Planning for Success

By Ron Kanterman

Robert’s Rules of Order, by Henry M. Robert, was introduced in 1896 as a guide for conducting smooth, orderly, and fair meetings. Close to five million copies (in nine editions) have been sold, and it is the authority for managing meetings according to parliamentary procedure.

I took the liberty of adapting the core principles of Robert’s Rules of Order to “Ronald’s Rules of Order,” which covers the attributes a fire department needs to operate and serve the community properly. How does your organization measure up against “Ronald’s Rules of Order”?

Leadership

Vision and a common bond. A great leader can lead others to a position or a conclusion that he envisions. The leader, of course, must have a vision and the ability to communicate that vision. If you aspire to lead your organization, its mission statement can provide the opportunity for you to dream a little while shaping the vision of what you believe the organization should be. You must believe in yourself and your vision if the members are to buy in and visualize your objective’s potential, and you must have the passion to make it work and be able to communicate that passion as well as confidence.

Values. Leaders must strike a balance among all the members. Each member brings a unique set of values to the table. A leader must deal with these values, which he first must understand. Sort through the pile of values, and bring everyone to a common ground.

Communication. It is the cornerstone of good leadership. Be clear, concise, and open. Honesty and integrity are critical. If you as a leader, supervisor, or boss lie to your people and they find out, you’ll never get back their trust. Learn the art of active listening. Awareness of body language is a big part of this science. Crossing your arms, rolling your eyes, taking deep breaths, and checking your watch send negative signals. Show interest in the speaker. Be gracious and respectful; treat people as you would like to be treated. Evaluate the problem, and handle it quietly and effectively.

Partner with your local press. Invite reporters for coffee. Chat with them about what your department does and the initiatives you’re working on. When things are slow in the news, they might run a story about your fire department or an initiative you’re trying to launch.

Proactivity. Chief (Ret.) Peter Lamb from North Attleboro, Massachusetts, says, “What you allow to happen without your intervention becomes your standard.” Set the stage; create the environment; set the tone; and lead at all times, not just when it’s convenient. Part of being proactive is to build effective relationships. Cooperating with your team is as important as your team’s cooperating with you. Sit and listen to their points of view; ask for their input. You may be surprised at what comes from the troops. These approaches lend themselves to ownership. When you are locked in your corners and are trying to get to “win-win,” move to higher ground. Agree to disagree if necessary. Do your homework; and when you’re wrong, admit it and don’t get defensive.

Learn and contribute. Generating new ideas creates excitement among the members. Try new things. If something new doesn’t work, try something else. Leaders are expected to get out of the box. Get rid of the box, lose it, or smash it – but do something. Develop functionally and technically so you can speak, operate, and lead at the proper levels across the board. You don’t have to know how every new tool operates or have it in your hands if you’re at a higher level of the organization, but you need to understand the concept of how it works so you can support the need.

Developing the department. Leaders at all levels must keep up with their town’s demographics. Changes are inevitable in most communities. People are moving in and out; and the ethnicities, religions, and genders of the population change rapidly. New cultures bring new challenges for the emergency services, and it’s our job to keep up and ensure that our new customers are getting what they need. Meet with community or religious leaders to better understand their needs. Being respectful of citizens’ traditions, cultures, and religions will speak volumes and probably get the code compliance or other cooperation you’re seeking.

Don’t forget your internal customers, your department members. You need to fulfill their requests in the station just as you would on the fireground. Other customers include the other municipal agencies (e.g., the police, the department of public works, parks and recreation, and so on). Handle their requests for assistance as you would want them to handle your requests. Remind your members now and then that you are “marked people” and that what you do as individuals affects the entire organization.

Collaboration. If you are at or near the top of the chain of command, discuss with your companies, divisions, bureaus, and units why it’s important to align themselves with the department’s goals, objectives, and guidelines. If you’re a company officer, lead your members toward the alignment, and explain why it’s important. Many firefighters and officers have told me that they work in a four-platoon system that has in effect become four separate fire departments. Each shift and shift commander does it a little differently or, in some cases, a lot differently. Alignment is the key, and leaders at all levels are responsible for it. Align the fire prevention bureau with the suppression forces. Align the shifts. One would think that standard operating procedures (SOPs) would have taken care of that!

