All eight of Lincoln’s ambulances can use wireless electrocardiogram and digital data systems on patients with chest pain and transmit such data over a cellular network to doctors waiting at BryanLGH and Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Centers.
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Lincoln Ambulances Go Wireless for EKG Transmissions
I attended an incident safety-officer course in my area and enjoyed the education and refresher on what the incident safety officer could bring to the scene. But soon I realized that much of the safety aspect relied on this one person, maybe two or three at a large incident. A few slides mentioned that everyone is accountable for their own safety, but nowhere did I see the concept of crew resource management or crew-member empowerment that the IAFC advocates . Crew resource management is a concept that originated in the airline industry, which aimed to reduce near-miss and catastrophic accidents. Less than a week after I attended the course, I came across the article, “Incident Command as a Participative-Management Practice: Dispelling the Myth of Authoritarian Command.” In it, B.E. William described the incident command system as more of a democratic process than the traditional autocratic process we have described for many years. He noted that information flow and empowerment of the operating personnel were more important than the one-sided view of the incident commander. The IAFC’s annual safety standdowns focus on taking personal responsibility for health, suggesting that each individual is responsible for his or her own safety. This personal responsibility is finally recognized as the culture we must promote to solve a large portion of the firefighter deaths each year. One of the 16 life-safety initiatives is empowerment of personnel to stop unsafe acts. This implies that even the newest firefighters can question and stop an unsafe act. Many firefighter fatalities occur in the presence of other firefighters who witnessed unsafe acts that compounded to the point of a critical failure. I often wonder if more empowerment and a culture that accepts this empowerment would have prevented these events. Lastly, the new generation of personnel entering the fire service, known as Millennials, has a trait that they are known for — the desire to question everything. I have attended a few conferences that have focused on the Millennials entering the work force, specifically, entering the paramilitary fire service. Overwhelmingly, speakers and fire service personnel discuss how much of a clash this mentality will create in the paramilitary organization of the fire service, where their opinion is not always correct or desired. Many are unsure with how this questioning mentality will work during fire suppression activities. But is this questioning attitude — coupled with the increased realization of the benefits of empowerment for stopping unsafe acts —exactly what we need to reduce line-of-duty deaths? Or would encouraging a generation that already questions everything only result in command chaos? How do we properly empower individual firefighters while maintaining operational command? Are we at the turning point for firefighter empowerment, and how do we train our experienced personnel to adapt to this change?
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Would Increased Democracy Equal Increased Safety?
Ten years ago, the Byron (Ill.) Fire Protection District celebrated the opening of its new fire headquarters and training facility. The 35,000-square-foot facility, designed by Durrant , went on to win the 2001 Station Style gold award in the volunteer category. Current Chief Galen Bennett was a shift lieutenant at the time. I spoke with him recently to find out how the facility has worked out for the past decade. He said that the building has held up well overall, but there are a few items they would change if they could. The facility was designed with four apparatus bays at the rear of the building and a separate service door on a brick wall. Bennett said that rather than the service door, the station could really use one more garage door. “We currently have an apparatus stored in that space,” he said. Bennett also should change the sleeping areas. “The dorm area is set up to sleep six with partial walls, but based on the complaints about snoring, I would have made it a full wall to the ceiling,” Bennett said, noting that a single is located directly across from the dorm area. Additional men and women toilets are on the other side of the building. When the station was built, residential appliances were installed in the station; Bennett currently is trying to change to commercial appliances. “We’re on our third dishwasher in 10 years, and I’m trying to take out a cabinet to fit in a new commercial-grade stove,” he said. Changes like Byron’s are physical. But too often, even the best-designed fire station must survive political change. Delhi (Ohio) Township’s Main Fire Station, built by Cole + Russell Architects (now CR Architecture + Design), won the first Station Style gold award for a career department. The facility’s project description said the 6,000-square-foot second floor was “intended for future fire department and township growth.” Today, part of the second floor houses administrative offices for the parks and recreation department, while the remainder is used for training and meetings. Current Fire Chief William J. Zoz said that the vision of the new facility was not executed as planned because the political body changed, and the new political body didn’t share the original vision. Zoz was not with Delhi at the time of construction; however, his two assistants were captains in the department. Based on their experience, it was agreed that if the project took place today, several items would be done differently: The height of the bay area would be considerably reduced. Ceramic, low maintenance tile would be used instead of the hard goods requiring constant maintenance. Higher-quality cabinets instead of the veneer cabinets. Better research on the contractors used as at least three went out of business during the construction process. Better high-efficiency garage doors instead of the heavy glass, low-efficiency garage doors. In 2001, the building also was recognized for its difficult topography and on-site parking requirements. “Parking is a challenge when more than 20 visitors are coming to the building, but there is ample parking 50 yards down the street at the township senior center,” Zoz said. “This is an extremely expensive building to maintain,” Zoz added. “Annually, $30,000 is appropriated for maintenance contracts and repairs to the building and the utilities to operate the building run $70,000 annually.” Building for the future isn’t just 30 or 40 years down the road; sometimes the truth shakes out in 10.
