
Welcome to a nine-month exploration of the thinking side of technical rescue. This is the first a series of articles that will be written by multiple instructors from Advanced Rescue Solutions (ARS). ARS is a firefighter-owned training company in central Indiana, and each of our instructors are career firefighters working on local or federal USAR teams. Many of the ARS cadre have instructed at the FDIC International hands-on training sessions, written for Fire Engineering previously, and filmed Fire Engineering Training Minutes for more than a decade. The goal of this series will be to discuss technical rescue from a various points of view, and also from various points of experience, with a focus on decision making and thought process. As we go along, we will talk about leadership, followership, deployments, trainings, being a brand-new team member, and much more as we explore the importance of being able to think beyond initial training.
Let’s review a few of the important concepts related to cognitive processing, risk management, and critical risk-benefit decision making. As an instructor and lifelong firefighter and rescuer, I personally have developed a passion for the importance of common sense when it comes to technical rescue. To that end, let’s first look at a commonsense approach to risk-benefit decision making.
Risk vs. Benefits in Fire and Tech Rescue
As all rescuers know, we must apply a risk-benefit analysis to any operation or mission that we face. The old Brunacini approach to firefighting rings true in technical rescue as well: we will risk everything to save a life, but we will risk very little to save that which is already lost. Over the course of a career, I have certainly transitioned from the young aggressive firefighter who wanted to charge headlong into every building into a leader who understands the importance of pulling back on the reins in certain situations. If there’s a chance of saving a life, we have taken an oath to do our level best to make the rescue. This job entails a very high degree of risk. We understand that both when we go through the academy and when we hold up our right hand and accept the badge. Acceptable risk is built into the very fabric of who we are.
I use the analogy of firefighting risk analysis as an example because it’s something we all understand and have a fair tolerance for it. We know the circumstances that make a high risk worth taking and we recognize the times where our efforts would be wasted and, in fact, dangerously futile. A well-involved residence fire can teeter on the brink: Rollover, flashover, floor failure, ceiling failure, and many more things are always possible. But when the call comes in as a possible entrapment, do those dangers dissuade us from making entry and performing a search? Certainly not. It is our mandate to accept that level of risk in the execution of our duty to save lives. So, how does that same risk benefit approach translate in tech rescue?
Technical rescue is possibly the best example of high-risk/low-frequency exposure. If we’re not involved in rescue deployment and training on a routine basis, then it will certainly skew our risk-benefit assessment. Even for those of us that are practitioners of rescue, there are easily a dozen different fields of study (or disciplines) that are uniquely different with very infrequent opportunities to practice. To be a good firefighter, you also need to be up to par on your emergency medical service (EMS) skills, fire tactics, hydraulics, building construction, furnace troubleshooting, social worker skills, all those annual Occupational Safety and Health Administration trainings, and much more. And if that wasn’t quite enough, we frequently see new equipment that makes the job easier, but also requires training, and updates to all the things we learned to do and now must relearn again. Because of all these things, many team leaders and instructors tend to bring a different point of view to technical rescue than they do to firefighting. Instead of understanding an acceptable level of risk, they chose to accept very little or no risk at all. In some people’s eyes, you’re just a firefighter, so you couldn’t really understand the details involved. Or worse, you’ve got too much on your plate already, so just do it this way and don’t worry about it.
No or Low Risk? The Example of Rope Rescue
Too often this risk aversion is a result of a lack of understanding or intuition. In another manner of speaking, we simply don’t have the slides in our slideshow. This zero-risk approach is not something that we would apply in other aspects of our job. Again, we are very comfortable with EMS because we see it every day. Most of us are comfortable with firefighting because we see it frequently and train on it often. But technical rescues are few and far between, and training time is limited by the long list of other things we must master. In the world of intuition building, that’s a very costly setup. On every single response, our brain scans through our mental camera roll and subconsciously gives us the gut instinct that we rely on all the time. But when it comes to technical rescue deployment, many times there simply aren’t enough photos in the album, or the album is filled with simple training scenarios from a class several years ago.
Several examples of this widespread risk aversion can be found in rope rescue. I don’t know who the original quote belongs to, but I’ve always appreciated this observation of rope rescue: “Only two things in rope rescue aren’t tested and rated—people and anchors.” How many times have you been in a discussion regarding rope rescue equipment or looking at a scenario and heard someone ask: “OK, but what is it rated for?” That’s a fair and valid question and it’s critical that we truly understand every component of our system. But often rope work is a prime example of an overreliance on excessive safety margins or redundancies.
