LightRock takes a look at the latest report:

In Saturday’s Ocala Star-Banner, an article by Rick Cundiff  (HERE)  provides details of the fire apparatus manufacturer’s current financial health. Previous to parent company Federal Signal’s most recent SEC filings, E-One’s financials had not been reported on a “stand alone” basis, instead being buried within the results of Federal’s Fire Rescue Group, which also includes Bronto Skylift.

In the most recent filing, Federal considers E-One to be a “discontinued operation” which means that E-One’s performance will no longer be included in reports of the parent company’s financial results. As a part of restating  their results for the last year — and showing E-One’s performance absent the “cover” provided by Bronto —  Federal Signal reported that E-One lost nearly $25 million on sales of less than $218 million.

Many fire apparatus industry observers were taken aback by both the size of the loss (especially on a percentage basis) and by how low the overall sales numbers of E-One have become. Federal Signal has had E-One on the block for sale for some time. However, despite talk about an imminent sale, nothing has materialized thus far.At this juncture, it is worth noting that in the past there been other distressed fire apparatus manufacturers – Grumman is one example – that simply closed their doors after a buyer couldn’t be found. With the kind of results that have now been publicly reported, it is worth considering that a similar fate could befall E-One.

Besides the bad news on the financial front, E-One has lost many of their top dealers to competitors. Being considered a “discontinued operation” by your current owners can’t be confidence inspiring for the remaining dealers or E-One’s employees. Any potential buyer would have to dig the company out of a pretty deep hole. Keep in mind that on $218 million in sales, to get from where they are now to let’s say 5% profitability, is an over $35 million swing. Not easy given the current state of the overall economy and the competitive landscape in the fire apparatus industry.

AUTHOR KURT KAMM’s LATEST BOOK One Foot in the Black is the story about a 19-yr.-old son of a firefighter who goes west to become a seasonal forestry firefighter while conflicted with family problems.

It’s not a murder mystery, but a social drama wrapped into an inside look at wildfirefighting.

While doing research for his next novel, Red Flag Warning, he is taking his extensive research from both books and presenting periodic postings on the technical work and psychological motives of both the firefighters and the arsonists.

I found them interesting and I thought you would like to give Kurt’s blog a look.  You can find it HERE and from that page you can click on the menu bar items for some other related topics.

FossilMedic tells us about:

 THE SEATTLE SECRET

Two years ago the National Institutes of Health joined other agencies to fund a $50 million Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (ROC) that established ten research centers. The goal of the two-to-three year study is to oversee innovational clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of selected life-saving interventions. http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/utsw/cda/dept37389/files/303192.html

ROC planned to enroll 15,000 cardiac arrest and 5,000 major trauma patients. At last week’s Society for Academic Emergency Medicine [ http://www.saem.org ] annual meeting some of the findings were shared in the presentation Bringing Back the Dead: From Down-Time to Doctor, What We Think We Know About Resuscitation, and What We Don’t Know That’s Killing Our Patients.

HEY, THEY ARE DOING BETTER THAN US

Some of the clinical interventions used equipment that measured the real-time activities during a cardiac arrest scenario, showing when ventilations, chest compressions and defibrillation occurred. One of the principal investigators (PI) noted that Seattle had some of the best spontaneous return of circulation rates within the study.

Looking at the data recorded during the resuscitation indicated that certain tasks were done in a different order in Seattle than in the PI’s hometown urban ems service. To get a better perspective, the PI rode with the paramedics in Seattle.

TEN MINUTES OF UNINTERRUPTED CHEST COMPRESSIONS

When the two Seattle Medic 1 paramedics arrive, the first medic immediately starts chest compressions at the rate of 120 compressions per minute. The second medic sets up the bag-valve-mask, defibrillator and starts the IV line. Intubation is not even considered until after ten minutes of compression are delivered.

The PI compared that procedure to his hometown urban paramedics, who traditionally place intubation as an initial clinical task. The recordings showed that while the paramedics were ventilating the patient with a bag-valve-mask while setting up the tube, no chest compressions were going on.

The cardiac arrest patient would have no chest compressions performed until six to ten minutes after the arrival of the paramedics. This was demonstrated in thousands of patients enrolled in the ROC study. The patients that received immediate chest compressions had a higher survival rate than those who were intubated first.

The PI, who has a day job as a medical director for an urban EMS agency, implemented the Seattle procedure based on his research. He has already documented an improvement in cardiac arrest patients in his hometown.