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Tips After 10
All creative people fascinate me, but creative young people inspire me with hope for the future. Over the past couple months, I’ve met some interesting young people who’ve generated great ideas by following their passions. One is Sun Lakes (Ariz.) Firefighter David DeGraaf, the creator of the Firehouse Scheduler, a shift-scheduling app for smartphones. DeGraaf told me the project started by him entering his own shift schedule on his phone. Soon fellow firefighters were asking him to enter their schedules in their phones. “Each one was different and would require manual entry,” DeGraaf said, so he talked his cousin into teaching him how to write a basic software program. “The program requires the pattern and then repeats itself.” As queries increased, DeGraaf created LeakyNozzle.com to sell his app. The app currently is only available for the Android phone, but will be available for the iPhone by the end of August. DeGraaf found police officers and dispatchers are also using his app to load their shift schedules. FDNY’s shift calendar is unique, so he created an exclusive app for FDNY. Another inspiring young firefighter is Austin Weishel. While in high school, Weishel started both sculpting and volunteer firefighter in Loveland, Colo. Now 21, Weishel is a volunteer for Windsor-Severance, Colo., and a bronze sculpture artist who recently completed a life-sized piece for the department’s new fire museum. The department had been scheduled to open the fire museum two years ago, but building was destroyed by a devastating tornado. The rebuilt museum’s opening ceremony featured the unveiling of Weishel’s sculpture. Paid for by private donations, “ Follow Your Heart ” depicts a firefighter kneeling and talking to a young boy. The models were a firefighter and his young son. Creative people can get ideas from anywhere, even the back end of a car. Have you seen the decals or firefighter license plates in some states and assumed the driver was a firefighter? Well, Columbia (S.C.) Police Officer Kristian Bell thought the same thing about the decals with a blue bar (for police) and red bar (for firefighters) that people put on their vehicles. When he found out that anyone could buy the decals, Bell decided to create a decal, “Watch My 6 ,” that would only be sold after verifying the status of the police or firefighter. “The decal is a shield, with the number ‘6’ in the center and ‘Watch My’ written within the 6. This represents ‘watch my back’ using the clock system,” Bell said. “My goal with this design is promote brotherhood.” With 10 years on the police force, Bell believes the restricted decal represents the pride, struggles, and commitment that these community heroes endure. “My decals are only sold to the people who have earned them,” he said. “This insures that the firefighters and police officers can display them with pride knowing that they are limited.” Do you know some creative people we should write about?
