Bob: Hi I’m Bob Knutsen, I’m the State Safety Manager for BLM Nevada.
I started my fire career in 1976 on the Willowa Whitman National Forest.
Since then I was on handcrews, hotshot crews, helitack and engines, along with dispatch
and then moved into fire management so that’s kinda the varied career I’ve had.
Scott: Now, can you explain to us why you’re here?
What you’re trying to accomplish?
Bob: I’m here today because we’ve had a number of burn injuries in the last few
years and they’re either inappropriate use of PPE or non-use of PPE-gloves and Nomex
shirt sleeves rolled up.
Those are the two that have been kind of a common denominator for us.
And we’ve been looking into those and taking a serious look to find out if there’s something
we can do to prevent those.
That would be our goal is to get some facts or questions out there concerning PPE, and
then hopefully the group watching this will have some positive ideas and things they can
do to help us and help themselves.
Scott: Last year you were part of an investigation that dealt with some burns on a fire that
were caused because the firefighter didn’t have his gloves on.
Could you describe the situation?
Bob: Last summer we got a call that on one of the fires that we were managing, a firefighter
had been burned with first and second degree burns on the hand and had been transported
to the burn center per the burn protocol.
So we formed a team, went out there and did a non-serious accident investigation of that
incident to find out what really happened.
Scott: Could you describe some of the observations that you guys made while you were doing your
investigation?
Bob: Ya, there was a large number of people that weren’t wearing PPE.
Some of that was based on they were cold trailing fire-they had reasons to not have their gloves
on.
But a lot of them were performing duties on an uncontrolled fire and they weren’t wearing
gloves.
And it was pretty broad across the whole spectrum of crews, it wasn’t any particular crew
or agency or type of firefighter.
In addition to the issue of firefighters not wearing gloves, one of the other things we
see on the fireline and we saw during this investigation-not relating to this injury
but we see it out there is-firefighters roll their sleeves up.
So, it’s a concern because some of the burn injuries we’ve reviewed in the last several
years have been to the arms when people have their sleeves rolled up, and a firewhirl came
over or the intensity changed very quickly and they were unable to roll their sleeves
down in time and were burned.
Scott: Are there times when firefighters aren’t wearing their gloves?
Bob: Well there’s a lot of times when firefighters aren’t wearing their gloves and there’s
an appropriate time to remove your gloves on an actual going incident and I think those
occasions have increased over the years.
We have a lot of requirements to talk on a radio, to program a radio, to dial it in a
frequency.
Those things-it’s almost impossible to do with gloves on.
GPS units-operating a GPS unit on a fire is difficult to wear gloves.
Swamping for a saw on some line construction or mop-up, whatever it is.
And they might have to; they might be pulling branches out.
They might have to be feeling to see if the branches are hot or they’re cold.
They might have one glove on and one glove off, and that might go on for awhile.
And then their mode changes and they’re not doing that.
Well then they need to get both gloves back on.
And the same way with some stages of mop-up, you might need gloves off but there’s a
time to put them back on.
If you’re not putting your hand down in the hole and feeling around for heat, ya know,
maybe your gloves need to go back on.
You need to know when it’s appropriate and when it isn’t and monitor each other.
One of the things that I think concerns us with lack of appropriate use of PPE is when
people have the PPE off, they think they can get it on in a hurry or they know-they’re
smart.
They’re smart firefighters.
They know when the situation really, really says that they should have it on.
But do they?
And can they make that quick decision?
I don’t think that anybody that has been burned or injured on a fire thought that they
were going to get burned or injured that day.
Scott: Why don’t you describe the safety standown that you guys had and the survey
that came out of that safety standown?
Bob: Last summer, when we completed the investigation of the burn injury, we passed those findings
on to the State FMO who reviewed them and took a special note on the finding that was
a large number, a high percentage of firefighters on that incident were not wearing appropriate
PPE, specifically gloves.
The State FMO for BLM Nevada called a safety standown to review the issues of PPE.
So all crews around the state that weren’t on a going incident, took two hours out of
their day and answered an eleven question survey that was developed for them to answer
concerning PPE use again, specifically glove use.
They answered those questions in their groups, sent that back to the state office, and they
consolidated all those notes and all those surveys and then redistributed them back to
the individuals who had completed them.
Bob: The results of that survey are something that now they can take this winter and see
if the suggestions or input that was provided from the on the ground firefighters throughout
the state is something we can help implement into gaining higher PPE compliance in the
future.
Scott: Now is this a question of policy or is it more of a question of judgment from
the firefighters?
Bob: When you have these kind of incidences, people talk about, should we add policy?
Should we change policy?
And the fear there is that, ya know we don’t enforce the policy anyway or people don’t
understand the policy.
I think PPE use comes down to something we train people when they’re starting out.
Basic wildland fire training talks about PPE use and I think by making more policy, that
doesn’t solve the problem.
We need to encourage and convince our firefighters that they need to wear gloves and PPE appropriately
to protect themselves from injury instead of focusing on the negative, focus on the
positive.
Reinforce the people who are wearing the PPE, say hey good job, you’re setting a great
example.
Really kind of emphasizing that aspect of it instead of, a little bit more positive
than a negative reinforcement.
There is no simple solution to the problem that we have here.
I think the only way we’re going to solve this is to have actual on the ground firefighters
that are professionals that do this every day-they’re the ones that can come up with
a solution on this.
A number of years ago, we had a problem with people getting burned on fires and not getting
treated appropriately and it was fire people that actually came up with the burn protocol
and it’s a very successful procedure that we have now that we’ve used to the benefit
of the firefighters and I think that this is another issue that the fire community itself
can come up with a solution and not someone sitting back in the office and writing policy.
One other thing we need to think about though is that this is a dangerous job we do-we’re
always going to have injuries to firefighters.
Some of those are going to be burn injuries.
But we just have to keep in mind that we should never stop doing everything we can to prevent
those.
And I think that’s something that we all need to take home.