HUMAN SUBJECT RESEARCH WILL CHANGE CPR, ACLS

Prior to 2005, all of the peer-reviewed research on resuscitation were based on animal research or retrospective (looking back) data. The ROC study is the start of the next generation of resuscitation research that looks at the human response to techniques, treatments and protocols. The 2005 American Heart Association CPR and ACLS protocols were the first to benefit from human clinical outcomes … such as the push fast and deep for chest compressions.

By the time researchers have processed all of the information generated by the ROC consortium, we may be using significantly different protocols that emphasize uninterrupted chest compressions – even WHILE defibrillating the patient. Basic life support will see a higher emphasis in the 2010 AHA standards.

FossilMedic talks textbooks: 

FIRE SCIENCE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME, AND IT IS ED KAPLAN’S FAULT: FESHE @ 10

Ninety years ago the American and United Kingdom fire services took a different path in professional development. The UK took the university engineering path, through the Institute of Fire Engineers (IFE) http://www.ife-usa.org/ . We took the vocational training path.

Chief Engineer Ralph J. Scott of the Los Angeles Fire Department is considered one of the fathers of fire fighter certification training, creating a fire college in 1925. He had the LAFD training staff research and document every task that a fire fighter might be required to perform. The list of almost 2000 entries evolved into a document that became known as The Trade Analysis of Fire Fighting. While functioning as president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs in 1928, Scott convinced the U.S. Department of Vocational Education to accept this list as an official definition of fire fighter tasks.

The First Wingspread Conference on Fire Service Administration, Education and Research was held in 1966. This group of fire service leaders agreed that fire officers needed a broad knowledge base. They proposed an educational program that became the blueprint for the development of community college fire science and fire administration programs. This education process built on Chief Scott’s work by progressing from training into education.

Like many initiatives, this one stumbled along. For example, the bachelor fire administration Degree at a Distance program suffered from inconsistent and puny support and, like the National Fire Academy, had brushes with governmental extinction in the 1980s and 1990s. Ed Kaplan, an Education Specialist at the National Fire Academy, kept the program going through creative funding and bureaucratic creativity. Kaplan is an advocate for fire service higher education.

A 1997 snapshot would show that most of the chief officers from the United Kingdom with graduate degrees in engineering and hard sciences. Few of the United States chief officers had graduate degrees, the majority were somewhere between an associate degree and a bachelor degree.

FIRE EMERGENCY SERVICE HIGHER EDUCATION SUMMIT

Ten years ago the community college fire science programs were shrinking, in part because of paltry educational resources. This created another challenge for the bachelor Degrees at a Distance program, which was celebrating its 20th birthday. The bachelor degree completion program is built to serve community college fire science graduates.

Kaplan organized the first Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education Summit. He invited interested faculty from fire-based associate and bachelor degree programs to work with fire service stakeholders in order to update the fire-based curricula that was established at the 1966 Wingspread Conference.

Working as a conduit, NFA provides an annual meeting at the Emmitsburg, Maryland, campus where interested academic and fire service members donated their time and talent to develop a model fire-based associate and bachelor curricula. The attendees develop course descriptions and teaching outlines that are appropriate for easy adoption by academic institutions.

During the 2002 conference, Kaplan arranged a roundtable with the fire science textbook publishers. By Academic Year 2007 - 2008 all of the model fire science courses have two or more textbooks that meet the FESHE curricula. This is a significant achievement and exceeds the results from the 1966 conference and the related development of college-level fire science textbooks published in the early 1970s.

HERDING SMART CATS

Kaplan’s skill in matching people with interests - with encouragement and some nudging - resulted in committee work products and professional relationships that have significantly moved the fire science academic world forward. The members donate their time and the process is transparent.

ACADEMIC CREDIT FOR VOCATIONAL TRAINING

One of the most significant results is the work with the American Council on Education to obtain academic credit for technical and vocational training. http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=CCRS

Most courses run by the National Fire Academy have achieved ACE recommendations for academic credit. So does training from a dozen other institutions. Virginia was the first state to make a seamless firefighter through fire officer career development program that combined the vocational training of the Department of Fire Programs and the Virginia Community College System fire science courses.

