THE CHANGE OFFICER AND INCEDENT COMMAND
Reflex activity in the fire service has been termed “free-lancing.” Reflex action, however, is more than the gaudy individualism implied in freelancing; it is the nearest we come to autopilot, and it serves us well when there is neither time nor space to think through our actions beforehand.
Reflex activity is most prevalent during the reflex precommand interval that characterizes the initial stages of every incident response. During this interval, all personnel, including the incident commander, are most likely to engage in free-lance activity. Departments should acknowledge that this interval exists and measure its duration. Every fire department’s goal should be to replace reflex precommand with coordinated command as rapidly as possible.
Tile department’s chief officer and other command officers properly are responsible for introducing a coordinated command system. If they fail to act, the job defaults naturally to the change officer, who may be nonappointed and nonelected, but who is a vital component in the organizational structure. (See “How to Change Your Department Without Changing Departments,” Fire Engineering, November 1991.)
THE PERVASIVE INFLUENCE OF REFLEX ACTION
“Knock a turtle in the haid; it be dark ’afore he daid.” This piece of folk wisdom bears quaint testimony to the durable powers of a primitive nervous system. Birds and reptiles accomplish spectacular feats even when their brains are severely damaged or absent altogether. Primitive nervous systems enjoy large nerve ganglia generously distributed throughout the body, which keep the body moving when the brain no longer functions. Fire departments have been known to exhibit similarly pointless activity. Emergency service personnel under duress tend to fall back on reflexcontrol systems. But, a turtle needs a brain, and a fire department requires strong central command.
We all are capable of performing marvelous ac ts of reflex behavior that amaze us when we stop to think about them. We breathe, blink our eyes, swat a bug, catch a fly ball, and start water flowing through a fire pump to a faraway nozzle without a second thought Our bodies can manage many things without much advice from our heads.
Outsiders are impressed even by confusion when it is skillfully presented. Whether a fire actually is extinguished by the fire department or eventually dies of “old age,” for example, the general public is amazed at the blur of activity, the roaring engines, the shouts and cries, and the oceans of water. It is especially impressive when all the shouting leads to an astonishing outcome. It is difficult to fault reflex precommand operations entirely. They get results.
Left to themselves, many fire departments would operate with reflex activity as their routine mode of operation. All members know the basic job requirements. Each member possesses a degree of training. Years of experience add up. Everyone reacts in the best possible way. Some reflex departments stand on a record of feats that fall just short of the miraculous. In such departments, the change officer will find considerable resistance to introducing the incident command system as a replacement for the comfortable, familiar reflex precommand.
As the change officer tallies the department’s reflex tendencies, he/ she challenges the department members first to admit to their reflex tendencies then to reduce and finally eliminate altogether the reflex activity characterizing the opening moments of every response. The incident command system, whose use is rapidly spreading, is the logical replacement for reflex activities and should reduce the reflex precommand interval to a bare minimum if it is consistently applied.
IDENTIFYING THE REFLEX PRECOMMAND INTERVAL
It is possible to describe the ideal command system; sometimes the ideal can be achieved. A few overworked urban fire departments may be free of any measurable amount of uncoordinated reflex activity. Rural firefighters can only imagine w’hat it must be like for their big-city counterparts to roll up, four or five at a time in a spacious crew cab, and step out into the heady environment of a major structure fire with an incident commander already at work. If the urban firefighters willingly commit their highly trained reflexes to the commander’s coordination, for them the reflex precommand interval may be nonexistent.
Somewhere between the perceived perfection of the world’s top-notch fire departments and those that struggle in the hinterlands are many fire departments that require a period of foot shuffling (the reflex precommand interval) at every incident scene before they get their act together. In most departments, it may not be practical to eliminate the reflex precommand interval altogether: A set of reflex tasks can be performed to great advantage before the department is fully ready to initiate incident command. Full incident command may require a minimum number of responders to be effective, and so we w eigh risk analysis against cost benefit and learn to tolerate a few trade-offs— but there is no substitute for incident command.
