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Firefighter Safety
As we all know, firefighter safetly is our primary concern in the fire service. We have all heard the term you cant help anyone if you are dead yourself. As true as this statement is, lets take a deeper look into all entailed. Firefighter safety starts well before you have your first alarm. You have to ensure you have the proper equipment and training to ensure your probability of staying safe is better. Without the correct PPE or SCBA you run the risk of serious injury or death. Face it, how many times do we read stories of people inside the building with incomplete fire gear or no SCBA. The chemicals you can't see are just as bad as the smoke and fire we do see. (example the Providence RI fire department had an engine and ladder company all treated in the hospital for cyanyde poisioning) the fire was out when they took the SCBA's off but the smoldering childrens toys was enough to make issue for the firefighters. In this case, they removed their safety netting aka the SCBA. No air quality checks were done to ensure proper safety.
Training is just the foreground of safety. Without the proper SOP's in place to safeguard the membership, and the proper line officers to enforce them, firefighters can tend to become lax in their duty to ensure their own safety. Adreneline is a major player in making some non intelligent decisions. Forgetting to turn the SCBA on all the way, putting on wet gloves (steam burns are terrible) not snapping or zipping up the coat all the way, are all minute examples of things that can lead to injury.
For volunteer firefighters (myself included) the next issue is driving skills when your pager goes off. Again adreneline kicks in, and you at times make brash foolish decisions while enroute to the scene or the firehouse in your POV. Yes, having a light gives you a little flexability, but look closely. The laws are still there to be followed. Nowhere does it say in the law that you have the right to speed (yes we all do) or blow through traffic lights and stop signs. Face it, you break the law and get someone hurt, your responsible, and your department will take a hit in negative Public relations. We all need to take a step back and be more vigelant to ensure our own safety and the safety of those around us while responding to the scene.
Next the safety is in driving the apparatus to the scene. Sometimes there can be issue with not enough training to ensure the safe movement of the apparatus, or enough pump training to ensure constant water flow. In my opinion, a driver/operator should be able to troubleshoot any problem (other than mechanical failure) to ensure the people inside the building never lose water. How frustrating is it to have an officer called from the scene to go fix a pump when it turns out to be something simple. (strainer on hard suction hose not there, or clogged; valve not opened, trying to draft with drain open) the lists are endless to the small problems that seem huge under pressure.
Next building construction. Knowing your building types, and whats inside of them is something we all should be keenly aware of before entering. Differant materials burn at differant temperatures, and have differant chemical byproducts caused by the smoke. We should be doing walk throughs of some of the major buildings to get a lay of the land to make sureyou have some sort of idea whats happening inside. Our respective fire prevention in house should also be providing planning for the firefighters to be able to go through to ensure proper techniques are used when entering the building.
This is just a brief example of where we are, and this is before actually starting fire suppression. Stay tuned will post firefighter safety block 2 in a day or so.
GOOD LUCK AND BE SAFE OUT THERE!!!!
Training is just the foreground of safety. Without the proper SOP's in place to safeguard the membership, and the proper line officers to enforce them, firefighters can tend to become lax in their duty to ensure their own safety. Adreneline is a major player in making some non intelligent decisions. Forgetting to turn the SCBA on all the way, putting on wet gloves (steam burns are terrible) not snapping or zipping up the coat all the way, are all minute examples of things that can lead to injury.
For volunteer firefighters (myself included) the next issue is driving skills when your pager goes off. Again adreneline kicks in, and you at times make brash foolish decisions while enroute to the scene or the firehouse in your POV. Yes, having a light gives you a little flexability, but look closely. The laws are still there to be followed. Nowhere does it say in the law that you have the right to speed (yes we all do) or blow through traffic lights and stop signs. Face it, you break the law and get someone hurt, your responsible, and your department will take a hit in negative Public relations. We all need to take a step back and be more vigelant to ensure our own safety and the safety of those around us while responding to the scene.
Next the safety is in driving the apparatus to the scene. Sometimes there can be issue with not enough training to ensure the safe movement of the apparatus, or enough pump training to ensure constant water flow. In my opinion, a driver/operator should be able to troubleshoot any problem (other than mechanical failure) to ensure the people inside the building never lose water. How frustrating is it to have an officer called from the scene to go fix a pump when it turns out to be something simple. (strainer on hard suction hose not there, or clogged; valve not opened, trying to draft with drain open) the lists are endless to the small problems that seem huge under pressure.
Next building construction. Knowing your building types, and whats inside of them is something we all should be keenly aware of before entering. Differant materials burn at differant temperatures, and have differant chemical byproducts caused by the smoke. We should be doing walk throughs of some of the major buildings to get a lay of the land to make sureyou have some sort of idea whats happening inside. Our respective fire prevention in house should also be providing planning for the firefighters to be able to go through to ensure proper techniques are used when entering the building.