Frederick Community College (Maryland) provides a method to obtain academic credit for online self-study EMI and NFA courses. http://www.emergencymanagementstudy.com/content/default.asp

This coming weekend marks the tenth Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education conference. https://www.usfa.dhs.gov/nfa/higher_ed/feshe/feshe_conf.shtm

Ed Kaplan will not be in charge of the conference. He was promoted to be the Section Chief of Education, Training and Partnerships at the US Fire Administration/National Fire Academy. Talk about matching people with interests!

FossilMedic reviews a new textbook:

THE SEATTLE GUYS ARE SHARING THE LESSONS

Last week I lamented the lack of changes in the NFPA 1021 standard. I asked “Have we learned nothing since 1997?” I can point to four dedicated brothers that have learned a lot and have spent the time to share it with us.

Mike Gagliano, Casey Phillips, Phillip Jose and Steve Bernocco have been teaching the “Rule of Air Management” at fire training sessions for almost a decade, starting in response to two fellow Seattle firefighters running out of air while operating in burning buildings. Using best practices from underwater divers, analyzing NIOSH reports and engaging subject matter experts, the Seattle Guys developed ROAM – Rule of Air Management and the concept of the Point of NO Return. They set up a website: http://www.manageyourair.com/ to share their results, and promote a training business.

For the last couple of years they have been teaching ROAM at national conferences and been involved with the NFPA 1404 Standard for Fire Service Respiratory Protection Training committee on the 2006 version of the standard.

This year their considerable work became a book: Air Management for the Fire Service. Fire Engineering (2008) ISBN 987-1-59370-129-1 (retail about $70). http://www.pennwellbooks.com/airmaforfise.html

After reading the book this weekend, I have to agree with Editor-in-Chief Bobby Halton, this is a landmark book. This praise is due to the quality of information and the way the book is structured.

This book made same impact on me as Chief Dunn’s Collapse of Burning Buildings did when I was a company officer. http://firegeezer.com/2008/04/29/inside-a-burning-structure/ This may be the first fire fighting text for the 21st Century.

FossilMedic prods us again:  

FAILING TO LEARN DISRESPECTS THEIR SACRIFICE

Phase II of the “Routley” report was issued in Charleston last week. If you want to honor the sacrifice of the nine that died at that commercial fire, it will take more than buying a t-shirt, putting a sticker on your helmet or posting a snarky remark on a discussion board.

WE need to accelerate the rate of change in the institutions that codify our work and develop the reference and teaching materials.

MAKE SURE NFPA STANDARD 1021 REFLECT THE LESSONS LEARNED FROM OUR LOSSES

In 1971 the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) expanded their consensus code process from buildings, materials and industrial processes and into the firefighting occupation. Prior to this, firefighter training did not have a national standard set of knowledge, skills and abilities.

Oklahoma State University has been publishing the “Red Books” since 1931, generally aimed at rural and small city departments. Large departments like New York and Los Angeles wrote their own manuals. Warren Kimball used the Boston Fire Department drill manual when he wrote Fire Attack 1 in 1966.

The updated NFPA 1021 Standard for Fire Officer Professional Qualifications is up for adoption at the July World Conference. While there was a struggle over the fire inspection section of the standard, there are no substantial changes to the Job Performance Requirements (JPR) or areas of knowledge within the 2008 version of the standard.

I wrote a textbook covering the 2003 version of Fire Officer I and II. There are few changes in the 2008 version. That means much less work for me in writing the second edition. The original manuscript came from the fire officer I and II courses I taught at the community college, using the 1997 version of the standard. While there was a shuffling of some tasks between fire officer I, II and III, there is no significant change in the 1021 standard since the 1997 standard was revised into the Job Performance Requirements format.

HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING SINCE 1997?

It is troubling that, from a standards perspective, no new knowledge has been developed in fireground operations or the lessons learned from the investigations after 400-some brothers and sisters who have died in burning buildings.

Let’s consider four structural fire events with a single LODD that generated reports in addition to NIOSH:

Firefighter Brett Tarver, Phoenix, 2001 (Carbon monoxide poisoning in supermarket)

http://phoenix.gov/FIRE/report.pdf 

 *  *  *

Captain Jay Jahnke, Houston, 2001 (Carbon monoxide poisoning in residential high-rise)

http://www.houstontx.gov/fire/reports/fltr.pdf

 *  *  *

Firefighter Oscar Armstrong III, Cincinnati, 2003 (flashover in residence)

http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/cityfire/downloads/cityfire_pdf8213.pdf

 *  *  *

Technician I Kyle Wilson, Prince William County, 2007 (structural collapse in residence)

http://www.pwcgov.com/default.aspx?topic=020016001470004566 You should read these reports after you have finished the Charleston Phase II report.

