Have you ever participated in the experiment where a person reads a group of people directions to fold a piece of paper in half, fold it in half again, tear off the upper right-hand corner, etc.? By the end of the exercise, there are usually multiple versions of the end product because there was no visual reference to ensure that everyone did it the same way.

According to instructional theorists, we retain 10 percent of what we read, 20 percent of what we hear and 30 percent of what we see. If we then engage in discussions about the topic and/or events we’ve experienced, and turn those discussions into teaching opportunities, the amount of information that we learn and retain can approach 95 percent.

Applying this information to the fire and rescue services, it’s easy to see why bringing together as much information about an incident as possible—including visual information, such as photo and video—can create a framework for learning and, therefore, a safer fireground.

Post-Incident Analysis

Incident reviews can take many forms. “Hot washes” often take place prior to units departing a scene. The purpose of the “hot wash” is to quickly discuss major points related to the incident and obtain immediate feedback. “Call critiques” normally take place back at the station where additional details can be obtained and incident actions are further evaluated.

A more formalized approach, which often involves multiple units, is the post-incident analysis (PIA). PIAs provide an opportunity for all personnel to capitalize on their experiences and create that optimal learning opportunity (if correctly facilitated and applied). The goal is to ensure everyone learns from the event by reinforcing the positive actions and eliminating the negative ones. Note: The analysis must focus on the organization, not on individual fault or blame.

With the proliferation of cell phones capable of capturing pictures and video, security cameras, dash cams, news media and other devices, it’s no longer difficult to obtain pictures and videos of emergency incidents. Although it may take some effort to track down the sources, once the information has been gathered, it can be easily stored on a computer for inclusion in a report.

Why is this media so helpful? Each person involved in an emergency incident has their own perspective of what occurred based on what they observed, felt, heard and/or performed on the scene. Their experience represents just one piece of the incident—like having just one slice of the overall pie. Integrating multimedia into the PIA or incident investigation can enhance the process, effectively reconstruct the incident and create that “whole pie” picture.

Another reason this media is valuable: Fire and rescue personnel often base their decisions on what worked best in a previous similar situation. As our number of experiences increase, we create a mental slideshow of sorts that we can use to help us in the decision-making process. Integrating multimedia into our PIAs helps ensure our mental slideshows are as varied, thorough and technically accurate as possible.

Using visual aids to document the incident scene is essential to helping personnel understand what occurred. The mental picture created by just saying the incident escalated due to rapid fire spread or extreme fire conditions can mean different things to different people. However, if you can include pictures of that rapid fire development in your PIA, everyone can see exactly what occurred. The photos are a good example. These images illustrate rapid fire progression in 1-minute increments—something far easier to show visually than to describe with words. Further, if you’re fortunate enough to have pictures that capture multiple sides of a structure—pictures that can be date- and time-stamped—then the participant’s learning is maximized even more.

But there’s more to multimedia than just photos and video. Radio traffic can be recorded as a .wav file, segmented and inserted into a PowerPoint presentation in the appropriate place. Why is audio so critical to the PIA? Most firefighters don’t have a great understanding of the duration of various tasks during the chaos of an incident. Specifically, they tend to compress time when attempting to recall how long it took to accomplish a particular task. For example, if you ask an engine company officer what they were doing when the truck officer was venting windows, the engine officer may answer that they were flowing water from a handline on side C of the structure. However, the radio traffic may indicate that it was several minutes after the truck officer’s actions that the engine officer called for their hoseline to be deployed and charged. Thus, evaluating an incident timeline will assist personnel in anticipating and planning for how long it takes units to complete a specific task.

If your agency utilizes a digital radio system, the corresponding data for the radio’s operations (i.e., radio channel assimilations, push-to-talk activations, emergency button activations) is another source of information that can provide answers to incident-related communication questions. For example, this data can track the source of mic clicks or radio transmissions where the unit identifier is not verbalized.

The more serious an incident, the more important it becomes to gather all available documentation. If an event causes a serious injury or a line-of-duty death (LODD), the investigative team will need to get as much information as possible to understand what occurred and develop appropriate recommendations.

When our department suffered the tragic LODD of Technician I Kyle Wilson in April 2007, the incident was meticulously reconstructed, and a detailed report was produced. The report included a PowerPoint presentation that integrated pictures and video captured by personnel and civilians, as well as radio traffic, diagrams, tables, charts and sophisticated computerized fire modeling. To view the reports compiled for the investigation, visit www.pwcgov.org/fire. (For more about fire modeling, see the sidebar below.)

As technology continues to improve, there will be more and more devices on which we can gather data for inclusion in PIAs. Contemplate how information gathered by an SCBA’s data chip could help demonstrate the rate of a firefighter’s air usage. Combine the pictures taken outside with the information downloaded from the data chip present in some thermal imaging cameras. Capture the data from firefighter tracking devices to review crew movements. The possibilities are endless and, with practice, it doesn’t have to take a significant amount of time to compile the information for a solid PIA.

The PIA is an excellent way to capitalize on our diverse learning modes. To be most effective, the PIA must capture the incident facts and facilitate organizational learning. As mentioned, the process is not meant to be a “finger-pointing” exercise, but rather, it should be used as a learning tool focused on the organization.

An effective PIA can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be. You can create a simple picture board with time-sequenced information or, if you’re a little more tech savvy, you can integrate the information into a PowerPoint presentation or use movie-making software to combine the files. Regardless, a useful PIA can engage personnel in discussion, will make the information meaningful to them, stimulate their recall, hold their attention, and enhance the information and learning exchange.

Integrating multiple sources of media allows personnel the opportunity to understand what occurred on an incident, and emphasizes the importance of establishing incident priorities, risk-assessment decisions and coordination of strategy and tactics. Further, multimedia can assist in the validation of incident data and facts, and it facilitates the loading of lessons learned into your personnel’s “mental slideshow” to be referenced and applied in future incident decision-making.

Although it does take additional effort to gather the information and incorporate it into your PIA, the results are invaluable and will pay dividends in the professional development—and safety—of your personnel.

Fire modeling is a tool that helps predict fire behavior and travel based on the structure’s construction, the reaction of building materials and contents under fire conditions, and the impact of weather, ventilation and other incident variables. Although fire modeling doesn’t produce an exact replication of an actual fire, we can use multimedia to help validate (or invalidate) the model.

The fire model that was developed following the loss of Technician I Wilson augmented actual scene footage, aided us in understanding how quickly conditions changed within the structure, and demonstrated the intense heat that was produced.

Fire modeling was also used in the report on the significant injury fire in Loudoun County, Va., in May 2008. Prince William and Loudoun counties worked cooperatively with Montgomery County (Md.) Fire and Rescue Services to develop the fire model for these incidents. Fire protection engineers in Montgomery County are trained and certified in fire modeling. Montgomery County is one of the few fire-based agencies in the nation with the ability to produce fire models, and they work cooperatively with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST was asked to produce a fire model by the Houston Fire Department following their double LODD on April 12, 2009.

Bottom line: Understanding why a fire progressed in the manner it did is invaluable to understanding the incident in its entirety.

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