Eliminating Unsafe Acts

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Chapter 4

• Eliminating Unsafe Acts

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Introduction

• Throughout the history of the fire service,
  tradition has been the backbone of operations
• No fear reasoning starts very early in careers
• Expected to reduce the risk as much as is
  feasible
• Task is to ultimately save lives and property and
  then stabilize an incident
• Some aspects of our tradition tend to build the
  foundation for unsafe practices

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Life Safety Initiative 4

• All firefighters must be empowered to stop unsafe
  practices

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Life Safety Initiative 4

• FOUNDATION OF UNSAFE PRACTICES
• New firefighters
• Trained to take orders
• Spiral into bad habits
• Unrealistic training
• Synthetic materials
• Real world attack line crews

Courtesy of Richard Vandevander
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Life Safety Initiative 4

• FIREFIGHTER EMPOWERMENT
• Definition
• Granting permission to subordinates to exceed
  their normal authority
• Achieve organizational goals
• Clear line on what is permitted
• Intended to keep crew safe
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 4

• FIREFIGHTER EMPOWERMENT
• McCoys model
• Education
• Enablement
• Empowerment

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Life Safety Initiative 4

• ACCIDENTS
• Definition
• Occurrence with
• tragic results
• Could not be
• predicted or prevented
• Cont.

Courtesy of Retired Chief Don Barnes
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Life Safety Initiative 4

• ACCIDENTS
• Usually predictable
• Usually preventable
• Energy conversion to injuries
• Kinetic energy awareness
• Potential energy awareness
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 4

• ACCIDENTS
• Safety equipment
• PPE perceptions
• PPE limitations
• Operational redundancies
• Now commonplace
• industry wide

Courtesy of John Kloski
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Life Safety Initiative 4

• RECOGNITION OF UNSAFE ACTS
• Unsafe acts in the spotlight
• Unsafe acts in disguise
• Poor risk management
• decisions
• Distraction events

Courtesy of Rick Armstrong
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Life Safety Initiative 4

• PREVENTING UNSAFE ACTS
• Three Es
• Example Rollover curve
• applied to firefighters
• Education
• Engineering
• Environment
• Enforcement

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Life Safety Initiative 4

• STOPPING UNSAFE ACTS IN PROGRESS
• Categorize unsafe acts
• Know how to bring up a concern
• Plan for the problem
• Speak directly to supervisor
• Speak directly to peers
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 4

• STOPPING UNSAFE ACTS IN PROGRESS
• Politely request to complete a task
• Call a timeout
• Working with unsafe acts
• Post-incident critique or debriefing

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Life Safety Initiative 4

• CREW RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (CRM)
• Identify and combat unsafe practices
• Allow and encourage observations
• Require involvement from all members
• Communicate respectfully
• Vital to improve empowerment
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 4

• CREW RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (CRM)
• Policies and procedures
• Authority
• Checklists
• Training
• Situational awareness
• Task saturation and mistakes
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 4

• CREW RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (CRM)
• Communication
• Everyone on same page
• Terminology
• Briefings
• Challenge and response
• Cont.

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Life Safety Initiative 4

• CREW RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (CRM)
• Problem solving
• Skills-based problem solving
• Rules-based problem solving
• If/then statement
• Knowledge-based problem solving

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Summary

• Teaching recruits how to identify and address
  unsafe acts responsibly is vital
• Vigilance with empowerment is about stopping
  unsafe acts or poor practices
• Promising ways to stop unsafe acts are prevention
  methods and crew resource management (CRM)
• Using a respectful system of challenge and
  response, firefighters are empowered

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