After reading these reports consider what should be added or changed for the 2013 version of NFPA 1021 Standard for Fire Officer Professional Qualifications. If we promised to “never forget” we need to institutionalize the changes that these reports recommend.

Horry County, South Carolina, laid out $90,000 to one of those consulting groups that issue reports about how to improve fire and rescue services.  During this decade of the early-2000’s, the fashion favored by most of these consultants is to preach volunteerism.  One of them up in Michigan even took money from Detroit to tell them that they’d be wise to convert the city’s entire FD to a largely volunteer force, keeping paid drivers and administrators.

But somewhere along the way nobody has clued in the consultants that the volunteer departments are having a recruiting problem, too.  Even in areas with a strong VFD tradition, such as Pennsylvania, some departments are simply unable to replace their older members as they leave the active service.

Horry County is a large part of the northeast portion of South Carolina that includes the Myrtle Beach area.  The county provides fire protection to the unincorporated areas and EMS coverage for the entire county and cities.  They operate 38 fire stations, but only 11 of them are staffed with paid firefighters.  The rest are wholly dependant on volunteer FF’s for coverage, mostly in rural areas.

Horry County Station 41

One of these, Station 41, has only one volunteer member and scrubs on 94% of its calls.  The all-volunteer station with the best response record is Station 19 which has 13 volunteers, yet still misses 39% of its dispatches.

One of the 70-some recommendations to improve service calls for the career stations to operate with a minimum of 3 FF’s in the suburban stations and 4 in the rural stations.  In addition, they call on the county to initiate “an aggressive recruitment program to increase the number of active volunteers.”  Easy for them to say.  The report does not make recommendations on how to achieve this.

They also propose doubling the number of battalions from two to four and utilizing the paid B.C.’s on weekdays and relying on volunteer Batt. Chiefs on nights and weekends.  The County is 1,100 sq. miles in area and the consultants feel that too much is left uncovered whenever there is a working incident.

The entire report is 196 pages long and you can read the document in .pdf form HERE.

Today’s edition of the Myrtle Beach Sun News carries an article about the challenges that the county is facing in getting volunteers qualified for duty.  The HCFR requires them to pass a background check, an initial agility test and a physical before actual training can begin. 

Then they have to take the standard firefighting training along with courses in CPR, haz-mat, infectious diseases and a final agility test.  A department spokesman says that the entire process can be completed in three months.

But the paper’s interviews with prospective volunteer members exposes the problems that many other VFD’s are coming up against.  And that is a growing culture of non-committment and me-first attitudes that clash with the spirit of volunteerism.

The article quotes a bunch of people whining because the requirements don’t mesh with the applicants’ personal needs.  One of them complains that the Infectious Diseases class is being held in June and July.  And that’s when a lot of people prefer to go a vacation, don’t you know?

Some of them complain about the time it takes to do the paperwork necessary to apply.  Many others flat out refuse to take the necessary classes.  About 85% of people who express an interest in joining fail to complete the required procedures.  Some of them even complained that they didn’t get enough “encouragement” from whoever they expected to get it from.

Firegeezer brings all this up because it illustrates once again the growing cultural phenomenon of people who want to feel good about themselves by being able to hang the certificate on the wall and telling their friends that they are a Volunteer.  But they don’t want to actually do any volunteering, let alone working to achieve the level of ability demanded of it.

Read the Journal Sun article HERE.
Horry County Fire Rescue department WEBSITE.

FossilMedic tells us that maybe they don’t really matter after all:

ALS RESPONSE TIMES: EMS PHYSICIANS SAY “NEVER MIND”

Twenty-five years ago semi-automatic cardiac defibrillators (AEDs) could only be operated by paramedics. Applying electricity was considered as invasive as starting an intravenous line, administering drugs or pushing a tube down the throat of a non-breathing patient.

Miami, 1966 - the first defibrillator

In order for my department to place AEDs on a fire company we had to make sure that there was an ALS credentialed firefighter on the rig. As we were starting the trial period in 1986, the updated national standard curricula allowed use of AEDs by EMT-Basics. The department did not stop the effort to staff engine companies with a paramedic/firefighter, because it increased the minimum staffing from three to four.