Look, I’m not suggesting we should do anything unsafe or outside of the department policy. What I am saying is that we do not place the same requirements or expectations on many of the other aspects of our job that our lives depend on routinely. If your fire department uses 11 mm rope, consider how difficult it was to give up the half inch. Most rescuers today will not remember, but some of us actually had 5/8-inch rope on the apparatus when we started. If the change from half inch to 11 mil was tough, imagine what it will be as rope and hardware continues to reduce in size and weight.
It’s easy to understand why people have concerns. We have a strong visual association of size and strength. However, when you understand the construction of the material and the testing involved, you realize that many have probably been employing an ultraconservative approach to safety for a long time. We usually don’t feel the same immediate concern with other aspects of the job because we deal with those things far more often. They’re more familiar, and we’ve built a strong intuition of their capability. We don’t worry about a redundancy for the one brake pedal or the single steering wheel on the rig because we’ve learned to trust their reliability over many years of experience. Many rescuers think 11 mm rope is a brand-new concept, but ask those teams operating in the mountains how long it’s been around. It’ll all about perspective and experience. So how do teams without those pictures in the mental album come to accept 11 mil? By relying on the intuition of trusted colleagues and by trusting the data.
Here’s another example. If you took a rope class in the early ‘90s, you may have learned to use twin tensioned rescue systems. While many may think this concept just sprang up a few years ago, it actually just came back around in a new application. Back then, many teams would set up duplicate RPM systems. (As an aside, I realize that many of you don’t know what RPM stands for. You probably don’t know who John Gage and Roy Desoto are either. Ask one of the senior guys about both and get caught up.) Having two identical systems then creates a lot of equipment use, potentially slower response, sometimes confusion, and a tremendous amount of redundancy. That redundancy was the whole point. It was built that way because of a lack of faith in people or equipment. Gradually, most teams shifted away from the dual RPM to a dedicated main RPM and a simple double prusik belay. A little over a decade ago, we saw the advent of the multipurpose descent devices that have brought the concept of the twin tension system back in a whole new way. My point of this is that most rope work is built on redundancy. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen a belay activated in an actual operation. It was unexpected and it worked perfectly. Without it, we would have seen a career-ending and possibly life-ending accident. Redundancy has a place. But so too does proficiency and an intrinsic drive to learn and understand more.
The Need for Proficiency and Intuition
And that is what this commonsense approach is all about. It’s about getting beyond the book. It’s about putting our minds to work and dedicating what little time we have to proficiency of the craft. Understand that you don’t have to take on all the disciplines by yourself. If the fire service is about anything, it’s about teamwork. Your shift should have experts in every field. You can take on all the rope stuff while the backstepper is learning everything he or she can about trench. Share the burden and help educate each other. If you’re on a special rescue team or rig, then you’ve accepted a higher degree of responsibility. If you don’t want to live up to that task, then do your community a favor and move to another house so that someone with the passion can have the spot. The National Fire Protection Association model of Awareness-Operations-Technician is a great approach and has worked well for training tech rescue for years. But just because you’re a technician, you know that you’re not an expert. There’s always more to learn and, thanks to our instant and immediate access to knowledge, there’s never been a better time to learn it.
Intuition is the key to rapid risk-benefit decision making. In our line of work, it must be rapid, and it must be thorough. We develop that intuition best through direct hands-on personal experiences. As discussed, that’s hard to come by and can take a career or many responses. But there are other methods, such as videos, training, and reading about calls that others have gone on. Arguably the best way to develop this is through storytelling. If you’re a young member of the company, ask questions. If you’re one of the old team members, talk about past calls. Theres a reason we go to the movies, read books, and watch television. Storytelling, and absorbing the story being told are hard-wired into our genetics. It’s how the prehistoric tribes flourished and stayed alive. It’s also how we stay alive today. In closing, if you’re a technician in any discipline that really is a big accomplishment. But it’s only the start. Now it’s time to get beyond the book and get to work!
Clinton Crafton is a retired firefighter with more than 30 years of service. He retired as the deputy chief of operations with the Whitestown (IN) Fire Department, having previously served with the Fishers Fire Department for 22 years. While at Fishers, he served in every position up to battalion chief, where he led the dive rescue team and filled the role of special operations coordinator for the department. He has been heavily involved in all types of technical rescue since 1995. In addition to teaching technical rescue, Clinton served the INTF-1 for 14 years as a rescue squad leader and a rescue team manager. He is also a former public safety dive instructor for Dive Rescue International and a 12+ year FDIC HOT instructor. He is also the author of the ARS Technical Rescue Crib Notes.
He can be reached at c.crafton@advancedrescue.com