The Teachable Moment
Carefully crafted messages can turn tragedy into education
By Jim Crawford

Recently I had a chance to reflect on something I’d once learned about using the media to promote fire safety messages. I had a great conversation with Ed Ruckriegel and Lori Wirth, the fire marshal and public information officer, respectively, of the Madison (Wis.) Fire Department. We talked about a number of fire prevention issues, but one in particular provides a teachable moment—about teachable moments.

We’ve all been taught that any given disaster serves to galvanize public attention, providing an opportunity to tell people how to prevent such disasters from happening in the first place. We recognize that it’s not usually an accident when something bad occurs, but rather a series of events that leads to a negative outcome. A fire, an injury or a motor vehicle accident is most often the result of human behavior.

As such, we can tell the viewing public what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again: Don’t drink and drive, check your smoke alarms to make sure they’re working, etc. But Lori reminded me of a long-ignored problem: In the long term, the public may decide that it’s not worth it to be honest about their mistakes, which would eliminate much-needed teachable moments.

The Blame Game
If we keep pointing out people’s failures, how long will it be before they start lying to us during an investigation to keep from being blamed? From what I’ve learned, that may already be happening in certain cultures, notably eastern European, because of their long history of distrust and fear of government officials. As one woman of Russian descent told me, they’ll tell you what they think you want to hear as opposed to the facts. Getting people to admit that they left the stovetop unattended is a problem if they fear retribution as a result.

This is an oversimplification, of course, but it bears some examination and consideration at the local level. If we make a habit of telling people publicly about another family’s failure, we could be encouraging an environment where investigators start getting the silent treatment.

The blame game can also create tension among the persons involved. As fire marshal, I saw that type of social interaction in multifamily housing. What happens in apartment 1A can affect 2A, 2B, 3A and so on. The spread of a fire from one apartment to others is common. And when the occupants of apartments learn that the behavior of one person caused fire damage in their own homes, they can become understandably angry.

It’s a valid concern for any jurisdiction to take into account. Throughout my career, I was confronted with this issue and considered it carefully, because I know that we all make mistakes; calling attention to others’ mistakes could lead to embarrassing headlines like “Fire Marshal Causes Fire.”

Crafting a Message
How then to take advantage of those teachable moments? The answer lies in carefully crafting the message.
I can remember a letter I wrote to the media outlets in Portland, Ore., when I was fire marshal of that jurisdiction. I called on them to dig for the reasons as to why an event occurred and what human behaviors might have caused it in the first place. But I also reassured the public that I wasn’t judging people harshly because I “owned up” to the fact that I was far from perfect (still am) and could make similar mistakes myself.

In the long run, the messages we send during these teaching moments must make clear that we have an opportunity to learn from others, so the teachable moment becomes more important than blaming others. Together, we can do our part to avoid mistakes in the future and decrease the covering up of the facts by those fearful of blame. If we treat the public with respect and compassion and recognize that we collectively make mistakes, then we might achieve some middle ground where people are willing to assume responsibility, learn from their mistakes and move forward constructively.

This process is particularly difficult when the incident has produced a personal loss so heavy that it’s difficult to bear. I can only imagine how I would respond if I were the person responsible for a fire that killed a loved one. Still, the path forward is for all of us to learn from someone else’s loss.

Consequently, the teachable moment is something we can’t ignore. But we can (and must) treat it compassionately and try to turn it into something positive.

Jim Crawford recently retired as deputy chief and fire marshal with the Vancouver (Wash.) Fire Department and is chair of the NFPA technical committee on professional qualifications for fire marshals. He has written “Fire Prevention Organization and Management,” published by Brady, and has also written a chapter on fire prevention in “Managing Fire and Rescue Services,” published by the International City/County Managers Association. Crawford is a past president of the International Fire Marshals Association and has served on the NFPA’s Standards Council. He is a member of the IAFC.


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