The chiefs were following the drama within the NFPA 1500 committee and believed that Department of Labor or NFPA would recommend four-person staffing of fire companies. Fellow fossils may recall the mass withdrawal of the IAFF representatives from the code consensus process in protest of how the internal workflow was progressing on the Standard on Fire Department Occupational Safety Programs. The final result of this battle was the NIOSH “two-in-two out” ruling for work performed in immediate danger to life and health (IDLH) environments.

EIGHT MINUTES FOR ALS MEANS MANY PARAMEDICS SEEING FEW PATIENTS

There is scant evidence justifying the ems response times that we have treated as gospel. We spent the past decade using the same threadbare data to build large, complex and expensive fire-based ems delivery systems. In many systems, there are so many paramedics that there is almost no opportunity to treat enough seriously ill patients to assure competency in the few out-of-hospital clinical interventions that MAY make a difference in long-term patient outcome.

Dr. Paul Pepe assists on the scene

While fire-based systems were building resource rich systems, private/public agencies were finding the limits of high performance ems systems by overloading transport unit workload. Somewhere in the middle is probably the best system.

A WORD FROM EMS MEDICAL DIRECTORS FROM THE LARGEST CITIES

The Consortium of U. S. Metropolitan Municipalities’ EMS Medical Directors developed a statement that was published in the April/June 2008 issue of Prehospital Emergency Care. PEC is a peer reviewed professional journal. I explained how medicine develops and shares knowledge earlier this year: http://firegeezer.com/2008/02/05/secret-handshakes-and-decoder-rings/

This group has a State of the Science professional meeting in February. From their website http://gatheringofeagles.us/ : The U.S. Metropolitan Municipalities EMS Medical Directors Consortium (The “Eagles” Coalition) is comprised of most of the jurisdictional EMS Medical Directors for the nation’s largest cities 9-1-1 systems as well as the FBI and the U. S. Secret Service. In essence, this small cadre of leading emergency specialists not only oversee the medical aspects of day-to-day 9-1-1 calls and early resuscitative care in the nations most populous cities, but most of them are also responsible for much of the medical aspects of homeland security in these high-risk venues in which nearly 50 million Americans dwell and make their livelihood.

Some of these medical directors worked as a paramedic before they started medical school. They share our perspective of street emergency medicine.

WHAT URBAN EMS SYSTEMS SHOULD BE DOING

The physicians outlined recommendations for six areas of clinical treatment. ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI), pulmonary edema, asthma, seizure, trauma and cardiac arrest. Their recommendations for cardiac arrest are surprising:

Response interval of less than 5 minutes for basic CPR and automatic external defibrillators (AEDs). No response interval was specified for ALS arrival.

In justifying its cardiac arrest recommendation, the group noted that much of the clinical research used to establish acceptable ALS response time intervals was conducted prior to the widespread dissemination of AEDs and at a time in which the compression component of CPR was not emphasized as it is now. As a result, the consensus group proposed that EMS systems not focus response time measurement on ALS ambulances, but rather pay greater attention to first response/BLS response time to measure what it called the “most important predictive elements for optimal outcome: time elapsed until initiation of basic chest compressions and time elapsed until defibrillation attempts.”This is a powerful recommendation from emergency medicine physicians with EMS experience and operational authority. It is going to be difficult to promote blanketing a city with paramedic staffed first responder fire companies if all you need is an AED and chest compressions to make a difference in cardiac arrest survival. Maybe fewer paramedics is a good idea.

Dr. Copass helps unload a Seattle cardiac arrest patient
in the 1990’s

Go here to download the rest of the Best Practices in Emergency Services summary and the Prehospital Emergency Care article.  14 pages, 137 KB Adobe Acrobat file
http://home.gwu.edu/~mikeward/0804_EMSMedicalDirectorsConsensus.pdf

FossilMedic throws the switch:

THIRTY-FIVE LESS LINE OF DUTY DEATHS IN 2009

I was one of the 200 that developed the 16 initiatives that came out of the National Fallen Firefighter Foundation (NFF) Life Safety Summit in Tampa four years ago. http://www.firehero.org/index1.aspx?BD=26803.  We committed to reduce firefighter line-of-duty deaths by 25% in five years.

Since the Life Safety Summit, the industry has witnessed excellent work by many to raise the awareness and change some processes. Unfortunately, it appears we will not meet our commitment by January 2010. Here is my proposal to meet our original commitment.

