Live & Learn: Call reviews enrich volunteer training
Story & Photos by Bob Kolva

These days, there seems to be a virtual cornucopia of urban-oriented training tools. Retired big-city battalion chiefs flock to magazine-sponsored tradeshows and seminars to discuss the best way to manage multiple engine companies during a chemical plant fire or prepare for incidents involving WMDs. Unfortunately, such a wealth of training resources doesn’t exist for volunteer fire departments. Our crews need to know how to get water to a house fire that’s 15 miles from a hydrant, not which high-rise pack to use on a 23-floor hotel fire.

Until retired rural and small-town chiefs start hitting the training circuit, we need to depend on our own ingenuity. One tool I can offer you: the internal call review.

The call review is, perhaps, the most valuable and yet underused training resource available to volunteer fire departments. What better way to take the lessons gathered in the field and bring them back to the classroom in order to learn from your mistakes and successes?

How many times have you witnessed the same mistakes on a fireground? In the fire service, failure to learn from our mistakes and adjust our techniques can be deadly. For firefighters who are willing to learn from mistakes, the call review can be a masterful teacher.

In my department, we have four basic methods of call review: the truck bumper review, the post-call station debriefing, the classroom analysis and the training article.


Truck Bumper Review
In a truck bumper review, you gather the crew while the incident is still fresh in their minds and they’re still sweaty from their efforts. This method works great for minor calls, especially EMS runs. Often we will leave the trucks and do a walkthrough of the scene, analyzing the placement of apparatus, hoselines, operational teams and support personnel. It’s a great opportunity to obtain immediate feedback on the general logistics involved in working the scene. This is also the time to get out the camera and record the layout for future training and review.

From a safety aspect, truck bumper reviews are an excellent time to make a detailed survey of potential hazards that you may have overlooked during the heat of the battle. You may have had a near miss and not even known it. Identifying previously unknown hazards makes this post-scene walk-through crucial to the future safety of your personnel.

Of course, there are times when truck bumper reviews are not ideal:
• Poor environmental conditions: Rain, sleet and darkness can make for a lousy classroom. Dodging high-speed traffic can also be an inconvenience—and it’s just unsafe. Occasionally, you need to get away from the public and return to the sanctity of the station.
• Long and complicated calls: If the call was long and complicated, this method can be good for gathering initial information, but it does not provide the time required to breakdown the call into digestible bites.
• Emotional or trying calls: If the call was particularly trying or emotional, the stress produced during an immediate review may negate any benefits achieved. When emotions are running high, accusations can fly, and your opportunity for productive training can be greatly diminished.

Another disadvantage is that truck bumper reviews don’t benefit personnel who aren’t on the scene.
Tip: When using the truck bumper review, evaluate how your troops are doing physically. As you are discussing the call, you can monitor your crew as they recover and try to catch their breath.

Post-Call Station Debriefing
Once you’ve returned to the station, stowed your gear and restocked your trucks, it’s time to sit down and analyze the call. Unlike a truck bumper review, a post-call debriefing allows crewmembers to talk about the call in a controlled environment, after they’ve had the opportunity to discuss the call with others and have distanced themselves physically and emotionally from the event. Another benefit of the post-call station debriefing: You have more tools at your disposal, including whiteboards, which you can use to sketch out the scene so everyone can see the big picture.

Begin by having each firefighter, starting with the newest recruit, describe what they witnessed on scene. For crewmembers to feel comfortable enough to participate fully, make clear that others should withhold criticism. Ideally, you should get more detail and a different perspective as you go down the line, from the rookie to the seasoned veteran. By the time you get to the incident commander, you should have a detailed description of the scene. Once this is accomplished, the unit can begin to analyze its actions.

If multiple stations were involved in the incident, you might not be able to get everyone together following the call. In such instances, wait until classroom review for analysis.

Note: In volunteer departments, getting the desired outcome from a post-call station debriefing can be challenging. When it’s 2 a.m. and you have to be at work in 3 hours, the last place you want to be is in the station talking about a car fire. The same might be true if you are late for work, church, dinner, your son’s ballgame or Monday Night Football. Under these circumstances, meaningful discussions become extremely brief. Often, volunteers who responded in their personal vehicles are at home sleeping by the time the critique begins. You are the best judge of your department and can best determine when or if a station debriefing is appropriate.

Classroom Review
Conducting a detailed review at the next scheduled training following the incident is your best opportunity for success. In the classroom, you have a number of tools at your disposal, including PowerPoint slideshows, news footage, amateur videos, on-scene and post-scene photos, witness accounts, mapping programs, dispatch records, tabletop models and, naturally, the accounts of your personnel. Remember: TV news stations often reuse tape, so to ensure you have news footage of the event, contact the station as soon as possible and request a copy.

Proper timing of classroom reviews is essential. You don’t want to delay this vital training opportunity too long; quick action is essential to capturing the thoughts of the responders while they are still fresh. However, you do need to allow a cool-off period for traumatic calls.

