Commentary
Recently I saw on a website forum a comment that offended me. Usually I am not quickly or easily offended, especially given the nature by which a majority of forum users display their reasoning, but this one bothered me. The writer, commenting on the recent death of a Homewood, Illinois firefighter, stated a desire to have a legislation requiring placards on homes that use medical oxygen. The rationale, if you will, was that having this foreknowledge might lead to influencing the initial sizeup decisions.
While the opinion of one among many is a clear minority, what should be alarming to us is the quickness and acceptance of this lone thought. The collective body in fire service forums, no matter what the site, believe in a grieving process method, a period of waiting. They exist with a accepted norm that says questioning the acts of the fallen must wait a period of time since the announcement of tragedy. After this period of time has passed the questions are raised and the deceased firefighter’s department is piled on with “should have” and “could have”. The recommendations are laid out better than any NIOSH report, since cyberspace firefighting has few faults.
Richmond firefighter, and former Kentland volunteer, Jake Rixner wrote a article describing a moment during his recruit school where a firefighter’s cause is expounded. He tells of a moment during PT when a recruit would be near exhaustion and the instructor would go face to face with the recruit and yell, ‘are you going to get the baby?!’
“The high temperatures and the fact that these sprints were taking place in full turn-out gear, and after the recruit was tired created a situation where you had to dig deep into your heart to force yourself to find the energy to continue. The instructors would get right in the face of anyone who showed signs of fatigue, “ ARE YOU GOING TO GET THE BABY?” The question was, do you have the heart, the guts, the drive to keep going after you think you can’t go anymore and go rescue the baby in the burning building. With the mental image of a trapped infant how could you give up?”
I know Jake and he didn’t write this to piggy back on the unintelligent reasoning that says you must rush in to every burning structure you find. He wrote this to emphasize the need for firefighters to be physically and mentally fit to face one of the two universal reasons why you ride the engine, that is to save life. The intelligent passion for the job requires you to be courageous and, note this, intelligent. The intelligence comes by using your fire service education to evaluate the conditions on the fireground and influence your operations. It is not intended to be a loophole for you to place your personal safety in an extreme manner above the very people you have chosen to serve. I’m not advocating a reckless approach to interior firefighting, but emphasizing that the basics, get the baby, cannot be marginalized by risk management, victim survivability profiling, and lately hazard labeling.
If we quietly accept the remote notion of labeling for medical equipment, such as oxygen, then what else do we label? Should explosive placards be placed in the homes of those who have firearms and do reloading? What about home hospice care? Do we place a DNR sign on the front door, so not to rescue Grampa if the house catches fire? I hope you see the rationale in the irrational. I believe, as Ray McCormack put it, that too much safety makes Johnny a poor rescuer. What good does having a hazard label on a private dwelling do when we are faced with the obvious rescue?
If a danger sign on the front door does more for your mental sizeup than the burned person in the front yard screaming that the baby is still inside, I hope you reconsider your decision to be a firefighter. Powered by Facebook Comments
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There is no such thing as a safe scene. Every scene has hazards to one extent or another, and some of those hazards cannot be mitigated without hamstringing the guys called to put out the fire.
The safe provider (firefighter or medic) weighs the known hazards versus the known benefits, and plans accordingly. You can’t ever plan for the unknown hazards.
Besides, bubble wrap doesn’t look nearly as cool as turnout gear!
Thought provoking piece. Hazard labeling, why not. As a courtesy to responders it is not a bad idea.
Bill:
I like the cut of your jib.
First off; kudos for hitting the nail on the head with respect to discussion vs. appropriate grieving period. I too have seen condolence threads turn into a critique of the aggrieved fire department. It is so wrong on many levels. Though I believe that it is important to find out if a fatal fire was an anomaly or something happened that was predictable/preventable, it MUST wait until we have paid our proper respects to those involved.
Next; hazard signs on private homes. Many homes DO have the oxygen placards if an occupant uses it to assist breathing. It makes sense. Less innocuous hazards? Not so much.
In the town where I work, all businesses are required to be inspected by the fire department and the proper hazard sign must be displayed above ALL walk in doors/points of entry under HMIS. And they charge for the inspection, so they pay for their time. That is a good idea in my mind. The sign does not say “STAY OUT”; the sign says “you should know there are hazards in there, so be careful”.
I don’t think that it makes Johnny a poor rescuer; it makes him smarter.
And to close, don’t forget that we have seen property owners charged with crimes because they had bad stuff in their house and Johnny was injured/killed as a result.
I would want to know if someone was making nitro in their basement. It may not be enough to keep me out of the house, but I might want another truck or two just in case.