Think and act strategically. First, you need to know who you are. You can’t do anything until you are comfortable with yourself and confident in your position. You must also know your department – every function, position, policy, procedure, SOP, rule, regulation, what to do, and what not to do. You have to know your people, too. As a 28-year chief officer, I came to realize that most of my successes came from my deputy and battalion chiefs, line officers, and firefighters. For you chiefs who think you’re bigger than your department members, I have bad news: It’s bigger than you and, by the way, probably much better. Get that valuable input from the staff, look at best practices, and benchmark with peers and professional associations. Maintain your integrity at all times because your leadership legacy depends on it.

Part of thinking and acting strategically is consistency in how you handle your people, especially when things go wrong. Inconsistency can ruin a department, whether it’s allowing four shifts to operate in completely different ways or bringing charges against only one firefighter when two firefighters committed the same offense. Consistency is critical.

Officer development. Chiefs and high level officers should be able to rely on their senior line officers every day, even if the boss is out of town. If you haven’t developed your subordinate officers to your level, you’re cheating them and yourself. Bosses who hold back information because “they can’t know what I know” need to remove themselves from our business. We must delegate for development purposes and stand behind these subordinates to catch them should they start to fall.

Safety and Health Systems

We have worked the same way for a long time (250 years or so), and our injuries and line-of-duty deaths (LODDs) have become part of life. However, it seems we’re on our way to better days. Changing the way one million firefighters think and behave is not easy. Training and a good set of SOPs form the basis of a fire department’s safety program. Safety starts with each firefighter and rests mostly on the shoulders of first-line supervision. Line officers are expected to be safety advocates. The adage “Lead by example” applies here. Telling firefighters to wear any piece of personal protective equipment if the officer is not wearing it is a bad practice.

There are a few good “down-and-dirty” programs that can be taught and discussed with ease at the company level. If you haven’t seen them, get them, read them, and implement them. Look at the 16 Life Safety Initiatives of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, the Rules of Engagement of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, and the Safety and Survival program of the International Association of Fire Fighters. When National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1500, Standard on Fire Department Occupational Safety and Health Program, was published the first time, chiefs throughout the country collectively thought that there would be no way to comply, but 20-plus years later, most of us are doing most of it, if not all. It just took some time. Any big change takes time. Think of it as turning around an aircraft carrier – very slow and deliberate.

Foundations of safety. Career fire personnel should be training every work shift, and the volunteers on an established regular basis. Train to your SOPs; remember to work the way you train and train the way you work. Review your SOPs annually, inform your members of any changes, and incorporate any changes into the annual training program.

Incident Operations

Situational awareness. Situational awareness is a universal thought process that assists the human brain with decision making – e.g., fight or flight. For us, it starts when the tones drop or the pager goes off. It continues when going to the apparatus floor or your privately owned vehicle and while listening to the radio and making a mental size-up of the event while driving, and through the size-up at the scene and tactical decision making. Knowing what’s going on around you and what can happen next are key thoughts that will help tactically and add greatly to the crew’s safety. Every officer and firefighter on the scene should be repeating this process constantly and consistently; it’s especially important that the officer do it. Those who have studied situational awareness and have written papers and research dissertations have concluded that the loss of situational awareness increases human error; human error is the most common cause of accidental death; and improving situational awareness can reduce the number of firefighter injuries, near misses, and deaths.

Additional tools for improving situational awareness and reducing LODDs include prefire planning, collecting building reconnaissance/building intelligence, life safety and hazard inspections, familiarization tours and drills, training, and SOPs.

Training Methodology

Training the troops, the staff, and yourself and cross-training are the hallmarks of strategic thinking. Fire departments that don’t train or train seldom are doing a disservice to themselves and their communities. In fact, it’s urgent to do more training when things are slow than when they’re busy. When things slow down, we tend to lose our edge. Does your department or company get only a few fires a year, or maybe just one? If so, your need for realistic and competency-based training is more important because you have no edge at all. After you teach the members and illustrate the tactics, have them apply and perform them in a real-world environment, as realistic an environment as possible without risking undue injury or worse. Once they have proven competence, document the training.

Don’t forget preemergency planning. Get out and look at the town as part of your training program.

Fire Prevention Diligence

The “signs” of a tragedy. The New Jersey Uniform Fire Code requires buildings that have truss construction (roof and/or floor) to have a placard affixed to the structure near the front door. It’s a simple “R” for roof or “F” for floor in a reflective triangle. All firefighters should know how dangerous truss construction is when exposed to fire conditions. This code requirement may be said to be “written in the blood” of firefighters who lost their lives in fires with this construction type. On July 1, 1988, a fire at the Hackensack (NJ) Ford Dealership claimed the lives of five firefighters when a bowstring truss roof collapsed. On November 29, 1988, in Kansas City, Missouri, a trailer full of ammonium nitrate exploded as the companies pulled up to a construction site, killing six firefighters and tossing their tiller truck across the street like a toy. Now, every building in Kansas City has an NFPA 704, Standard System for the Identification of the Hazards of Materials for Emergency Response, diamond placard on its door that indicates what level (0-4) of flammable, health, or reactivity hazard is present. Fire inspections are critical to our survival.