DEFICIENCIES AND DANGERS OF THE REFLEX PRECOMMAND INTERVAL
The opening moments of our response to a major structure fire reveal a frightful amount of reflexive activity. Until an incident commander, communicating through an incident command system, begins to coordinate and integrate firefighters’ activities, a group of firefighters will remain a group of individuals, each individual exhibiting the reflex activity for which he/she is best suited.
‘ITie performance of the least coordinated fire department can be awesome to behold, but it does not take a change officer to tell the difference between a fire department that is coordinated and one that is performing reflexively.
Underworked fire departments often handicap their own learning process by failing to capitalize on every opportunity to refine the incident command system. As the book says,most fires are small and easily managed. Small and easy challenges encourage a casual attitude. A casual attitude begets careless procedures. The change officer reminds laggard fire commanders of the wisdom of playing the little ones like the big one, so that when the big one comes, it seems more like a little one.
If only three or four firefighters were to respond to a major structural fire in our jurisdiction this afternoon, the entire incident would run from start to finish under reflex precommand conditions. We admit this without shame. There would be no commander to issue orders. All of us would be painfully busy. We’d all have dirty hands. By dint of heroic effort and maybe some help from bystanders, we eventually would suppress the fire and overhaul the scene. Then we would sit down over a bottle of pop and realize that we don’t even remember half of what we did—and that what we did was very dangerous and probably shouldn’t have been attempted at all. But we deemed it necessary, and so we did what we had to do. Reflex action. Absent command structure.
We acted entirely at the level of reflex precommand—or, as some may argue, reflex noncommand—the ultimate in free-lance firefighting. Though pleased and proud of ourselves, we also realize we are not immortal. The next time we may not be so lucky. For many fire departments, a tragedy always is waiting in the wings.
As a “ruruban” (a township in the midst of four major metropolitan hubs) fire department, my department may never whittle the reflex precommand interval down to the vanishing point, but we know that we can reduce the amount of time spent in chaotic reflex precommand activity if we are determined to do so. If we keep on trucking like a turtle with no brain, sooner or later some valuable property will suffer or someone will get hurt or even killed.
Reflex precommand strategies do not provide for adequate size-up of a scene. The voice of anxiety spurs our reflex desire to break, chop, and throw’ water without first asking how’ much is needed and w here.
Salvage and overhaul alw’ays suffer, especially under conditions of reflex noncommand. An exhausted and unrelieved crew has little spirit left for details of the aftermath. The volunteers slip back into real life one by one, until a skeleton crew remains. The chores become burdensome for the few’, especially the dedicated command officers. The department that relies on reflexes instead of coordinated command, moreover, also has difficulty readying apparatus and equipment for future service.
ABBREVIATING THE REFLEX PRECOMMAND INTERVAL
To initiate the change process for incident command, the change officer begins by asking how much the reflex precommand interval can be shortened through training and discipline. There are practical limits. It may not be possible to eliminate the reflex precommand interval altogether.
Incident command depends on a written set of standard operating procedures (SOPs). If the department has not yet accepted at least a preliminary set of SOPs, it is pointless for the change officer to push for adopting the incident command system. There is no standard by which to define the conditions of command. Do not forget the SOP that commits the department to an incident command system and spells it out in detail. The real purposes of incident command are to bring organization out of chaos, to harness reflex action with coordination, and to focus reflex activity.
The earnestness of a few w ell-intentioned officers —especially lowly change officers—is not adequate to overcome decades of reliance on reflex noncommand. The change officer would be wise to arrange for some form of introduction to incident command. Perhaps a lecturer could be engaged to teach one of the subsections of Fire Officer I, such as “Preparing for Incident Command,” in a weekend training session for the entire department.
Departments that depend on reflex noncommand also are likely to depend on minimal and erratic styles of leadership. In some cases a particularly charismatic and likeable leader will inspire people to do commendable work in the absence of consistent leadership. Beyond that, you may anticipate three additional styles of leadership in descending order: domination, then intimidation, and finally humiliation. When these methods have been tried and found wanting, nothing else remains. Leadership is brought to a dead end.
Before attempting to guide the department into eliminating the reflex precommand interval via coordinated command, the change officer should choose an incident command system that is regionally approved, at least at the mutual-aid level. It should be a system that is adaptable to the department, that consistently will be applied by the officers of the organization, and that is acceptable to the individual department members.
