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing." It is the ability to choose the "best" option to respond to a given set of circumstance. Developing a sound basis for making judgments, or "tactical decisions" on the fire ground is direct result of training and experience. Given the national trend towards a dwindling number of structural fire responses we must give our firemen the ability develop experience through realistic, live fire, training.

Personal Condition

 

The fireman who ascribes to the ideals of the Fire Service Warrior embraces the Boy Scout Motto, "Be Prepared". We begin instilling that idea of being ready into recruits on day one of the academy. Recruits are taught that they must have their equipment ready for duty, and are taught how their personal turnout gear is to be placed on the rig. We teach the idea of readiness when we work on developing SCBA donning skills, ensuring that the recruit places his SCBA into the "Ready Position" every time it is doffed. It is incumbent on the Fire Service Warrior to place himself in the "Ready Position" each and every day.

    There are countless trivial, mundane and down right serious matters that we humans have on our minds twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. As firemen we are bound to bring those concerns into the firehouse. Minimizing the impact of distractions is important however if we are to concentrate 100% on the task at hand when we are fighting fires, caring for patients or cleaning the firehouse. It needs to be clear, if you are distracted when you are performing a high-risk evolution the likelihood of you, or another member of the team, being injured or killed rises. Distractions take away from your ability to maintain Situational Awareness, and a loss of Situational Awareness will lead to accidents and mistakes.

    The Fire Service Warrior sets out each and every day to be prepared, to be ready, for what ever will come his way: a structure fire, an EMS call, HAZMAT Training, a Fire Prevention lecture at the grade school or cleaning the small tools on the Engine. For the career fireman it is easier to be mentally and physically prepared for duty because you know when you are going into work; the drive in leading up to shift change is a concrete time where you can put your game face on. The on-call fireman must be able to set aside the thoughts and activities he is engaged in when the pager goes off and must to train to "flip the switch" and suddenly be in the ready position.

Personal condition is a combination of being mentally and physically prepared to perform the job at hand. If you are distracted by situations and circumstances you are placing yourself, and your brothers, in danger. If you are not physically fit enough to maintain the metabolic output required to perform any job on the fire ground you are placing yourself, and your brothers, in danger.

Training

 

    Training lies at the core of everything we do in the fire service. No one is born instinctively knowing fire behavior, building construction or critical thinking. We must provide our apprentice and journeymen Fire Service Warriors with the basic and advanced training they need to flourish. I will venture to say each and every one of us has seen the results of a poorly trained firefighter. It is a "twenty-year" mistake. In my experience training comes in three modes: formal, company and individual. Formal training is those classes which lead to our certifications and often times relate back to standards developed by the NFPA, OSHA or our State Fire Marshal's Offices. Company training is the day-to-day training that our Company Officers lead to make sure their people are prepared. Individual training is that study, research or experience that we develop on our own.

    Training our people to maintain Situational Awareness needs to occur across all three modes of training. We must begin with the recruit Fireman and train him (or her) in Fire Behavior and Building Construction, Tactics and Procedures for Fire Attack and Suppression, Ventilation, Search, and the Fire Ground Support functions. Once this foundation is laid, then we must take our apprentices and teach them how to put all of these individual concepts together and think critically about how they are interdependent.

    Effectively training our firemen to maintain Situational Awareness requires that we engage in realistic, scenario based training. We must push them to confront experiences that are difficult, that scare them, so that they can develop the ability to manage not only critical fire ground tasks, but also the inevitable anxiety reactions that occur. If you cannot keep yourself calm and focused, anxiety will lead to a loss of Situational Awareness. A loss of Situational Awareness may lead directly to Disorientation, which all too often leads directly to a Firefighter Fatality.

Embrace the Darkness

"...Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." – Stephen King

I wrote the other day of the problem that so many have when attempting to reconcile our instinctual nature with the moral systems of organized religions. My belief is that in everything we do, choice is the deciding factor.

The First Credo in my Philosophical approach is:

One must acknowledge his animalistic feelings are healthy and acceptable. It is the choices you make in acting upon those feelings by which you will be judged.

Choice is the single most important factor in evaluating the actions of an individual. One of the greatest gifts that we possess as humans is the ability, and the inherent right, to choose. It is a very simple concept. You get to make a choice, every day and for every situation, deciding how you will respond to the world around you.

