The third Life Safety Initiative is risk management. To me, this seems like a very easy one. This should part of everything we do everyday. There is so much inherent risk in everything we do that risk management should be a no-brainer but I have seen departments operate with what appears to be no real concern for the risk involved. Honestly, that is one of the reasons why we continue to kill 100+ firefighters a year.
We face risks in life every single day. Walking down the stairs, driving in our cars, responding to and from calls, and making entry into a burning building. Nearly everything we do has some sort of risk. We wear seat belts to try and minimize the risk of injury if we are involved in an accident. We were gloves to try and limit exposures on EMS calls. We wear turnout gear and SCBA's to try and minimize the risk we face on the fire ground. Risk management is part of what we do. Most of the time we don't even realize it. To me its common sense, so why wouldn't your command staff, officers and firefighters use risk management when fighting fires? Typically even the worst and most reckless incident commander uses some sort of risk management, it just may be that what they see as an "acceptable" risk maybe different than what you or I see as acceptable. From the day I started in the fire service I have heard the saying "Risk a lot to save a lot, risk a little to save a little." This is a simple and rudimentary way to exercise risk management but it is a starting point. If there is a viable life to be saved inside a burning home then it is a risk worthy of sending firefighters in aggressively. The issue comes when firefighters are being sent in to fully involved house fires where there is no chance of civilian survival. We as firefighters, company officers and command staff need to be able to recognize the difference between an acceptable risk and an unacceptable risk. In this day and age we should not be risking the lives of firefighters when there is nothing to save. I know its not as much fun to fight a fire defensively and we all want to go inside and make the attack on a fire but seriously folks, if fire is in all rooms and on all floors and blowing out of the roof no one inside will survive. Why would we risk our most precious resources in that situation?
We need to learn to be better risk managers. Gone are the days when it was okay to rush into a fire with minimal turnout gear and no SCBA. Fires are different, building construction is different. Fires burn hotter and structures fail quicker. We need to have a good working knowledge of fire behavior and building construction so we know what we are dealing with and so that we can properly assess the risks on the fire ground. To make matters worse we are seeing less fires every year so we get less opportunities to practice. This is where personal accountability and cultural change become key. The fire service has changed. While it is still considered a "blue collar" job we have to use some "white collar" thinking. It is no longer acceptable to be uneducated brutes that rush into the fire no matter the cost. Training and education are more important than they have ever been. We need to be studying the types of structures in our first due area and then discussing what type of fires we might face. Ordinary construction burns differently than light weight construction. If you can't recognize the type of building you have on fire then how can you effectively fight it? You can't. A good risk manager will gather as much information as possible about the situation, assess the risks and then use the appropriate tactics to resolve the situation. In order to assess the risks, you have to know what you are dealing with. We need to be able to recognize the signs of building collapse. We need to be able to recognize when a fire is approaching flashover. Businesses study the markets and economy to determine what risks are involved, if they didn't then there stock holders would be upset when they make poor decisions and lose money. Our business is firefighting and we should act the same way. Our stock holders are our families and our tax payers. We don't want to foolishly risk equipment at the cost of our tax payers and we certainly don't want to foolishly risk our firefighters at the expense of their families. Honestly, we have far more at risk then any corporation. I can handle telling someone I made a poor investment decision that resulted in a loss of $1 million dollars but I never want to tell a wife or a child that I made a poor decision that cost the life of their firefighter. These are the things that we should be thinking of when we are making decisions on the fire ground.
To me risk management is not an option. We must do it everyday and we must do it well. We need to be able to assess the situation and make the proper decisions that will ensure all of our firefighters go home safely. If your firefighters are not your number one priority then you need to reassess your risk management strategy. Are you making the right decisions based on the risks involved? Zero is the only acceptable number of casualties we can demand out of our risk managers. I know things happen and we cannot always assure that no one will be injured or lost but we need to make darn sure that we are doing everything in our power to identify and control as many of the risks as we can. We need to ensure that EVERYONE GOES HOME!!!!!
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