During the course of the review, try to answer the following:

For everyone on scene:
1. What information did you have?
2. What information do you wish you had?
3. Why did you take the actions you did?
4. Did you follow standard operating guidelines? If not, why?

For the command staff:
1. What was your initial plan of attack?
2. How did you modify that plan?
3. Were your plans successful?
4. What training do we need to institute as a result of this critique?

Remember: As a chief officer, you’re responsible for what happened at the call. The biggest morale killer is when you don’t take full responsibility for on-scene errors. Spread the credit and take the blame.

A Call Review in Action
I swear by classroom reviews. In fact, one saved my department from severe heartache during a transitional period when we were struggling to rebuild morale.

One winter evening, we were dispatched to a working structure fire. Because of a heavy accumulation of snow that morning, accessing the fire was extremely difficult. The nearest hydrant was 13 icy miles away, which was nearly a one-hour round-trip for the tenders. Of course, that was before one of the tenders slid off the road as it was leaving the fire for water. Our task soon became fighting a fire with no water.

To make matters worse, the neighboring house ignited because we were unable to protect exposures. This house just happened to be of great historic significance in our community. By the time we were done we had two smoldering heaps where homes once sat, a tender in the ditch, a neighborhood full of irate taxpayers, a team of demoralized firefighters and a TV news crew waiting for an interview with the chief.

I was a new chief, after having moved up through the ranks from firefighter. This was the first major fire I had overseen, and at that time we didn’t have a formal call review procedure. At our first training following the call, we held a makeshift review that degraded rapidly. It started innocently enough, with firefighters relaying what they saw on scene. But things took a turn for the worse when two firefighters started lobbing insults and accusations toward anyone not quick enough to get out of the way. We ended training early that night.

We realized that unless our command staff acted quickly and decisively, our department would implode. So we sat down and systematically scrutinized the call; we analyzed the good, the bad and the ugly. We interviewed several firefighters to determine their independent opinions, gathered dispatch documents and created a timetable of events from the initial dispatch to when the last unit was back in service.

Tip: During any major incident, log significant events with your dispatcher. The timetable created can be a lifesaver when you are trying to recreate the event. With the dispatch records and a series of time-stamped digital photos, we were able to recreate the entire scene. This timeline was a key component of our review, since one of the complaints levied by the public was that we stood around doing nothing as the homes burned to the ground. I now had evidence in hand to take back to the troops, showing them they were doing their jobs despite extremely adverse conditions.

With a PowerPoint slideshow that chronicled the events of the night, accounts from witnesses and an unflattering review of my command decisions, we called a special training session to review the call. We began with the slideshow. Through hours of preparation, we were able to anticipate negative comments and addressed them during the initial presentation. This greatly deflated any potential attacks and kept the meeting not only civil but also upbeat. During the open forum that followed, we did not allow any derogatory commentary. That night was about two things: learning from our mistakes and rebuilding morale. We achieved both goals.

From that point on, we have reviewed most calls. Once people realized our training sessions were about education, not placing blame, session attendance grew.

Our reviews have become very comprehensive, employing mapping programs detailing topography, structure location, apparatus placement, personnel, prevailing winds and any other data that we can express graphically. We have several visual learners in the department, which makes this form of training crucial for success.
Pictures are an essential part of all our calls. We take pictures during the call, and then follow up the next day and take post-fire pictures. When incorporated with maps, the dispatch timeline and commentary, the photos bring the incident to life for those who were on scene and those who were not. A video camera mounted on the dash or a tripod is an excellent tool for capturing the action and can show you things you might have missed on scene.

We also still use the firefighter accounts in our reviews, followed by an open yet frank discussion of the call.

Training Article
The final form of critique we use: the training article. With the advantage of hindsight and perspective, we document the big calls. Besides creating a permanent record, a training article explains the event to members who were not on scene and didn’t attend the training. In the article, we’re frank about deficiencies but freely heap praise on deserving personnel.

We usually reserve training articles for unique calls, such as major fires or prolonged rescues. We may include patient updates, investigator reports and other details that were not available at the time of the assessment. The training officer or chief writes these articles and includes them in our monthly firefighter newsletter, which we distribute through the mail and e-mail to all volunteers, retirees and various community leaders.

Though not an official training article, on numerous occasions immediately following an especially taxing or rewarding incident, I send out an e-mail to the responders, heaping praise on them for a job well done, regardless of the outcome. I find this helps build morale. Tip: A less-detailed version of a training article makes a great press release for publicly praising the efforts of your team.

Conclusion
A good critique is a timely, honest appraisal of your department’s performance. Its purpose is to clarify the facts, promote safety and utilize experience to improve performance, all while building a unified and professional team.
While volunteer fire departments might not have an abundance of training tools, what we do have is the internal call review. With this tool, you can better serve your community and your department. Just remember: Call reviews don’t work if we don’t use them.

Bob Kolva is the former chief and 18-year veteran of the Newman Lake (Wash.) Volunteer Fire Department. Kolva currently serves the department as a volunteer firefighter and EMT.

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