This is just a brief example of where we are, and this is before actually starting fire suppression. Stay tuned will post firefighter safety block 2 in a day or so.
GOOD LUCK AND BE SAFE OUT THERE!!!!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Nick Morgan on
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You're right on target brother! Stay Safe!
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Permalink Reply by ThumpDiesel on
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Have you come across any decent SOP's for overhaul. Yes we want to peal the tanks ASAP. Siting fatigue as a major cause in injuries. After air quality checks allow for this, what about particulate kick up from the process? If you know of a good SOP that deals with this, throw a brother a bone, and shoot it my way please.
Thanx
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Permalink Reply by Terry Lambert on
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You are right. These are all things that need to be taken in to consideration. Another things that needs to be avoided is "The BIG eye syndrome. Tunnel vision." That can get someone hurt as well.
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Permalink Reply by mike wright on
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Don't forget inexperience in these factors. The guys that don't go in all the time and don't take the training at the station are a big risk. We had guys that did't show up for training or fires only once a year and we had the discussion and decided to ask them to leave. We realized they were a hazard to the guys that did know the drill we had.
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Permalink Reply by Engineco913 on
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Mike, in the situation you have hit on, your department is absolutely right. Even though volunteers are hard enough to come on, you can't have people who only show up to calls, and never to any training's. Its hard to coordinate a fire scene as is, nevermind having Joe 1 call a year show up and counteract what you are doing.
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It's funny how the good posts get buried, time for a new breath of life for this one
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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on
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OK E913, let's roll!
There's an important time between the pager going off and getting behind the wheel of your car that needs to be covered. I have nearly fallen down stairs, slipped on the ice, and participated in other little incidents while getting to my car. A few years ago a FF fell off a ladder while he was putting up Christmas lights with his wife. When his pager went off he apparently missed a rung and fell; it was classified as LODD. Others have tripped and fallen down pole holes, or slid down too fast and broke their ankles and legs.
I firmly believe in "Everyone goes home safe", however we have to LEAVE home safe first!
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I didnt hear about that one Joe, but I guess it counts. There is a line there when in the motion of responding. Incident safety does begin when the pager goes off. If a ff twists an ankle when going down the brass pole to hit the rig its covered. Makes sense to me for us all to watch ourselves, and each other.
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In any case you need someone that has been around a while to overlook the scene. We have a ex-chief doing it for us. He dont do entry no more and doesnt get excited on scene. We used him to do the job for the calm eye on the scene. In any case we are ALL saftey officers arent we? If we see something unsafe shouldnt we say sometihing? If we dont and something happens to one of your buddies how are you going to feel? Why not just point out something to an officer if something dont look right to save a life. Isnt that what the safty officer really does?
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That would make sense Mike. Having one person do the all around scene safety is pretty important. Remember as firefighters we are given a task, and if the safety issue is outside of our scope (or line of site) the safety officer who walks around continuously will most likely see it, and correct the issue before it becomes a problem
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Permalink Reply by Mary Ellen Shea on
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Everyone forgets about this aspect.
I was at an unnamed Fire Station last year running registration for a FASNY training class.
The tones dropped, and 23 chairs were kicked over at the same time. Leading the pack were about six or seven of the younger guys, pushing and shoving and running pell mell to get to the stairs to be on the first due engine. I watched with my mouth open (we were there to teach a Highway Safety and Blue LIght Safety program) as the kid in the lead (I'm guessing mid-20's?) leapt off the top riser on the stair case and took about 8 stairs in one jump.
I get the whole "gotta get there, gotta get there fast" mentality, but don't endanger yourself and others while you're at it.
I walked over to the window to watch the engine leave---and shook my head as they shot out of the bay and across four lanes of heavy traffic without ever touching the brakes. The irony of the evening of course being that the ones who demonstrated they needed the training the most left the class.
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That is common. There always seems to be that one "group" who treat training as a chore and most times can be found having side conversations and not paying attention. Speaking of safety will generally get an eyeroll, and little interest. The "go gettem" attitude is the one that will generally get the "tunnel vision" that so often gets us all in trouble. These are the people whose excitability gets them in trouble while driving POV's and apparatus because their minds seem to work faster than their brains. Foolish risk taking occurs because "they are firefighters" and never can get hurt.
I can only imagine when they returned from this call (if you were still there) the conversation held because of your topic of training.
If these people aren't going to pay attention to the training, or are conducting their own private conversations during training, are they getting any benefit from this training? The answer is no. Can you imagine if they had gotten in an accident pulling out of the station, crossing 4 lanes of traffic and then had to go sit through the highway safety training? Whats it going to take for these people to slow down and start seeing the light that safety is one of the forefront issues in todays fire service?
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