By Chief Michael D. Chiaramonte CFO, MIFireE

This past Christmas I took on the wonderful and fulfilling job of preparing a four course dinner for family and guests. I have some experience in cooking but this undertaking took a great deal of planning. As many of you know, timing is extremely important when preparing such a meal. Everything has to come out at the right time and warm. As I was working on the project days before and pre-cooking some things ahead of time, I thought that this was just like most fire department projects, I had to develop an action plan and stick to it. This plan included a goal, a budget, an inventory of equipment, a list of supplies and an implementation schedule. I could not just get up on Christmas day and look around the house and decide on the spot then what I was going to do for the family Christmas dinner.

There are many similarities to planning a dinner like this and planning many projects in the fire service. The phrase "Everyone Goes Home" has been bantered around for a couple of years now in our service. Is this just an inspirational phrase? Do we as brothers and sisters in our profession have any way of controlling whether or not everyone goes home? Can we as individuals actually be a force in changing the culture of the fire service enough to make a significant impact in reducing the injury and line of duty death rate? Should we continue doing things as we have always done them?

The culture of the fire service has traditionally been reactive. Let's face it...that is the nature of our job. There is a fire and we go and put it out. There is an auto accident and we go to clean it up. There is a line of duty death or injury and we then investigate. The NIOSH Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) Project states:

"The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Division of Safety Research(DSR), performs Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation(FACE) investigations when a participating State reports an occupational fatality and requests technical assistance. The goal of these evaluations is to prevent fatal work injuries in the future by studying the working environment, the worker, the task the worker was performing, the tools the worker was using, the energy exchange resulting in fatal injury, and the role of management in controlling how these factors interact."

Is this not the time to start thinking about line of deaths and injuries? I guess it is better late than never. Should we wake up on the proverbial Christmas morning and then decide what we are going to prepare for family dinner, when most of the stores are closed? Do we need to have a line of duty death or injury before we decide to do some prevention? Do we need a NIOSH report to motivate us to prevent fatal work injuries? Do we need a NIOSH report to seriously look at our work environment and how we do our job? Do we need a NIOSH report to study the tools we use and the role management has in safety? If we do, we have just attended the funeral of one or more of our brothers or sisters or we just got back from the hospital where one or more of our brothers or sisters is seriously injured, but after all the culture of our organization is intrinsically reactive. This type of thinking MUST STOP!

Our reactive culture must be turned in a proactive safety culture. We must cultivate a safety culture and develop safety competencies. Very few worthwhile things come easy, they take work. Cultivating safety competencies and a safety culture is no exception. In order for us to do this successfully one needs to have their heart into it and be brave enough to have the courage to be safe before the accident happens.

The first step in developing these competencies and this culture is to start with a complete organizational review. This review should be done by a committee composed of members from all levels of the department, from firefighters to chiefs. This committee must also seek an honest input from the entire department. This review must be candid and honest and many times it will be painful but the end result will be extremely rewarding. This review should assess the department's operations and policies and procedures with the goal of finding out if they are affective and most of all are they safe. This review may reveal a need to establish some new operational methodologies, as well as, new policies and procedures. There should be a strong alignment among the way things are done, and the people in the department, as well as, the department's unique culture and tradition. In order to conduct an affective organizational review the following steps should be followed:

Step 1 - is to establish the goals of such a review. It must be determined how this review is to be conducted. It is important to establish clear cut guidelines for the review.

Step 2 - is to determine how the data for review will be collected and what criteria will be used to measure the department. For example, is the department going to use the national accreditation model, the NFPA standards, the 16 Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives or a combination of any or all of these things? Is the department going to use another department or departments as a model?

Step 3 - is to decide what focus groups within the organization will be used to achieve the goals of the review. For example, will there be a fire operations focus group, an EMS focus group, and or an administrative focus group, etc?

Step 4 - is to see how the department compares to national benchmarks for similar size and type departments.

Step 5 - Using all the information gathered by the various methods employed by the review team, determine if the current structure, processes and operations of the department are affective and most importantly for this particular organizational review, safe.

Step 6 - Create a list of action items that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable and Time dimensional (SMART), that will assure that all aspects of the department will be safe and effective.

Step 7 - Begin an active program of implementation and education within the department based on the results of the study in order to assure buy in by all personnel realizing, at all times, that such changes may be slow.

The results of such an operational review may be a pro-active approach that develops a practical wellness and fitness program for the department.

A policy like the following may be developed as a result of a full department organizational review:

Title: Personal Protection, Apparatus Occupants
Purpose: To assure that all ABC Fire Department personnel are properly protected by personal protective equipment issued and worn by the personnel.
Procedures:

Protection for Apparatus Occupants
Safety of all personnel while operating or riding in department vehicles is an important concern of management and is regulated by OSHA 1926.60(b)(9) (49 CFR Part 571 Department of Transportation, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards).

The driver shall not move the vehicle unless all personnel are properly protected.

The officer on the apparatus shall assure the crew is properly seated, belted and properly protected before allowing the vehicle to leave quarters, return to the station or otherwise move.

Seat Belts
All personnel driving or riding in department vehicles (or in personal vehicles on official department business) shall have their seat belts on and buckled whenever the vehicle is in motion.

Protective Gear
Helmets will be worn and secured by the strap by all personnel riding in the open areas (jump seats) of all apparatus.

More policies and procedures such as the one above are available at the following web site: http://www.vcos.org and click the on line resource button on the left.

The fire service must begin to reverse the horrible trend of loosing over one hundred firefighters a year in the line of duty and avoid unnecessary injuries. In additional, all fire departments throughout this country must do organizational reviews with an emphasis on safety.

Like any good meal, such as Christmas dinner, spontaneity and a reactive approach must be avoided and a good well followed purposeful plan must made. Remember, a good plan developed from a thorough organizational plan will help bring your department and the American fire service to the ultimate goal of "Everyone Goes Home."

This author wishes you a happy, healthy, blessed and most importantly a safe new year.