This leads us to the Second Credo:

Your actions and emotional responses to thoughts, or events are a choice.

The choices you make, in response to events that impact you, or the way you are treated are 100% with in your control. You can choose to relinquish control over your thoughts and your emotions by allowing yourself to react to the things that others do or say, but that is a choice. Rather than react we as individuals need to respond to the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" in a thoughtful and constructive manner.

At some point in each of our lives we have heard a friend, lover, parent or partner say, "You make me feel (fill in emotion)!" We each have probably said it ourselves. The reality is that no one can make us, nor can we make anyone else, feel a particular emotion. I can MAKE you feel pain if I pick up a baseball bat and hit you in the head. I can't make you feel worthless as a person. You choose to feel hurt or sad or worthless based upon the credence you give the words and actions of someone else. You relinquish a tremendous amount of personal power when you allow others to hold sway over you like that.

Of course, individuals are capable of saying things that are triggers for our personal hurts or insecurities. If my partner says, "You're a terrible father" I may begin to question my abilities as a parent. I may doubt the way in which I am raising my son. However that person hasn't made me feel like a bad father, they have simply said something which has flipped the on switch for one of my insecurities. I have chosen to react to by doubting myself. How can I respond though in a more effective, and beneficial way?

I don't react to the emotion of the moment; I pause, I consider and I respond in a thoughtful and emotionally neutral way. I may ask, "Why do you think I'm a terrible father." I may believe that the real issue is not my parenting because of my clear understanding of myself and instead ask, "Saying I'm a terrible father is mean spirited, are you trying to hurt me? Why?" Either of these responses keeps me from being wrapped up in the emotional assault and attempt to get to the heart of the matter. At other times I have found silence to be the best option. Just ignore the other person's silly bull-shit. The idea is that you are in control of you. You can choose to not be bothered.

Some people may be thinking as the read this, "Well that sounds good, but my partner is always being mean." Okay, why do you choose to stay with him or her then? It is your choice. Even if someone is holding a loaded weapon to your head and threatening to kill you if you do not do (fill in the blank), it is your choice. You may not like the options in front of you, but in all but the rarest of circumstances you have a choice. You are choosing to stay in a relationship with someone who is insensitive, mean spirited or just a jerk. Why? Well, usually we stay in unhealthy or emotionally damaging relationships because we do not feel worthy of the healthy alternative. We may say, "She's a bitch, I deserve better" or "God, he's just an idiot," but we have the ability to end that relationship. We choose not to. Why is it that we do not readily acknowledge our right to choose when it comes to "I have to…" or "You make me feel…"? I believe that there are two main reasons.

First, it is easier to blame someone else for our failing than to examine how we are culpable. We don't want to be responsible; we don't want to get in trouble. Think of the child who runs after unintentionally breaking a window. He is trying to avoid the pain that comes with being culpable for his actions. In dealing with our actions as adults it is less painful to blame our failings or misdeeds on the influence of others than it is to acknowledge our choice. If it is our choice then the buck stops with us. That is a heavy weight to bear and one that requires considerable strength of character and a tremendous amount of self esteem.

Second, most people do not have the knowledge of themselves to be able to truly understand why they make the choices they do. Many people do not own the fractured pieces of their self, of their subconscious which bring about the emotions that serve as the triggers for thoughts and actions. You must know yourself to be the best possible you. To own your self often means delving into the painful, darker corners of our experience and our soul to understand why we think and feel the things we do. You must find the shadow self, the occulted aspects of yourself that are so difficult, so painful, that you hide them from yourself.  This is hard; it is challenging and often requires the help of trained counselors, coaches or therapists in order to provide perspective and a safety net during the discovery. It must be done though in order for us to progress

So, in order for us to be able to fulfill the Second Credo:

Your actions and emotional responses to thoughts or events are a choice.

We must develop the skills to own our choices by owning "who" we are and how we have become that person. Some of those choices we made long before we could understand that we had a choice: events of our childhood, good or bad, that helped shape the foundation of the adults we have become. You have a choice how you will respond to those things in the now. Will you continue to react as though you have no choice?