NO COMBAT FIREFIGHTING PAST THE AGE OF 50

The NFFF tasked Gordon Routley to analyze twenty years of line-of-duty death reports. The only statistically significant item was the rate of cardiac-related deaths in firefighters over the age of 50.

This factoid* is used by every person selling automatic external defibrillators (AED). Fire company AEDs is one of the reasons why the number of firefighters dying of sudden cardiac arrest have declined, from an average of 65 deaths a year in the 1970s to an average of 41 deaths a year in this decade.

One LODD example was a seventy-something fire-police member. Fire-police are elderly firefighters who control traffic at an emergency scene. He suffered a cardiac arrest while operating at a fire. The AED that resuscitated him a year earlier could not repeat the task.

This prohibition is a draconian concept, penalizing about a quarter million firefighters that are over the age of 50. Of that group, about 80,000 have a cardiac condition, whether known or unknown, that may lead to a fireground line-of-duty death. So, lets refine this concept to …

MANDATORY PHYSICAL, STRESS TEST AND WORK PERFORMANCE AT AGE 49, 56 & 63

When a firefighter reaches the age of 49, 56 and 63 the department should require a comprehensive occupational physical exam designed to assess the ability to perform firefighting tasks. This will include a cardiac stress test and comprehensive analysis of blood work.

A mandatory work performance test will be required when firefighter passes the physical and stress test. This is to confirm that the firefighter can continue to participate in structural firefighting.

This applies to all ranks: from firefighter to command officer. If you are on the fireground you must be physically capable of performing required tasks within this demanding environment. Those familiar with retirement plans and pension regulations will recognize that these three ages represent decision points for many municipal employees.

There are dozens of fire departments that do more. Check with your IAFF or IAFC representative to get contact information from the departments that participate in the Wellness-Fitness task force: http://www.iaff.org/HS/Well/index.htm

I appreciate that this recommendation is fraught with fit-for-duty, disability, retirement, rehabilitation, and labor-management concerns. Maybe this option is too expensive or politically difficult. How about this:

NO FIREFIGHTING AFTER CARDIAC SURGERY OR A SIGNIFICANT CARDIAC EPISODE

The majority of the 41 firefighters who have a cardiac line-of-duty death each year had a known condition, cardiac surgery or a “sentinel” event days, weeks or months before their death. I am concerned when reading about cardiac arrest survivors and multiple bypass recipients who return to full firefighting duty. They have an exponentially higher chance of suffering another cardiac event that will cripple or kill them.

This option also raises significant labor-management and worker compensation issues. We have many examples of fire departments that “look-the-other-way” to allowing our heart-damaged brethren to stay on the job in frontline assignments.

One LODD example was a company officer assigned to office duty. The results of his cardiovascular stress test never got to his boss, the officer hid the report in his desk. He died of a cardiac arrest when assisting on a greater alarm fire.

We need to show tough love and move these dedicated sister and brother firefighters off the front line before they become a statistic or assisted living resident. This affects about 5,000 of the 80,000 firefighters with a cardiac condition. This third option can result in 35 less LODDs in 2009.

*  *  *

*Factoid:  NFPA analyzed post mortem information or known medical history on 713 of the 1,117 sudden cardiac arrest deaths that occurred in a twenty-five year period. 84.6% had suffered prior heart attacks, had severe arteriosclerotic heart disease, had undergone bypass surgery or angioplasty/stent placement or were diabetic.

Source:
Fahy, LeBlanc and Molis (June 2007) Firefighter Fatalities in the United States - 2006.
Fire Analysis and Research Division
National Fire Protection Association

FossilMedic brings up the subject:

KILLED WHILE OPERATING IN A BURNING STRUCTURE

Vincent Dunn’s Collapse of Burning Buildings is one of the few fire textbooks that left me sleepless. When the book came out in 1988 Dunn was in his third decade at FDNY and working as Division 3, the mid-town Manhattan deputy chief. While on the job, Chief Dunn obtained an associate (fire administration), bachelor (sociology) and master degree (urban studies) from Queens College, City University of New York.

The opening left a lasting impression: This book is dedicated to the forty-six FDNY chiefs, company officers and firefighters who have been killed by burning buildings which collapsed during the thirty years 1956-1986. Dunn then lists the deceased, including a description on what collapsed on them.