Excellent points as always.
See you in Indy?
Chief Reason has some great points. I work in a older community and some homes do have these type of signs, but many do not. We train on this type of hazards and by responding on EMS calls we note these hazards so they can come out with our dispatch orders. Pay attention out there folks, it’s up to us to be vigilant, to help protect ourselves, to the best of our ability.
I agree that the hazard signs do have their place, much like universal ones for vacant buildings and the various truss construction hazards. What I find troubling is the near Pavlovian response to a firefighter’s death to find another measure of safety to which we apply to our sizeup. It does help to build on the information, much like all the extra details in the CAD information helps. The problem occurs when we blindly agree that a tragedy, like Homewood’s death and injuries, could have been avoided ‘if only’. Had this fire happened to have had all the occupants out and accounted for, then perhaps a placard, or knowledge of contents, would have led to greater caution. But that is not the case; instead the fallen and injured were meet with a injured occupant out front and a report of one trapped inside. The caution to go inside is made heavier now because of that addiction to have a remedy. That makes Johnny a poor rescuer, in my opinion, because as with previous LODD reports Johnny will be given often repeated recommendations whose value does nothing more than create more rules, instead of give Johnny more resources. I’ll be at FDIC. If we’re able to meet, remind me of the fire and rescue in Maryland and we can kick this around more.
If you’re going to Indy Bill, I’d be happy to kick this around. Like my post said we must be vigilant on every alarm, but not going in on a rescue, it better be going from top to bottom. That is our job! We protect life, while not putting ours in a suicide position. Now I’m back to common sense again, silly me.
I have been wrestling with the thought that maybe we have saturated our firefighters with so many check offs on go/no go that it is causing the incident to grow to unsafe to enter.
But, how much info is needed to remain safe, give the fire its proper size up, initiate a rescue if need be and fulfill our mission?
I realize that calculated decisions must be made in spite of what a firefighter has been taught when lives are at stake.
However; I don’t think they should be lemmings either.
I also know that firefighting comes with certain risks; some recognized/some not.
Giving one’s life to save another is one thing, but having it stolen because of a bad decision is quite another.
I was with you until you used a Jake Rixner quote….this is the same guy who didnt have ” the heart, and desire” to go on EMS calls in his FD (were we have more of a chance of actually doing good for someone) which led to his firing. I know Jake as well and he is all about him….when there was no money to gain in his fire training business he stopped teaching, now he is up there with a bunch of other yahoos at Kentland.
Now for your topic like Chief Reason said the only thing this would do is gove you more information and help you make a better decision. FDs all over the country are starting to mark there private dwellings with “placards” indicating basements or lightweight construction. More information is always better than less.
No it wont change my decision to make a “viable” resuce based on size up, smoke and fire conditions. What it will do is give me more information in order to do it better, and to realize I may not have as much time as I would in a normal situation.
Boss, your dead balls on.
I met Ray McC 2yrs ago at FDIC and saw his speech get pulled from the net for not being “the views of the FDNY admin”. What a load. I believe he was correct in his thinking and logic. Fastforward to Homewood’s tragedy. I run a firefighter bagpipe facebook page and received a “join the oxygen placard on every door that contains medical O2″ group… and thought, why? From what I was told the fire was dispatched with known entrapment. Would any firefighter not search a home that had the aforementioned placard on the front and knew someone was inside? I’d like to think that’s not the case. Maybe a good idea but I think its one we can forego.
Information can be used for making decisions. The DOT requires placards on trucks to identify the contents. We use these placards to make decisions on METHODS of mitigation. No one is advocating putting ridiculous placards on houses, but if you are searching a structure that contains potentially explosive contents, you bet your butt I’d like to know about it before committing firefighters to the task.
Knowing someone built bombs in there basement will influence your IAP, not prompt you to get in your apparatus and leave.
Thank you all for your comments and insight, and thank you Amir for not sidetracking the comments. It is good to read that the additional information a placard might provide would not completely cause you to write off the primary search. As with most any fire service education, the material makes you smarter, thereby making your operations smarter.
I am not for placarding homes with Oxygen. Do we not have enough Government regulation already, not to mention them telling us what we can and can’t do in our homes…
I am a Fireman and Service Technician with a Home Medical Company. It is already manditory that the Medical Oxygen provider give every Patient or homeowner a sign for the front door and rear door and the window and door of the home that has Medical Oxygen. Most of these patients have a small quantity of cylinder such as an E or D tank.. Some use Liquid Oxygen. Those tanks are a bit larger holding about 98lbs of oxygen. This is something every Emergency Responder should be looking for…
Also used in the home is an oxygen Concentrator and this is plugged in to an electric outlet and takes room air and produces oxygen. This is used in about 99% of homes with oxygen. The reason is as long as the patient has electric they have o2. If they go out they turn the power switch off and they take the cylinder that I spoke of before..This O2 concentrator does not store any amount of o2 at all.. Once turned off the oxygen is done..So my point is that these patients do not have enough hazMat product to really be of major concearn. I placard my vehicle at 1001 lbs..and I need hasmat and tanker and government TSA clearance to drive it..What will they make us do in our homes?????
