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- [Dave] Every firefighter is familiar
with the standard fire orders and watch out situations.
The 18 watch outs are important to consider
when engaging in the mission,
and the 10 fire orders are crucial to have in place
to fight fire safely and aggressively.
On page 46 of the IRPG,
we have a set of watch out situations specific to aviation.
These watch outs provide a great framework
to make decisions when working with aviation resources.
In the dynamic environment of firefighting,
we could all find ourselves working directly with aircraft.
How carefully have you considered the aviation watch outs?
These watch outs can apply to all firefighters,
regardless of seniority.
A new crew member could make a difference in safety
the next time they see a hazard
where the helicopter is dropping.
On the other end of the spectrum,
the operations section chief
can minimize transfer of risk to pilots
by actively assessing the true need for aircraft.
In this video,
we will elaborate more on aviation watch outs
and how they might be addressed on the fire line.
- Confusion on who's in charge.
A lot of the times, what I've found to be very helpful,
is if you're confused,
it's your part to stand up as a team member and say,
"Hey, I'm unclear on what's going on."
And sometimes, you have to lead up in those situations.
Perhaps you're working with someone
that you might have more experience than them,
but they are the leader at the time
and with the title and the duty that they're acting as,
so it's part of being a good team member.
And sometimes you need to lead up
when you're not getting that information,
and that's not clear.
This has serious consequences though
for chaos and confusion.
If you feel like it's at a point, I think,
where you don't know what's going on,
you're unclear on what's being asked for you to do,
then you need to be assertive, and you need to speak up,
and maybe you need to pull out perhaps,
your refusal on how to refuse an assignment.
That could be appropriate at that time,
if you're not getting the information that you need.
I went to a training recently
where I heard something that has resonated with me.
Before you know what you're doing,
know who you're going to do it with.
And that, again, ties back to CRM.
Before you accept a mission, how healthy is the team?
What can the team do?
What is it capable of doing?
And really understanding
that human dynamic in that situation.
Yeah, I believe
that all the watch out situations are important.
A few of them, have grabbed onto, on my career, has been,
should this mission continue with the changing conditions?
Meaning weather, mission changes, terrain,
competing priorities, all those things.
That, to me, is somethin' that we need to really focus on,
because we get pretty task saturated sometimes
when we're in the front seat of the helicopter
and/or the fixed wing,
and maybe we're missin' something
on the external side of things.
And I think that that's definitely been a factor
in several accidents,
where folks are maybe focused on the mission
and kind of shrink their situational awareness
to that mission-driven attitude,
and it's really important for folks
to maintain that awareness beyond that mission
and constantly be evaluating whether things have changed.
And so, I think that's a really important one,
for folks to stay in that moment and not get so focused
that they're not noticing what's changing around them.
The sense of urgency,
you see that a lot,
and I think it's rather self imposed.
And a lot of the times, it's not just so much urgency,
but a need to act, and I see that quite a bit.
We're type-A personalities, as firefighters, most of us.
We have a sense and a need to do something,
and sometimes, that's a really hard attitude to break,
because maybe the right thing to do is to not act
versus acting.
And that's a really hard thing to learn and to develop
and to have the self-discipline to enact
when you're in that situation.
So, I have had situations
where I've trusted the pilot too much.
I know that almost sounds kinda hard to understand,
but I had a feeling where I didn't like the situation,
and I trusted this pilot.
I've worked with this person for 10 years.
They were a high-hour pilot,
but it was probably one of the scariest flights
of my career.
I didn't feel comfortable speaking up
because he felt so comfortable being there.
So, that's resonated with me
in how I can help folks determine,
like, how do you use your gut?
How do we know how to use our gut in this job, right?
It comes from experience and flys,
and it comes from understanding policy and knowing all that.
But in the end,
when you need to stop the mission is a bit of a gut check,
and it's also a pulse check for your team.
To determine if your actions are justifiable
is a pretty complicated question.
It has to do many levels with your authority.
Are you authorized to approve this action
or operation that you're doing?
And that's something to be very cognizant of.
And then you have, where are you at in time and space?
Do you have the luxury of seeking further authority,
or do you need to kinda act on what is right at the time?
