(suspenseful music)
(fire crackles)
- [Voiceover] The 10 Standard Firefighting Orders
were developed to prevent firefighter injuries
and fatalities.
Each of the first nine fire orders addresses
a particular hazard of the operational fire environment.
The Tenth Order, in many ways,
is meant as a culmination of the first nine.
And it reads like a mission statement,
"Fight fire aggressively, having provided for safety first."
This video opens a discussion around the Tenth Fire Order,
and we will hear from Phil Lind,
the Base Manager of the Boise Smokejumpers
and he will share his organization's viable perspective
on fighting fire aggressively
and providing for safety first.
- I would separate that into two elements.
And one, is the tactics, you know,
taking aggressive tactics to suppress the fire,
having provided for safety.
But I tend to think of it more of as a strategy
of aggressive additional attack
when I relate it to my occupation as a smokejumper.
Aggressive initial attack puts us in a position
where we can address the risk on a smaller scale,
exposing less people, and ideally prevent the fire
from growing to a large-scale conflagration,
escalating the risk, transferring that risk
to a much larger scale.
So when I think of fight fire aggressively,
that's where I go with that.
It is a concept that all fire management officers
and firefighters grapple with,
and that is the notion that we can't have
this absolute zero-risk environment.
Once we start there, then we can start moving forward
to make it as minimal risk as possible.
But none of these concepts are unique to smokejumping.
The application of risk management is universal
in the wildland fire community.
To initiate the risk management process,
you have to have that intent.
That intent begins with an awareness.
And one of the first things any firefighter learns
in their S-130/190 courses are "Situational Awareness".
So once we, as firefighters can be aware
of our surroundings, then we can identify those hazards.
That's really the hardest part
of that risk-management process
is identifying those hazards.
There's certainly plenty out there,
we can see they're right in front of us,
but there's the ones that we can't see.
And that's where you have to have that intent,
you have to develop within your organization
the tools that'll focus your attention
on those blind spots you might have.
Once we have those hazards identified
and particularly the ones that we don't normally see
or don't anticipate,
then implementing mitigations is relatively easy.
You know, if we know that this is gonna hurt me,
I can take actions to prevent that hurt.
Just like it says on the form,
we have an initial risk,
and then we implement the mitigations
and we end up with the residual risk.
And then we make a decision about
that residual risk, a go, no-go-kind-of decision.
The difficulty is a form like that is great
when I'm taking a administrative viewpoint
of the activities that we're gonna engage in.
I have hundreds of risk management worksheets around here
about all the different activities we do
at the Smokejumper Organization and they're great.
They're a great tool and they can show us
the proper way to go about business
that challenges creating that culture
within your organization that hasn't that mindset
for every decision that they make out there
on the fire line.
And they don't have the benefit
of time to construct something like that.
So having been exposed to those administrative tools
in the past and absorbed them
and implemented them in their non-emergency situations,
people tend to make better decisions
when they're in the emergency situations
because that that formality is part
of their internal risk management process.
And if we have other great tools,
like what we like to use around here
is an Order of Precedence which kind of,
as we develop mitigations, we can see,
well the most effective mitigation
is simply maybe, not doing that action.
Well, that action has to happen, right?
So many times in that fire environment.
So, the next way down the Order of Precedence
might be a design change, all right?
We're gonna change the piece of equipment I'm using
to accomplish this tactic to achieve this suppression goal.
And by doing so, it's a safer way of doing it.
Maybe that's not achievable.
And we finally get down that Order of Precedence
to what we most commonly rely on and that is training.
And that is building our firefighters up
with a strong foundation of training that prepares them
to develop mitigations to make it safer
once they've identified the hazards.
That's essentially what training is.
It's that preparation, give 'em, you know,
we like to use that term, "slides"
when we're teaching stuff and fire.
That's why you do so many practice parachuting jumps
'cause they have those slides,
they've encountered those atmospheric conditions prior
to going into an operational environment.
When we look at it from the smokejumper perspective,
so oftentimes, design brings us back to equipment,
and we can eliminate hazards by changing the equipment
or we can design a new protocol.
We can design a new standard operating procedure
that eliminates the hazard.
But when we start making those movements,
then we seem to have, it has more efficacy
than just training people to exist
in the current environment.
We've got that HRO concept of a preoccupation with failure.
So we're always needling the standard,
how we exist now and how could it be a little bit better?
And maybe it, you know, we can always train
and train and train, but as we all know, you know,
a person's only gonna react so well
in the circumstances, in the heat of the battle,
if you will.
If we can go up the chain a little farther
and design something
or change standard operating procedures,
or give them a piece of equipment
that's gonna make it safe and eliminate the need
to train with the current existing piece of equipment,
well, we're one step closer to the maximum reduction
in that initial risk and minimizing that residual risk.
And then of course understanding
that it is a process to be diligent
and continue to evaluate,
to have our supervisors supervising the situation
and evaluating it repeatedly.
And just getting it into our heads as firefighters,
like we're never, this process isn't gonna end
is isn't gonna end today, tomorrow,
or it's not gonna end after the fire.
You know, that's why we have another great tool,
the AAR, so that process, that continual process
of learning is propagated all the way through the fire,
to the end of the fire, and after the fire.
I think when young firefighters enter our community,
they're taught some very basic concepts.
You started this interview discussing
the "Ten Standard Firefighting Orders",
but understanding that you're 25 years in the job,
they're still something you need to learn
and something you need to improve
on your personal risk management process.
Developing that culture where people
are invested in that and interested in that
as opposed to simply going through the motions,
so that I can go about my day and get my job done.
It's an active process that we need to be invested in,
engaged in, create buy-in within your culture.
And then you actually see some pretty positive results.
You see an organization like ours
which enters what is perceived
as a very hazardous way of going about business.
But in reality, it's a heck
of a lot safer than just riding my bicycle
to work, you know?
Resilience to me is more like learning
from the little mistakes, accepting continual failure,
knowing that this is the only way we get better, you know?
And we're gonna accept this failure,
we're gonna report it, which is probably
the best thing going for this organization
that I would share with others is that reporting culture.
The notion that you hide things,
sweep 'em under the rug is what cost you in the long run.
So if you can be empowered by your fire management officers,
that you report every bad thing that happens that day
on your engine, or every bad thing that happens that day
on your crew, then everybody can learn from it
and accept that accountability is important,
but there's not a guillotine hanging
over your neck to prevent that sort of reporting culture.
You can always find statistics
of every single injury that happened
in the smokejumper community.
That sort of reporting culture, I think,
is what we could pass on the best
to the wildland fire community.
- [Voiceover] Understanding that aggressive
is both a strategy and a tactic.
Having a clear intent to identify the hazards
through the Risk Management process
using tools like risk management worksheets
and Orders of Precedence to design a safer environment.
Continually training and learning as a cultural mindset.
Creating resilience through recognition
of failure and openly reporting it.
These are some valuable insights
from a smokejumper perspective.
Now the questions are open to you.
What does it mean to fight fire aggressively?
And how are you providing for safety first?
(energetic rock music)