Strategies for Safer Driving - Article in February Fire Engineering by Steven DeLisi

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Larry Lasich on February 13, 2009 at 4:48pm

True that. Arrive alive.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Marty Mayes on February 14, 2009 at 1:43pm

John,
You are definitely on the right track. You said it already, artificial response times. The standard answer in the fire service for the measure of a response time is: from alarm or tone, til the first piece of fire equipment arrives on scene. There are several flaws with this model. First, for most of us the truly first due piece of equipment is a IC. So that really does not count as a response. Next, if the engine or truck arrives first, how many people does it have? Many times it's 4 or less. Does that really address the situation?

Here's what we did. We changed our response time to truly reflect our job performance. The time now is measured from alarm to situation under control. It is measured against the bench marks of the call type. So for a structure fire we call our response time as follows.This call was three weeks ago.
1) Alarm and tone at 1057am, Structure fire called in by off duty Chief. Goes out as working fire with possible rescue.
2) Engine 313 and 13 respond 1059am
3) Engine 313 on with smoke showing 1101am, split first due crew, two on search two on attack.
4) Engine 13 on 1103am, water supply, secondary search assigned.
5) Engine 313a calls fire under control 1104am, room and contents only.--First response time noted just over 6 mins--
6) Engine 313b calls primary search complete 1106am, no victims found-- second time noted just under 9 mins--
7) Engine 13 calls secondary search complete 1109am, nothing to report-- third response noted 13 mins--

Changing to this type of response time model helped in several ways. For the drivers, they were able to feel relaxed about making the scene. They now know they are not responsible for the response time. I would here the Lts. tell them to slow down, we'll make up the time on scene. It then gave me great insight on when and where to train the guys. I now have solid performance markers. If the benchmarks are slow we can evaluate where the delay occurred. Was it in hose deployment? Was the delay in forced entry? Was the driver slow getting water? All of these things became the information I needed three years ago. It was how we pulled of the call above in such good record.The members really embraced this system when I was able to show them how it benefits them as a whole. From FF to driver and across the entire department, we own our response times. Not just the driver. In fact it is a rule, we do not ever operate our engines faster than 35mph. Only exception is if we are on a highway, then we only drive the posted speed limit to 60mph.

This is our challenge in the fire service. We have to own our job performance as a whole. We can no longer tolerate mediocre performance and accept the thanks of the public.All aspects of our job must be on an ascending path towards excellence.

Marty

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John K. Murphy on February 14, 2009 at 1:51pm

Marty:
Thank you. Very insightful to this issue. I appreciate your sharing the model used in your organization and hopefully we can get beyond response time parameters.

• ▶ Reply

▶ Reply to Discussion