What is he looking for? In the latest meeting, Chiefs and Captains and Training Officers from New Hampshire and Colorado and Texas and Michigan got together and said loudly things like "we need to teach survival skills from day one of Firefighter I training." And, "maybe we ought to slow down."
Siarnicki and NFFF have for years picked up the pieces left after a LODD, seeking to assist and provide solace to the survivors. Last year the board of directors blessed his project to take solid steps to prevent these deaths. That led to the Tampa, Florida Summit that hosted over 200 fire service leaders from across the nation and provided the 16 initiatives they felt were essential to keep firefighters from dying unnecessarily. Firefighter Life Safety Summit Initial Report.
And now those initiatives are being applied to six domains and hard directives are being laid out to specifically cut down the chances that another firefighter will die needlessly.
These "mini summits" began at Fire Rescue West Expo in San Diego this spring sponsored by Firehouse Magazine and Firehouse.com. Of six domains (Training and research; Structural firefighting; Wildland firefighting; Vehicles; Health, wellness and fitness; Fire prevention and public education) that one took up Wildland Firefighting. A summary of those directives will be out in a couple of weeks. NFFF will be doing the Structural Firefighting domain at the Firehouse Expo in Baltimore, July 27.
The Fire Department Instructors Conference in Indianapolis April 13 provided the opportunity to bring in over 50 men and women who gave a day to tackle directives for Training and Research. The always-involved Chief Dennis Compton, now with IFSTA at Oklahoma State University, has been the primary facilitator for the summits.
Captain Matt Tobia with the Anne Arundel County Maryland Fire Department outlined the 16 initiatives of the Tampa Life Safety Summit. According to Tobia, one initiative that came out of every single domain almost word for word by all who participated was the first. "Define and advocate the need for a cultural change within the fire service relating to safety, incorporating leadership, management, supervision, accountability and personal responsibility."
That is a nice way of saying the fire service has an attitude that until corrected is a problem for changing anything. The feeling that came out of the Tampa conference was that until this is dealt with, there would be nothing affected anywhere else. And so the mini summit was kicked off. Change your attitude.
At this summit, four groups took on specific areas of Training and Research; cultural change, standards and qualifications, risk management, safety and training. The relevant initiatives were applied and these were some of the suggested directives.
Identify falsehoods being taught. Instructors must walk the walk. Slow down and do it right. Everyone is a safety officer. Make departments seek accreditation. Standards need comparison and consensus. On going fitness standards applied to firefighters. Teach risk management throughout all training. Push for computer simulation training programs. License fire service instructors. Emphasize survival skills in training. Identify and apply accountability. These suggestions came out of hours of roundtable discussions filled with anecdotes and stories and sometimes loud voices and hard questions. The thinking was sometimes radical and out of the box, but often practical and to the point. These directives will make up one of six chapters in the completed book presenting answers to the lessening of LODDs. So what are the possibilities of all this making a difference down the road? According to Chief Billy Goldfeder, recently appointed to the NFFF Board of Directors, there are indicators already of change. "If we held this meeting two years ago there would be three people in this room." One indication Goldfeder described was his column in Firehouse magazine called Close Calls. "For years writers would send me incidents but plead, do not tell anyone I sent this in to you. In my last four columns the chiefs are saying please tell them who we are, please have the contact us, here are pictures of our fire department. We don't want this to happen to anyone else. That's an indicator to me that things are starting to turn around." Siarnicki has a plan and according to the quantity and quality of those who responded to his call for this mini summit, it will be successful. He said, "We want to make it that you cannot go anywhere in the fire service and not have somebody saying to your face, Life Safety Initiatives are important. The message is that we attack this culture in the fire service .We are beginning to tell some firefighters that if they won't do it for themselves, do it for your families. They are the ones that have to go on at home. They [firefighters] have to understand there are consequences for the actions that firefighters take." Siarnicki said the NFFF is the instigators of this project but not the owners of the project. He gives ownership to the American Fire Service. NFFF is running this project with $1,000,079 in funds from the Assistant to Firefighters Grant Program and donations from Fireman?s Fund Insurance Company. NFFF will be doing the Structural Firefighting domain at the Firehouse Expo in Baltimore, July 27. For more information, contact Jeanne Moreland, Fire Service Programs Specialist at [email protected]. National Fallen Firefighters Foundation