Originally posted here:
People You Should Know
By Rick Brockman I heard from an old friend the other day, and he triggered some nostalgia about my early career in the fire service and the people and events that shaped my present-day attitudes and opinions. Wayne Kee was my boss in the early 80s in South Carolina. He taught me how important it is to keep learning and, most important, to live and enjoy a life outside the fire department. No matter how stressful, gruesome or frustrating it became at work, there was a world outside the engine hall with people who cared about you and needed you to be a positive influence. I experienced another blast from the past when the Air Force announced they were naming their heroism award after another old boss, Bob McAllister. Bob earned his battle scars in the rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam. He had an innate understanding of what was serious and what wasn’t. Doing the job was serious business with serious situations and serious results; you’d better not take your responsibility as a firefighter lightly. There was plenty of time for relaxing and fun after work. Bob is the guy who taught me the value of attention to detail. He was a stern supervisor, but also a great friend who knew how to enjoy himself. The Air Force couldn’t have picked a better person to name a heroism award after. In these times of shrinking budgets and seemingly endless bad economic news, another person who stands out in my mind is the guy who had the misfortune of having me as his rookie deputy chief. Gordon Messerschmidt knew the business of public safety and firefighting. We had a very small department on what is now known as the Barry Goldwater Range in southwestern Arizona. We had everything we could ever want thanks to his seasoned business acumen and ability to persuade leadership that the fire department was an integral piece of the mission. Ironically, the lesson I took away from Gordie was not about obtaining funds, equipment and support; his lesson was about how to handle the inevitable situation where you don’t get what you ask for. “If all they give you is a wheelbarrow full of wet toe sacks, that’s what you take to the fire and you throw them wet toe sacks as far and as hard as you can.” Think about that for a minute; that is a pretty profound homily old Gordie was using back then (I had look up toe sacks, too) and it is probably more pertinent today than it was then. Say you are used to having three or four units show up simultaneously on an initial response but now find yourself waiting for a second or third due engine. Your instinct will be to approach the situation as you always have but that is a mistake you cannot afford to make. You MUST wait for enough resources to show up before you get aggressive. The decision makers are aware of the risk they are accepting and don’t expect a crew of three or four to do what normally requires a crew of 13 or 15. The only time there would be an exception to that rule is if there was a no-kidding life saving situation and even then the risk would have to be measured. We must simply do the very best possible job we can within the limitations of the resources we have on hand. We can’t be in the business of trading firefighters for vacant buildings. Toss them toe sacks from the sidewalk. So how do you reign in that “get there first or pick up my line” attitude? It won’t be easy but you might start by talking about life outside the job, about paying attention to details and putting things into perspective. Is a vacant building worth risking your lives for? What do your loved ones have to say about that? What about the loved ones of the other people on your crew? What do they think about the “we don’t need a culture of safety we need a culture of extinguishment” mentality? Ask them. “If all they give you is a wheelbarrow full of wet toe sacks, that’s what you take to the fire and you throw them wet toe sacks as far and as hard as you can.” What a great lesson. Rick Brockman serves as deputy director of U.S. Navy Fire & Emergency Services in Washington, D.C., and is a 39-year veteran of the Department of Defense fire service. Brockman has an MBA in finance, a master’s degree in executive fire service leadership, and a bachelor’s degree in business management. He is a graduate of the National Fire Academy’s Executive Fire Officer Program and is one of only 20 Chief Fire Officer designees in the Department of Defense. He is the editor of the Navy Fire & Emergency Services newsletter, What’s Happening , and is currently serving as the U.S. Navy representative on the IAFC Federal and Military Fire Service Section.
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A Wheelbarrow Full of Wet Toe Sacks — and a Great Lesson
Intelligent Automation announced that its sensor payload, which can determine the distance between robots inside a building, is currently being beta-tested as part of DARPA’s LANdroids program.
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DoD’s Research Office Beta-Testing Components for Robotic Firefighter Tracker
FCC findings that 10 MHz of 700 MHz broadband spectrum is enough to meet public safety’s needs are erroneous and based on false assumptions, according to multiple filings from organizations representing first responders supporting reallocation of the 700 MHz D Block to public safety.