We must accept our culpability for the choices we make and the impact that our behaviors can have on others. The only way to develop the strength of spirit and sense of self worth needed to acknowledge one's responsibility and culpability is through knowing oneself. This brings us to the Third Credo. They are not my words, but a quote that I live my life by:

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." – Carl G. Jung

There is darkness with-in all of us. We have all experienced insults and injuries on the physical, emotional and mental fronts which have left us the scarred and battle weary travelers of life's roads. That is pain we must revel in. That pain, that experience, reminds us that we are alive. Often times I walk along the lake front, down in the surf zone, where the waves break across the shore. I delight in the feeling of the rocks under my bare feet. I know that the pain I was feeling was making my feet stronger. Another analogy is the old-time exercise mantra "No Pain-No Gain". When you are striving to be physically fit you will suffer. The suffering is good. The aches and soreness are signs that muscle is growing, bones are getting denser, and that you're mental toughness is increasing. Remember the Navy SEAL mantra: The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday.

That's the essence of Jung's statement, which I live so much of my life by. We can only grow and become the best people possible by digging inside of ourselves and uncovering the pain. We need to rip away the emotional scabs that are keeping us from getting to the real issues.

I don't think that the Third Credo needs much more elaboration, I believe that it is an understanding that one must find for oneself. Just know, that no matter how much it hurts, or how challenging it is, that you will be a better person. I've spoken so far of three credos:

One must acknowledge his animalistic feelings are healthy and acceptable. It is the choices you make in acting upon those feelings by which you will be judged.

Your actions and emotional responses to thoughts or events are a choice.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

Once you really are able to embrace these Credo's, once you have gone down the road of self discovery and self awareness, then you can begin to make the next step.

Life is monstrous.

All life exists by consuming other life, but it is only through knowledge and acceptance of the monstrous nature of life that we can being to accept all that upsets us as natural: war, famine, death… these are all perfectly normal elements of the human condition. Parents watch their children die; children grow up with out knowing the love they need and rightly deserve to help develop them as normal people; we loose family member to conflict or tragedy. These conditions tax each of us to come to grips with a new reality, but the reality is that the randomness, the pain and the challenge are normal.

There is darkness all around us. It can be pervasive at times in our lives. We only truly set ourselves up for failure when we imagine that this darkness is something abnormal, something that "isn't fair." Like Wesley's statement in The Princess Bride, "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says different is selling something."

You must choose to embrace the darkness. By knowing the darkness of your life you can begin the transformative quest of becoming enlightened.

 

 

Death & Dying…

"Have the courage to live. Anyone can die." – Robert Cody

Obviously with everything approaching in our lives Heather and I have spent quite a bit of time of later thinking about death. I'd say it has been the undercurrent of our conversations ever sense we met. We knew from our very first date that we both have spent plenty of time gambling with our lives. The "Gift" of Cancer that I talked about is the gift of knowing that you are mortal. For me it is the "gift" of knowing that any given day could be my last. I have held the dead and the dying in my hands. I have watched the life ebb out of people and considered it an honor to be there in those moments. Sometimes I may have been less than reverent, but that dark-humor is a way of dealing with the grief that you feel when a fellow person goes into the great beyond.

A ways back a friend of mine was dealing with the death of her grandfather, understandably it was challenging for her. Loosing someone you love is never easy, and the emotions that come forth are challenging and difficult and confusing. I gave her my take on death and dying over the last few weeks as she prepared for that difficult transition. As I was looking back through my blogs and writing I stumbled upon these words and thought they were worth revisiting. It is something I want to share. You never know when you're going to confront this, but we all know somewhere in the back of our mind that we will.

Death is inevitable. The old adage of "You can't get out of life alive," is trite when you hear it, but it is true. So, why are we so scared of death? The obvious reason seems to be a natural fear of the unknown. We are raised with certain beliefs: Heaven and Hell; Reincarnation or Nirvana; Nothingness or Complete Unity with the Universe, but there is no proof. Every major religion has spent time trying to "prove" their mythology of an immortal soul because as people we are terrified of there not being something after this.

I think that fear comes from people who are unable to accept that this may be their one and only shot. Think about it, what would you be doing differently with your life today if you knew 100% that when you died that the electrochemical energy that drove your brain would dissipate and you would just fade into nothingness and once those capacitors in your brain were drained of their reserves of oxygen and sugar? Would you be setting aside time to work on that novel you've always wanted to write? Would you quit working so fucking hard at selling real estate and spend a few more days with your kids a month? Would you say, "Fuck this I'm going to party like a rockstar?" What would you do different?

