As fire departments across the country ramp up for Fire Prevention Month 2016, now is a good time to ask, I your prevention programs are getting the support they need. Every year fire departments are tasked with the difficult process of developing and cutting a budget where they look to garner the support of city administrators and elected officials, however, far too often one of the first areas that fire chiefs look to for cuts is prevention.
The standing argument that is presented is that if we reduce operations we won’t be able to effectively respond to emergencies when they happen. Response is a reactive measure to problems that weren’t prevented or mitigated.
Becoming proactive with public education
We need more fire service leaders to take a proactive approach and ask what they can do to prevent the need for an emergency response. Already some of you are thinking, if we prevent emergencies from happening we are essentially putting ourselves out of a job, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Simply shifting some of our focus and resources in another direction will not devalue our importance. Fire departments are always going to be needed, it is up to us where we take proactive or reactive approaches to our efforts.
Public education is our number one tool for reducing events in our communities. Unfortunately, in most departments this is looked at as a one month a year effort where we visit schools and show off the fire truck. Imagine the impact that our public education programs could have if we put the same amount of effort into them as we do training for our firefighters. Imagine if we did that year round and not just in October.
If we are honest with ourselves, we all have 30 minutes every shift that we could put towards public education. Whether conducting fire extinguisher training, checking a smoke alarm, or talking to a citizen about general home fire safety, we all could find time in our shifts to do this. Think about being a proactive engine company that stops in a business and ask if the staff has any questions about their sprinkler system, fire alarm, fire extinguishers, or routes of egress.
It sounds really simply, but how many times have you had people tell you on an inspection (or even worse after a fire) that they didn’t understand how a component of their fire protection worked or that there were steps that they could have taken to prevent the fire beforehand. We all talk about the need for good public relations and there aren’t many things better than a business owner or community leader spreading the word about the fire department doing a proactive stop to make sure they didn’t have any questions about their building or safety.
Current outreach practices
Talking about public education and proactive outreach is one thing, having current and up-to-date information is another. If you are still using stop, drop, and roll or crawl low in smoke as your primary talking points you get a C+ for effort because, unfortunately, you aren’t being very effective. As a profession we have more information available to us today than ever before, but we aren't fully capitalizing on it.
While the fire service is spending the majority of our time arguing over the results of the recent fire dynamics research and where we should apply the first water from, we are missing out on some other valuable information from the research. Things such as interior finish, fire-growth rates, toxic gases, and door closure are there for discussion and backed up with scientific data.
Fire departments should take this information and include it in their outreach messages and emphasize that this information is new and scientifically proven. Society today wants immediate facts that they can Google. Think about the impression you leave on someone by providing them with new information that they have never heard before and encouraged them to go online for further information where your message is validated by nationally recognized bodies like Underwriters Laboratories and NIST. Our goal is always to have public trust and believe in our messages, thus having the support of such well-known organizations is tremendous.
Tennessee's "Close Your Door" campaign
A great example is from the Tennessee Fire Marshal’s Office, which has taken steps to capitalize on this new information and launched a statewide "Close Your Door" campaign that educates people on the importance of closing doors in homes to prevent fire spread. While the impact and results of this work may not be measurable for a few years after enough data has been collected, the fire marshal’s office is taking a pro-active approach and getting this life-saving information out there sooner rather than later. Coupled with their existing statewide smoke alarm program, the Tennessee is taking a different approach to changing the fire death rates in their state.
Some departments are fortunate enough to have statewide programs that help with their efforts, still there is no greater advocate than the support that comes from a fire chief. Prevention is not what most candidates have on their mind when applying for a job with a fire department and unless the chief establishes this as part of the department’s culture, they may never understand the importance.
Support from leadership
Ask any chief what their top priorities are and firefighter safety will be mentioned. What better way for a chief to keep their members safe then preventing or mitigating the risk that firefighters are exposed to. It is important for fire chiefs to lead with both their actions and their words when it comes to fire prevention. Every chief tells members that prevention is an important piece of what the department does, but it is important to make sure their actions match those words. I am not suggesting that chiefs should be conducting every fire prevention program, but the impact of them stopping by events, answering questions, and thanking the department members for their efforts reinforces the importance that they place on the programs.
More importantly, what message is the chief delivering to administrators or elected officials concerning their prevention efforts? When departments have fires we send e-mails and press releases outlining what a tremendous job crews did fighting the fire and salvaging property, but what if we took that same approach with prevention. When was the last time your department sent an e-mail or press release about an upcoming fire prevention program or highlighted a near-miss because of your prevention efforts?
How is your department utilizing social media? Did you post pictures from your last fire or the new engine? Of course you did. But did you post anything about your last fire extinguisher class or public outreach event? Departments shouldn’t wait until October every year to put an emphasis on prevention efforts and expect results; nor should they wait until budget presentation time to highlight their programs, successes, and needs moving forward. The level of success will only match the level of input you have for the programs.
In closing
I will not argue with anyone that prevention is the sexy part of the job that attracts people to the profession or that it is the part of the job that creates the great stories that are told at the kitchen table. I will, however, argue that it is the most important part of the job that we do and the aspect that has the greatest potential for a positive impact. When emergencies occur, we measure our success on how fast we arrive on scene and how quick we get water on the fire. The public measures us the same way, but that is because that is how we have told them to measure us for many years—response times and property saved. The fact is someone has already experienced a significant loss, whether that is property, or even worse, life. It is unrealistic to think that we can prevent every emergency from happening, but it is worth questioning are we doing enough to prevent as many as we can?
As a profession, we are taking proactive measures to address some of the biggest problems facing our members, such as physical fitness, PTSD, and cancer, all of which are problems that required a change in mindset and culture. What steps have we taken to address the problems that our customers, taxpayers, citizens and neighbors face? The public counts on us to show up on their worst day and make things better and when that happens their gratitude is unending. Imagine what their perception would be if we were able to help them prevent that bad day from ever happening. It is important for our members to be physically fit, well trained, properly equipped, and adequately staffed to respond to emergency when they occur, but it is equally important to ensure that we are proactively working to educate our communities to help prevent us from needing to use those attributes.
The information is out there, we have the time, we want and need the public support, we just need to do things differently than in the past. Be proactive, change the culture, and make prevention a year-round priority.
JOSH WALDO serves as the fire chief in Bozeman, MT. Chief Waldo has served in both career and volunteer fire departments during his 15-year career. He holds Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from Eastern Kentucky University and is a triple designee via the Center for Public Safety Excellence.