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Public Safety Alliance Calls FCC’s Broadband Findings Misguided, Risky
Researchers took 500 samples from nine Tucson firehouses, testing different surfaces inside stations, training sites and offices of emergency medical responders. Reynolds said sites were sampled every five days for a total of 10 times over a period of two months. They found the highest prevalence of MRSA bacteria on the couches, classroom desks and commonly touched office surfaces, she said.
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MRSA Occurrences Higher in Firehouses Than General-Public Buildings, Study Finds
I’m a water person and have been lucky enough to spend most of my life with Lake Michigan as a playground. I sail Hobie Cats. I surf. I kayak. I swim laps between buoys. I fish for walleye with friends. It’s a culture and a way of life, something I tried to explain to my landlocked visitors over the holiday weekend who were concerned about a young local girl — about 4 years old — who swam in the lake without fear. “That was me,” I told them about the girl. “We learned the water temp, the currents, the rip tide, everything from an early age. No one knows the water like we do.” When I heard about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf Coast, I thought about how devastated I would be — as would the local tourism-based economy — if a similar incident happened on the lakeshore. With that in mind, I truly empathize with the struggle faced by those along the Gulf. They are water people like me, said Jamie Hinton, chief of the Magnolia Spring (Ala.) Volunteer Fire Department. Hinton recently was made famous by a New York Times profile about his fight with BP and its disregard for unified command. He wanted the company to use local resources — and the knowledge of first responders who grew up in the area — to protect an estuary from toxic oil. “The estuary is a habitat where the smaller fish, like shrimp, grow before they head out into the Gulf of Mexico and land on America’s table,” Hinton said. You see, Hinton is a local. He’s spent his entire life in the area. He knew tapping into the local knowledge was the best way to protect the estuary and the Gulf shores from the toxic oil. Yet from the onset of the incident, he followed protocol and tried to communicate with unified command based on NIMS as well as with BP officials. But no one returned his call. “It seems like they don’t even care about what’s going on at the local level,” he said. So Hinton did the next best thing. He held a town meeting at the firehouse with local residents and bounced around ideas. The group discussed the currents, tides and typical 3-foot wave action that would carry the oil slicks over the 8-inch booms. They then looked at already-existing resources they could use. The group came up with a simple solution: Use barges as a seawall to block the wave action in front of the estuary and place the 8-inch booms behind it in calm seas so they were able to soak up the oil. The barges also may be used to block the underwater plume, Hinton said. By sinking it up to four feet, theoretically the plume would be forced to the surface to where it then would be managed. Hinton wanted to put the plan into action, but was told that no action would be taken without the strict permission of unified command. He didn’t care. He moved forward with the plan, even though he feared jail time. “I felt as if I had violated a federal order by going ahead with our plan as we were,” he said. Hinton took the ideas of individuals who knew the area — not D.C. officials or a CEO from another country — and now the barge idea has caught on and more areas along the coasts are deploying them. But his story left me with some concern. In my opinion, if leadership isn’t tapping into local knowledge, instead dependent on their perceived ideas of an area or just plain ignorance, there will never be a solution to events like 9/11, Katrina and now the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It makes me wonder what the heck they have been doing besides spending billions of dollars on theories. What happen in Magnolia Springs shows that it doesn’t take money and power to solve these issues. It takes a local, unpaid, volunteer department and concerned citizens to solve the problem. It makes me thankful for my area’s volunteer department, staffed by people I know, water people like me. After speaking to Hinton and hearing his story, I have more faith in their loyalty to our area than an unattached federal staffer or politician holed up in D.C. Related links: Lack of Unified Command Hurt Efforts to Clean Up BP Oil Spill, Gulf Coast Chiefs Say Podcast: Alabama Chiefs Face Off With BP Over Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
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NIMS Fails, Local Knowledge Prevails in Deepwater Horizon Cleanup
Fire suppression and losses make up around 2.5% of the total U.S. economy, according to the recently released “Total Cost of Fire” report from the NFPA.
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Fire Suppression, Losses Make Up 2.5% of U.S. Economy, Report Says
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