SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

In our last article we compared on service to a team sport. In this article we are going to elaborate a little more on that concept.

Firefighting in general is a team sport. We are not on the fire ground acting like a bunch of individuals. No, we are attempting to act as a team. So it is safe to say that the actions of our team is instrumental in our ability to maintain our situational awareness while on the fire ground. How do we accomplish this? This is accomplished through our SOPs, through knowing what our teammates are doing, or going to do, based on the situation at hand.

Let's look a successful NFL team (you can use your favorite one). If the offense of that team has any hope of moving the ball and scoring, the guy calling the plays, whether it be the head coach (Fire Chief), offensive coordinator (Battalion Chief), or the quarterback (Capt.), they must rely on every member of the team to perform their job without the need of being micromanaged. Ever seen what happens to a NFL offense when someone doesn't know or misunderstands the play that was called? The quarterback gets sacked, throws an interception, or the receiver/running back runs the wrong route. The play, which is well thought out, is only as good as the execution of the team members. NFL teams practice for months to make sure their team members know the plays. The begin practice in July, with 2 a days, and continue through August. During that time period the team will practice anywhere from 25 to 30 times. This is not including the team meetings or film studies. These men make sure they are as prepared physically as they can be. This is when they develop their ability to play as a team - through realistic practices. Are our departments training that hard? Does each company and it's members KNOW what everyone else on the fire ground is going to be doing based on solid SOPs and realistic training?

Here is a great example. Bill and Ted are assigned to Engine A. Ted is on the pipe and Bill is his back up man. They arrive first due to a working structure fire of a single story wood frame residential structure. Ted pulls the cross layed pre-connect, flakes out his hose and prepares to make entry into the structure through the front door. All of this is done per SOP. Bill is not with Ted at the front door, Ted moves foreword into the structure advancing the hose, while Bill is right inside the doorway feeding him hose. As Ted moves further into the structure, Bill continues to pull hose making sure that Ted always has enough line.

Bill and Ted work together perfectly to extinguish the fire. It should be said that Bill and Ted work together every third day and have made dozens of fires together. All of this was accomplished without a lot of screaming back and forth of "Give me more line". Why? Because these guys practice situational awareness every third day. Just like that NFL team.

But we must extend that situational awareness from just the company level and make sure it is applied to the entire fire ground team. As the nozzle man, you use your senses to maintain your situational awareness, but that same nozzle man is relying on cues from other firefighters on the fire ground as well. He is listening for windows being broken out, saws on the roof, radio traffic. These cues are being monitored by the nozzle man and his crew to make sure the environment they are in remains tenable for them. But at the same time other crews should be looking for and monitoring cues from the nozzle man and his crew. Crews searching for victims are listening for voices, but they should also be listening for the sound of water hitting the ceiling the level below then, if that is where they are searching. If they hear that they will know that the ceiling isn't so hot that everything is turning to steam. They know it is okay to continue their search. They know their playbook and understand what is happening. They are using Team Situational Awareness to observe what else is going on within the structure.

Developing our skills to maintain situational awareness will give us a better chance at avoiding factors that may lead to injury or death. When realistic, challenging, scenario based training is performed at the company, battalion, and department level, it allows firefighters the ability to develop the cognitive skill set to maintain situational awareness throughout the whole team. We must know our playbook and what our team members are going to do, even before they do it....