So, I ask you… why are you taking the risk? If there is something more after this great, but the creative source of the universe put in motion the events that have brought us here to this point today. Why are we waiting for a better tomorrow? Seize the moments you have.

A few years ago a friend of mine from "Church" (church at the time was Chicago Street Pub in Joliet) was murdered after "services". The last time I saw John he had finished having a drink with friends listening to music he enjoyed in a place he felt at home at. He didn't know that he was going to walk into the middle of a burglary and get beaten to death. None of us knew it… and each of us reacted differently. Ben was just glad that as the last person to see him he gave John a smile and hand shake; Kelly was glad she'd given him a hug; Shoes wished he'd come down that night. The fact of the matter is you never know when that last moment is going to come.

I live a life that regularly places me in situations where I may not come home from work. I love my job. I love the thrill of it, and I know that at any moment I may not get out alive. February 11^th 1998, my friend, Tony Lockhart of the Chicago Fire Department Engine Company 120 died in a fire at 106^th and Western Ave. I was there. I was at the wakes for Tony and Pat King (who died at the same fire), I was at the funerals. I wake up everyday knowing that I may die today, whether it is in some fiery hell-hole in the suburbs of Chicago or teaching a class of recruits at the tower in Champaign. I put my body in situations that are just screaming to get me killed. People ask me why I do it, and my answer is always this: 1. I like to help people. There is something satisfying about being there to help your fellow man when he or she is at their worst; 2. There is nothing more satisfying to a man's soul than taking on the elemental forces of nature and kicking its ass. You feel powerful and capable of doing anything; 3. Chicks dig it. That's always been my stock punch-line to get a laugh out of a serious moment. The excitement and thrill and adulation are nice, it is a grand experience, but I also have had to come to grips with the frailty of my own life. I have had moments where I though, "Oh, okay… so we are about to see what's on the other side." I think once you have lived through that you change your out look.

Death is not something I fear, because it is not something I can escape or avoid. I will die. It's actually a liberating realization. Much like the adage attributed to the Native Americans preparing for battle saying "Today is a good day to die." Once I knew that death was a certainty then there was nothing holding me back I decided to attack life with gusto. Why not party like a Rockstar? Why not write my screenplays and this Blog? Why not spend as much time with Liam as possible? Why not hop in the car and drive an hour to see our nieces? What could possibly keep me from doing those things? There are nights I sleep about 4 hours because there is so much living to do that I don't want to miss out. There are nights that jump into bed at ten, with Heather, to make sure I don't miss out on that embrace, that warmth, that sense of being safe and loved. I accept that my body may be sore some mornings or that I may be a bit tired. Living a purpose-filled life isn't as easy on the body at 33 as it was at 23; it will likely be harder in another ten years and harder yet ten more years on. That's fine; the wonderful thing about pain is that it reminds you, you're alive.

Let's get back into life. You need to learn who you are and do the things you want to do. What are you afraid of? If you always wanted to go skydiving… fucking go! If you get hit by a bus tomorrow, what will it have mattered if you took that sick day to go party?

Life is your choice. You can be timid and meek or you can go out and attack the world around you, own every room you enter and when it is your time there will be millions of people around the world who think of you and smile.

When I die I want those people who care enough to think of me to descend on Chicago with one purpose: Celebrate my Life. You can think back on playing Dungeons & Dragons with me. Remember being part of one of the countless Theatre productions I worked on. You can be sad that you wont get to do another Irish Car Bomb with me, but don't forget about the one's we did. You can miss watching those years when my eyes would narrow and my whole body engage when that Blond-9 walked by, but don't forget laughing at me every time I came back after crashing and burning on the approach. Remember most of all the unconditional love I shared with the most amazing woman in the world. It's going to be hard for Heather when she puts me in the ground, or up on the mantle (I hope many years from now), but she will know as I do that we celebrated and danced each day. Our meaning of life has been the experience of being alive. There is no greater Bliss!

When I die I want the old three-day Irish Wake. I want to be laid out in the living room. I want a band playing Irish rebel tunes. I want the Guinness and Jameson to flow. I want every person there to tell a story about me, raise a glass and say "He was a great friend." And at some point during the evening I want the band to strike up a chorus of "Finnegan's Wake" and when the row and the ruction begins pour that water of life on me and let's see just what the healing properties of Uisce Beatha really are.