Every chapter starts with a fireground story that describes a collapse or sets a scene. He then describes the construction elements at play for this type of structure. Each chapter concludes with lessons to be learned. I would be wide awake in the fire station bunkroom thinking about how to apply the lessons to my company.

I used the book as a resource for the building construction and strategy and tactics courses that I taught at the community college. I used my own funds to purchase the five videos developed by Dunn for Fire Engineering. With Dunn’s videos I felt I was bringing Brannigan’s building construction course alive.

FDNY LODDS IN STRUCTURE FIRES 1994 - 2008

Last month Chief Dunn made a presentation to The Fire Bell Club of New York (http://www.firebellclub.org ) describing the results of his continuing research into the deaths of FDNY firefighters operating within burning structures.

Chief Dunn

Excluding 9/11, 28 FDNY members died while operating in burning structure fires in the last fourteen years. Seventy-five percent of them were members of ladder companies. Three were from rescue companies and four were from engine companies.

By rank, there were 17 firefighters, seven lieutenants and four captains. Eight-six percent of the deaths occurred while searching the structure. Four were killed while operating a hoseline.

Multiple family dwellings counted for 15 of the fatalities, followed by eight commercial structures, three vacant and two single family homes. Thirteen were killed operating above the fire floor, ten on the fire floor and three in the basement.

There were more deaths during the fire growth stage (64%) than when the fire was fully developed.

DEVELOP AN EXIT STRATEGY

In some situations, command may initiate an evacuation order that does not result in the crews to promptly exit the fire area. Chief Dunn advocates that department’s develop and practice an exit strategy, including a unique signal, more training and a specified assembly area.

Chief Dunn’s fourth textbook, Strategy of Firefighting, was published last year by Fire Engineering.

Chief Dunn’s website: http://www.vincentdunn.com/

FossilMedic reports on the latest….

DEVELOPING 21st-CENTURY TIME ON TASK AND OUTCOMES DATA

There is a multiple organization effort starting next month to identify the current “time-on-task” for fire suppression and ems activities from 400 fire departments. In addition, there will be 50 fire and 30 ems experiments to identify the time required to obtain measurable outcomes. The results of this effort may have the same effect on staffing, deployment and evaluation as the Ontario Pre-hospital Advanced Life Support (OPALS) project had on paramedics in 2005. http://www.chsrf.ca/final_research/ogc/stiell_e.php

LAST CENTURY’S RESEARCH

When California voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978, local government revenues were significantly reduced due to restrictions on the property tax rate. This required immediate and serious reductions in local government staffing and services. The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) was faced with the possibility of a reduction in staffing of their single-unit engine companies. At that time about half of the 103 LAFD fire stations operated a single-unit engine company.

The LAFD developed a task analysis of typical initial fireground scenarios that included a list of required on-scene performance objectives for an engine company. They broke each objective into fundamental and discreet tasks and performed extensive time and motion studies using different staffing levels to accomplish the tasks. The Measure of Effectiveness System (MES) identified the tasks performed by each fire fighter in chronological order. The analysis was performed with variations in crew size from three to six members and documented significant increases in the time that was required to accomplish the standard fireground objectives as the size of the crews decreased. The results justified retaining five fire fighters on single-unit engine companies.

There were three subsequent studies that followed the LAFD success. They formed the core of fire suppression staffing and deployment research in the 1980s. Seattle, Houston and Phoenix used research to support the maintenance or expansion of fire company staffing and deployment.

There is a problem with the 1980s research. While the results were valuable for decision makers in Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston and Phoenix, the process cannot establish a validated set of best practices for use by others. They did not use the structure and academic vigor needed for professional-grade research. To be fair, none of the studies were constructed with that goal, but for two decades we have tried to extrapolate their results to make the connection.

THE START OF 21st-CENTURY RESEARCH

During the 2003 IAFF EMS conference, 17 focus group meeting were held to identify indicators of EMS system quality. The IAFF EMS committee was charged with generating an agreed-upon set of performance indicators. http://www.iaff.org/tech/ops/performance.htm

The resulting IAFF/IAFC EMS System Performance Measurement instrument consists of 15 EMS quality indicators, their definitions and performance measures. The instrument also provides background information relating the indicator to quality in an EMS system, explains any existing standards, notes the absence of standards, proposes a system goal and provides for data collection of information related to each main measure. The indicators include: call processing time, turnout time, defibrillation time to first shock, employee turnover, patient outcome, protocol compliance, deployment of mobile resources, staffing and employee illness and injury. The measurement instrument will provide system leaders the best way to collect relevant data and to report on that data in the future.

