Balancing risk with getting the job done

In the risk management area, how do you equilibrate risk assessment with getting the job done?

Chief Gasaway: This is a question I hear often. We are in a profession that has an inherent risk associated with what we do. This does not mean, however, that we need to be uncalculated in how we assess our risk. (There’s an old saying about love and romance that may apply here… “Only fools rush in”). The fire service does a good job, for the most part, of training firefighters how to arrive and attack a fire from the interior.

However, we don’t do nearly as good a job training firefighter on what a “no-go” situation looks like. Thus, firefighters arrive and perform based on their training, which is most often (if not always) “go” inside and put the fire out. Many firefighters I have spoken to acknowledge they’ve never had meaningful training (or even a meaningful discussion for that matter) on what “no go” looks like and when they should be defensive versus offensive in their attack. With a single script programmed in a firefighter’s mind (go), it becomes predictable that will be the script deployed under stress.

As firefighters, we are tasked with trying to save lives from the ravages of fire. Unfortunately, not all lives are savable. There are conditions civilian victims cannot survive in. There are also conditions firefighters cannot survive in. Knowing what these conditions look like and knowing what the precursor conditions leading up to non-survivable conditions looks like, will help firefighters make better “go” or “no-go” decisions.

Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
www.RichGasaway.com