I don;t want to find out…
pj
Sir, you have hit the point on the head. One can always “Armchair” the situation and unfortunately we have those personnel with the 2 / 20 syndrome will to immediately flap without getting all of the information. Example: The accident involving the two St. Louis Quints and the comment from a “Brother” Firefighter how there must have been a Volunteer driving the Quint that did the hitting. St. Louis changed over to Career in the late 1800′s.
My wife is on an Oxygen Concentrator. We put up the notifications of said Concentrator on all of the entrances into the house. Do we stop and look at those as we make entry? Most times no, not if we see Fire. We do our jobs and do what we can to effect the rescue if one is needed. A rescue from the home had been made, another was being attempted. We “Risk a lot to Safe a lot and Risk little to safe little!” The Homeowner was worth risking a lot! Unfortunately, the gamble did not pay off with a double rescue. The questions I do have is; Is every truss built structure in your response area marked. Probably not even one. Does your Fire Department have a Physical Fitness Program, with complet physicals, a work out room, and a program specifically set up for each member of your Fire Department or Fire District? Probably not! Heart attacks are still the numeber one PREVENTABLE killer of Firefighters.
By the way, 2 / 20 means two years on, twenty years of experience.
Yeah, Rixner went out of style with mustaches and gold chains! That old school macho stuff don’t mean squat…Be smart, be aggressive when NECESSARY and do your job.I read about men and women every day going to the hospital or getting jammed up from stuuf that they shouldn’t even have been in or they weren’t smart enuff to not end up in that spot.Yeah, I’ll go after your baby, but if you don’t care enuff to keep a battery in your smoke detector( which WE installed for you free of charge) and you are careless with cooking or lighters,etc. and you leave your baby in a room that you can’t readily get to in an emergency with no escape plan….well then you d#%$ right I am going to weigh the risk vs. benefit….I love my baby too!
Good discussion, though I worry that some may be missing the point. While we can all pretty much agree that more information can be helpful, it’s disturbing to see the speed with which a blanket solution is suggested…”let’s put up placards”, instead of ” Let’s examine our tactics/decisions/contributing factors to see what may have gone wrong”. We need to focus on tangible concepts and tactics that can be reinforced to reduce our risk of a repeat occurrence are what is needed, not simply throwing up signs and calling it good.
Hey Bill, another thought provoking piece. I have a couple of thoughts in a couple of directions:
1. Inside everyone’s turnout coat there is a tag that reads something along the lines of, “Firefighting is an inherently dangerous job…”. Stuff happens, even to the best firefighters, under the best conditions.
2. Regarding placards: True, they may be a useful tool if, and only if, your department completely commits to implementing, training and practicing it constantly. If not, it’s useless.
3. NO PLACARD, PREPLAN OR SAFETY BULLETING CAN,OR WILL, EVER REPLACE A WELL COORDINATED, AGGRESSIVE FIRE ATTACK, SEARCH, VENT, OVERHAUL. If you want to keep yourself, your crew and the public safe from fire, then train on getting the first line in service faster, the search completed faster and the roof opening bigger. The rest may take care of itself.
Thanks and Be Safe,
Jeebs
Dear Bill,
With regard to the Homewood fire, firefighter Brian Carey’s life may have been spared if the crew had an idea as to how many oxygen tanks were in the house, but that was not the only information that was lacking. If a 360 had been done on the premises, the firefighters would have know that the room that the homeowner was in was attached to a garage, which had a car parked in it. If the correct size hose had been taken into the small house, and not a larger diameter (2 1/2″) hose that was difficult to control in such a small area, and if the incident commander had been available to command the situation and/or assess the risk of entering the house as opposed to fighting the fire from the outside in, perhaps Brian Carey’s life could have been spared.
There is a bill in the Illinois House to require oxygen delivery companies to report the number of tanks, and the addresses to which those are delivered, to the district fire and police departments. My thought is that if the Homewood firefighters had known exactly how many oxygen tanks were in that house, they would have had more information available to them to make an accurate determination on how they were going to fight that particular fire. They were lacking information and leadership.