The fire prevention officer, fire inspector, or fire marshal (or equivalent title) knows your response district best. This person is in and out of the buildings on a regular basis and knows every nook and cranny from the basement to the attic, the occupancy, and the general activities in the buildings. You must get out and look around in addition to partnering with your fire prevention officer. Knowledge is safety.

That someone else may be doing this work is no excuse. Many fire departments are not responsible for fire code enforcement. In those areas, an external bureau or department, the town, the county, or the state may be the responsible party for codes. Just because you are not responsible for the inspections does not mean that you have no obligation to know the buildings in your area for your safety and that of your fellow firefighters. Go to local businesses and ask permission to do a quick walk-through. Reach out to the inspector responsible for your area. Invite him to the firehouse to discuss what you both know. Information sharing is a critical component of safety and survival. In addition, share this information with your mutual-aid group. Acquaint them with your target hazards, and ask about theirs. Familiarization tours, prefire planning, and building inspections make for safer fireground operations.

Atmospheric Conditions

The fire service has gained the trust of the people of this country. People let us in their houses for fires, emergency medical services calls, and other emergencies because they believe we’ll do the right thing, solve the problem, or get someone who will if we can’t. When that trust is violated, it’s very hard to repair. It takes only a handful of people in an organization to derail the operation. Maintaining the fire service’s reputation pertains to personal, professional, department, and community arenas. Department members need to understand their role in the community because at the end of the day they are accountable to the people we serve. Controlling the media and social media is especially hard today, so assume you are on camera every second of every day at every call.

We make every effort to get good, smart, sharp, passionate, caring, and dedicated people into the fire service, volunteer or career. Sometimes, a bad one gets through. The only way to have a level playing field is to have rules and regulations for everyone to follow. The members who are not “all in” will need extra attention; that’s where department leadership comes in. Internally, it’s imperative that personnel get along on a reasonable level and respect one another and their property. Dignity and respect go up and down the ladder. We need to understand each other’s roles and where we fit in the organization. We may not necessarily agree on the same values, but we need to understand that everyone has different ones.

Never air your dirty laundry in public. If there are issues, call a meeting, close the doors, and hash it out. There are on record too many cases of firefighters bad-mouthing their departments, officers, or senior management in public.

Community Risk Reduction

We need to help our citizens to take preventive measures against fire and other situations that could harm their family, business, or the environment.

Fifty years of Wingspread Conferences have underscored that we’re not reaching our audiences with fire and emergency prevention messages. Our target audiences have been the young, the old, and the infirm. We need to start reaching out to middle-age Americans. Members of the fire service also could use some education. In many instances, we don’t practice what we preach. A New Jersey firefighter died in his own home doing everything we tell our customers not to do: He ran back into the burning house to try to fight the fire. He was attempting to move the burning furniture down the stairs and became trapped on the second floor. We need to set the example for our customers.

The Community Risk Reduction (CRR) initiative provides a more comprehensive approach. It involves developing, implementing, and leading community risk reduction and health programs that will prevent, reduce, and mitigate community risk involving human-caused and natural disasters and health risks. The National Fire Academy advocates using proven interventions, mechanisms to gather and analyze critical data, actions to target specific at-risk populations, evaluation, and methods for building internal and external support to accomplish the changing mission of fire and emergency services. Fire service leaders must go up in their virtual helicopters and take a comprehensive look at their communities from 30,000 feet and see what’s next to be done in CRR. It’s a reactive tool you can use to add value to your department.

Evaluate your fire prevention education efforts. Do follow-up surveys to determine if the community is retaining the information you’re giving them. Good fire inspections, code enforcement, and public fire safety education are things that we can easily do and should be doing.

First Due

How well do you know your first-due district? Who lives there? What does the downtown commercial district look like, what businesses are operating in your district, and what types of products/substances do they handle and store?

Look at the building construction. In many parts of the country, buildings built 50, 75, and 100 years ago (or more) are still standing and can injure and kill firefighters under fire/collapse conditions. Get out in the district, preplan, and become familiar with the building construction so operations will be safer and more effective.

