My thoughts on fire service LODD and victim survivability.
Fire service survivability is a polarizing issue for our industry. The ideas of how safe is safe enough, and how safe is too safe to get the job done are constantly at odds with each other. With an ever broadening quest for better response my peers have trained and learned from some of the best and brightest in the industry. We bring them in and we learn about practices that will keep us “safe”. We study close call reporting, incident management, gas monitoring, and most recently victim survivability. We also learn from the other side of the coin. Joe Brown’s recent blog post calling for a return to effectiveness demands a back to basics approach to fire fighting, and he ask the question; Have we really become too safe? After reading the arguments I decided to do some of my own reading on the victim survivability concept and this is what I found.
In the paper “Can they be saved? Utilizing civilian survivability profiling to enhance Size-Up and Reduce firefighter Fatalities in the fire Department, City of New York” Captain Stephen Marsar analyses fire fighter line of duty deaths and tells us that victims were not saved from fires that killed our brothers. He then makes the argument that if a victim cannot be saved then our tactics should be changed. This is a great argument, but the way that this concept is applied doesn’t work in my mind. If we look back on 2010 as an example, 85 fire fighter deaths were classified as line of duty. Of those less than 25% actually died on a fire scene. That means that only 20 were actually within sight of a fire when they died. If we then look at the cause of fatal injury we find that 11 received injuries that occurred while operating within a structure fire. The remainders were stress/overexertion, vehicle collision, and other. If we dig even deeper only one firefighter in 2010 died from thermal injuries, three died from asphyxiation, and three more were crushed. Of those seven valiant men and women only two were actively engaged in the search for victims. When I first looked at these numbers I was shocked. All of the victim survivability principles that we teach only apply to the loss of two firefighters in 2010.
Although the loss of even one fire fighter is a tragedy I think we need to look even closer at the civilian survivability concept. In his paper Captain Marsar claims that if a victim cannot be saved that we should change our tactics. I have a tough time supporting this concept when the data doesn’t support that his assertions save fire fighters lives. What this concept does do is doom victims to death. Using 2010 as our bench mark I wanted to compare the deaths of these two firefighters who died conducting search to the lives saved by firefighters conducting similar actions. Unlike firefighter deaths there is no central database of heroic actions that firefighters did during the same time period. One source of information that I found is the publication put out at the annual FDNY medal day.
At the 2010 ceremony firefighter Michael A Czech was awarded the James Gordon Bennett Medal for his heroic actions while rescuing three victims from an incredibly challenging fire environment. In the same medal ceremony Firefighter Charles Dodenhoff was recognized for his actions in the rescue of two civilians “by employing initiative, rapid decision-making, and implementation of long practiced skills, all while facing personal danger”. I wish that I had access to even a few of these incident reports to determine if the victims that were rescued fell into the survival side, or the dead side of the victim survivability matrix, but either way I personally have a tough time boiling down fire service response to a matrix, or a buzz word. I would rather rely on a skilled trained firefighter, who can “employ initiative, rapid decision-making, and implementation of long practiced skills” than write off a victim’s survivability without at least giving that person some benefit of doubt; and therein lies the rub. I have never had the opportunity to talk with Captain Marsar, but I doubt that his report was intended to be applied as it is today. Many communities have used the data in this report to reinforce the “risk a little to save a little” philosophy that is so prevalent today. This rallying cry for the fire service’s safety culture is being applied with some unique inconsistencies. Take a look at the following questions and ask yourself where your agency fits on the risk a little spectrum.
- Does risk a little mean no interior operations at all?
- Does save a lot mean that a room and contents fire should not be aggressively extinguished unless a victim is present?
- If you throw a ground ladder to rescue a kitten from a tree is that considered risking a lot to save a little?
- What is defined as saving a lot?
- Is performing fire fighter 1 skills considered a risky situation?
When you answer these questions I hope that your department relies on the skill of arriving crews to make the right decision. These crews should be making sound strategic and tactical decisions that maximize firefighter safety while at the same time ensuring that everything possible has been done to save lives and preserve property. There is no shame in not being able to make entry because conditions untenable, but this is a decision that needs to be made on the scene by firefighters who employ “initiative, rapid decision-making, and implementation of long practiced skills”; not in the office, or during a preplan.