This project is the latest example of labor-management initiatives that benefit the fire service. Part of this effort includes the 2007 Fire-Based EMS white paper and DVD that was profiled in my July 24th column.
http://firegeezer.com/2007/07/24/walking-the-fire-based-ems-talk/

FIREFIGHTER SAFETY AND DEPLOYMENT STUDY

Building upon the work started by the IAFF/IAFC EMS Systems Performance Measurement program, a Department of Homeland Security funded research effort is starting to gather data and conduct time-on-task experiments to develop a prospective deployment model. http://www.firereporting.org/

Joining the IAFF and IAFC in this effort, are three national groups and one technical sponsor: the Center for Public Safety Excellence http://www.publicsafetyexcellence.org/ , the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Department of Fire Protection Engineering http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/Fire/What/index.html , National Institute of Standards and Testing http://www.fire.nist.gov/ , and Firehouse Software http://www.firehousesoftware.com/ .

From May through the end of 2008 FireReporting.org will be obtaining data from 400 fire departments, including the 53 largest fire departments. The letters of invitation will be going out next month. The data obtained will be used to document experience with time-on-task skills and outcomes.

While the data is obtained, crews from Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia, will be participating in experiments to determine time-on-task requirements and comparing different staffing schemes with outcomes. There are 50 fire suppression and 30 ems time-on-task experiments. We are coming a full circle, as these experiments are similar to the LAFD fireground task studies using three to six firefighter engine companies in 1979.

May even address the issue of two paramedic versus one paramedic and one emt ambulance staffing. This will end thousands of hours of passionate but statistically devoid firehouse kitchen debates.

FossilMedic reports back from Indianapolis:

Two tactical take-homes and a Fossil moment from the Fire Department Instructor’s Conference.

SMOKE IS FUEL

According to Diane Feldman, they retire a FDIC presentation after three years. This was the third year retired battalion chief David Dodson did a big room presentation on “Reading Smoke.” While this presentation may be rotated off in 2009, his message left a lasting impression on me.

Consider a primary search in a smoke-filled structure. The hallway is filled with thick turbulent smoke so thick you can barely see your helmet or boxlight. Products of combustion are coating your facepiece and the velocity of the smoke is accelerating.

You are seconds away from burning to death. You are surrounded with the vaporizing contents of the room that is about to be heated to flashover. You are getting coated in a combustible glaze that will flash-fry as soon as one of the half dozen combustible gases reaches ignition. Once the first gas starts to burn, the rest of the gases will ignite.

Pennwell sells a great DVD of Dodson’s presentation: http://www.pennwellbooks.com/artofresm.html

Dodson has a training company: http://www.readingsmoke.com/index.html

This is not your father’s products of combustion. United Kingdom firefighter and author Paul Grimwood participated in an international textbook on 3D Firefighting. IFSTA published the book in 2005. http://imis-ext.osufpp.org/imispublic/Product_Search/core/orders/product.aspx?catid=5&prodid=1678

Dodson shows that the black boiling smoke seems to lighten up moments before flashover. Grimwood speculates that we are seeing the sublimation of vaporized carbon into ash. Ash is the dense and hot product of carbon combustion.

Maybe that positive pressure ventilation, where you walk into a clear area to seek the source of the fire, may not be such a bad idea after all.

WIND DRIVEN FIRE

NIST started working with FDNY in February on tactics involving wind-driven fires. Some details discussed at FDIC, more at the annual NFPA conference in June. http://www.fire.gov/WDF/index.htm

 
FDNY photo

Hopefully, the results of this work, and the Reading Smoke concepts, will guide future fire suppression practices. We must remain aggressive without becoming deceased.

FEELING LIKE A FOSSIL, REDUX

Last week I mentioned Sean Flynn’s July 2000 edition of Esquire article about the Worcester Cold Storage tragedy. http://www.esquire.com/features/perfect-fire-0700

In another class a FDIC presenter asked how many attendees knew about the Worcester tragedy. Very few raised their hands. Part of this reflects the age of the FDIC attendees and part of this reminds me of the tyranny of time. We must never forget the sacrifices of those that went before as we learn to deal with today’s firefighting challenges.