What does the water supply look like? Are there hydrants? If so, how much water can you get from them? Can you get that information from the water purveyor? Do you have marked drafting sites? Are your personnel trained to draft? Is the department involved with the codes and zoning process to ensure new water supplies (cisterns, pools, tanks, and so on) are being installed for new housing or business areas?

Leaders of successful fire departments are heavily involved in the community, especially with civic organizations. Chiefs should be members of their Chamber of Commerce and civic organizations (Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, for example). These members are usually the community’s movers and shakers who will be able to assist the department with getting messages and information out to the town and in providing information on what is going on in the community.

Extra Hazardous Duty

Knowing what you can’t do is part of safety. Be open and honest with the community. Immediately after 9/11, a mayor of a small town asked an associate of mine, “Can you protect us from that kind of attack?” Since he had a six-person shift running an engine and a truck, he replied, “We can’t go to a house fire alone, let alone a terror attack.” The conversation was over. The Town Hall dweller wasn’t happy. I give that chief credit for telling the truth. If you can’t respond to a confined-space incident, a trench collapse, or a water accident, don’t; but let your government and the people you serve know that.

On the other hand, if you plan to respond to these types of incidents and take on the role of an “all-hazards” response agency, your members must be trained and prepared for this type of work. The department must have a working set of SOPs and a solid training program to maximize skills, competency, and preparedness. There is no winging it here.

The built environment. Active and passive fire protection are essentials in the fight against structure fires and are required by building codes for the safety of occupants and firefighters. Active systems are usually things that move – e.g., sprinklers, standpipes, pull stations, clean-agent gas suppression systems, dry and wet chemical systems, smoke-removal systems, and the like. Passive fire protection includes built-in stationary construction features – e.g., fire walls, fire doors, rated stairwells, smoke partitions, fireproofing, and fire-stopping, for example. Being intimately familiar with these systems will enable you to fight the fire more efficiently, effectively, and safely. Know how to support the sprinkler system, activate the wet chemical, hood system pull station in a restaurant, start the smoke-removal system, and close protectives (fire doors) if they’re open.

Following are some tactical tips for operating in the built environment:

  • If you’ve been trained to breach drywall to escape a room when trapped, be aware that there may be a sheet of Lexan™ in the middle of some drywalls. Know if they are installing this type of drywall in your district, and be prepared to breach using power tools or take breaching out of your SOPs in these circumstances.
  • Fire-resistive buildings are like ovens; the heat in these buildings is double that in nonfire-resistive structures.
  • Fire walls normally protrude through the roof so you can see them from the outside. They may or may not be under the new codes. Also, a decorative ornament or placard at the roof may lead you to believe that there is a fire wall. This is one more reason to do a 360° walk-around or, at a minimum, a look from the A-B and A-D corners.
  • Maintain the integrity of the stairwell. Fire-resistive stairwells buy time to set up and plan the attack. Consider having personnel performing as human shuttles for equipment in a mid- or high-rise fire wear street clothes instead of turnout gear.
  • Try not to chock doors open so you can control the flow path and contain the fire. Control ventilation in a coordinated manner. I heard a chief from New York City say, “Control the door; control the fire,” more than 20 years ago.
  • In sprinklered buildings, send a firefighter to the valve room; close the valve only on the express order of the IC. Watch your ventilation tactics. You could vent too early and render the sprinklers ineffective by releasing heat and not allowing the fusible element to activate. You need heat buildup at the ceiling to activate the elements on the sprinkler heads.
  • If you have standpipe systems in your district (or an adjacent district), make sure that you have a well-equipped standpipe kit.
  • If you have buildings with stationary fire pumps, send a firefighter to the pump room; start/stop the pump only on the express order of the IC.
  • If buildings in your district have specialty systems (carbon dioxide, halon, clean agent, for example), learn how they work and what to do when you get there before or after a discharge of the system. Most of these systems have “abort” switches. Learn what they do and when and when not to use them.
  • Get out in your response area and look around. Study active and passive fire protection systems. Learn what they do and how to use them to your advantage.

RON KANTERMAN is the chief of the Wilton (CT) Fire Department and a 43-year veteran of the fire service, including municipal and industrial fire protection, volunteer and career, emergency management, and emergency response. He has a BA degree in fire administration and two master’s degrees. He’s a contributing author for Fire Engineering and FireEngineering.com, the Fire Engineering Handbook for Firefighter I and II, and the 7th edition of The Fire Chief’s Handbook.

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