And no one's gonna be able
to tell you the right answer there,
and that's gonna come with experience
and your own personal values.
In order to determine if it's justifiable,
we have policy and that'll tell you right away,
if it's justifiable.
There's no way we can have a rule for every situation.
And, policy does a really good job
of keeping us kind of in our sideboard in that,
but the concept of doctrine to me is more fascinating
when we talk about justifiable actions.
And there's been times in my career,
where I've used doctrine, and it's worked out okay,
and it's been good, but my advice to you is don't,
if you can't justify your actions,
then perhaps you shouldn't do them,
but perhaps you should, depending on the risk versus reward.
And that's gonna be a really individual decision.
I definitely see rules getting broken,
but for me, I wouldn't call this a rule.
The biggest trend I've seen lately,
as far as ineffective use of aircraft perhaps,
in a sense that, you know,
our risk tolerance as an agency is changing, and at times,
depending on location and values that are threatened,
you may or may not have the approval to do a direct attack
or a tactic that you would like perhaps, as an ops person.
What's happened, and I've seen,
is the transfer of risk then to the aviators.
Sometimes that is a very good plan.
Sometimes that's a great tactic.
For example, you gotta snow storm coming in in four days,
and you got a house a quarter mile away,
and you just need to slow it down,
and there's a small timeframe that you have to get that,
you know, to achieve that objective, if you will,
and maybe that's an appropriate use
of that transfer of risk.
However, in the last few years,
I've seen that transfer of risk
with no end state for a tactic
when it gets deferred to the aviators.
Long-term fires,
that people don't feel comfortable
maybe engaging direct activity,
and we see multiple flights over and over again,
multiple incidents, jurisdictions.
And that's probably got me the most concerned,
as an aviator,
as an aviation manager at this point in my career,
is that transfer of risk.
And I wanna be super clear here,
sometimes it makes sense, and I get that,
but sometimes it doesn't make sense.
And that kinda ties back into one of my watch out situations
is that urgency to act or, you know, needing to act.
Perhaps this is where we need to look at
some of those behaviors in our human dynamic,
to go, are our actions making a difference?
Our larger team fires, at this point,
is to think about that risk transfer
and to think about some strategies and tactics
that we can avoid doing.
Most commonly, I've found in my career,
I'm deviating from a flight plan
or a plan mission for weather,
or I've been redirected from the GACC
to a different emerging incident, and so,
just being able to not get mission-driven on that
and have the flexibility to say,
you know, the plan can change.
And I think that's really important for people to grasp onto
is to not get mission-driven on this is the plan,
we made the plan, and I'm gonna follow through with it.
Probably one of the best attributes
to an aviator or a risk manager
is the ability to recognize change
and then change your plan,
and that's a really hard thing to do.
The most important thing to do is,
when your mission plan changes,
that you communicate that
to everybody that needs to know it,
clearly dispatch, but also your crew,
perhaps the IC, or anyone you're working with.
I think it's just really important that when things change,
you make sure everybody in that communication chain
is getting that message.
- [Dave] Never let undue pressure
influence your judgment or decisions.
That is the closing statement in the IRPG.
It is easier said than done,
and we will all face this pressure at some point.
- I love that that is written in the IRPG,
but we have to digest it in our culture,
and it is not there.
We, as a culture,
have a long way to go before we're willing.
And I think we're really good at saying,
"We give permission to people to refuse,"
but I was actually talking to a pilot this morning
about this interview, and I asked him that question.
His biggest thing was, from a pilot's perspective, is yeah,
I get told every day that I can turn down a flight,
but when I turn one down, it doesn't go so well.
So, I think, it's great that that stuff's written down,
and it's in our documents, that's a starting place,
but as far as our culture adopting those kind of things,
I think we still have a fair bit to go
before our actions maybe match our words there.
We need to be better at hearing no
and accepting it.
- [Dave] As firefighters,
we will always be the go-getters
that want to get the job done.
That is where the last fire order comes to mind.
Fight fire aggressively, having provided for safety first.
Both concepts are equally important and need to be balanced.
We can strive to accomplish objectives,
just remember that our safety is the most important mission.
(gentle music)
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