By Robert Tutterow
Before I begin my column, I must pay tribute to Bob Barraclough, a friend and mentor. As most of you know, he passed away in late January after years of declining health.
To me, he was the face of the American fire apparatus industry. Bob was the ultimate convener. Whether he was packing the room at the major fire service conferences or simply introducing people for the common good, he always brought people with apparatus interests together.
Bob was the Daniel Boone of apparatus safety. Just four days before his passing, he sent me e-mail on my columns about cab entrance and egress. He simply wrote, “Robert… Good Work. bb.”
Prior to the Internet, NFPA apparatus technical meetings always began with Bob passing around dozens of newspaper articles about apparatus accidents. This laid the foundation for challenges facing the committee during its meeting. Firefighters are alive today because of his advocacy. Bob Barraclough – a great American. Rest in peace.
The issue of fire department staffing for career departments has once again become a hot topic for local governments.
Due to the prolonged economic turndown, local governments are searching for ways to slash expenditures because of reduced revenues. The elephant in most local government expenditures is public safety. Local government officials are talking with each other through the ICMA (International City/County Management Association). And the conversations are not what the fire service wants to hear.
The January issue of Governing Magazine had a column titled “Firefighters Feel the Squeeze of Shrinking Budgets – In Small and Large Cities Alike, Firefighters have gone from Heroes to Budget Bait.” The article states that “high level municipal officials – elected and otherwise – have not been shy about portraying firefighters as a group that has vacuumed up more than its fair share of municipal resources – whether it’s for salaries, equipment and firehouses, or for some of the most generous retirement packages offered by local governments today.”
The article goes on to mention that most responses today are EMS-related rather than fire-related, and raises the question: Is the fire service deploying its resources to the maximum effect? The article goes on to state, “Painting firefighters as something of a pampered class – well paid with retirement packages that would be the envy of anyone in either the private or public sectors – would have been unheard of just a few years ago. Today, it’s a widespread practice.”
The fire service has typically countered staffing arguments with emotional debate, rather than with data. Historically that was because hard data was practically nonexistent. Today however, the fire service has a very valuable report available that it should use to substantiate its staffing levels or staffing requests.
In April of 2010, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a study titled “Report on Residential Fireground Field Experiments.” The study is, without doubt, the result of the most comprehensive and quantifiable analysis ever conducted on the subject.
The 102-page report was funded through the DHS/FEMA assistance to Firefighters Grant Program. It had the support of the IAFC, the IAFF and Worchester Polytechnic Institute. The field experiments were done in cooperation with the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Department and the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department. The key point to the agency support and involvement is that it was not driven by a special interest group.
The study concluded that for “overall” scene time, four-person crews were able to complete all tasks an average of seven minutes faster (almost 30 percent) than two-person crews. The four-person crews were able to complete the same tasks 5.1 minutes faster (almost 25 percent) than three-person crews. Those minutes are directly proportional to lives and property saved.
How was this determined? A 2,000-square-foot, two-story residential structure was designed and built at the Montgomery County Public Safety Training Academy. (The NIST campus is just a few miles away.) Fires were set inside the structure, and the inside temperature and toxic environment were measured. Using crews of two, three, four and five people, all responses were carefully timed. Each response was measured for 22 different tasks applicable to occupant and firefighter safety.
The fire service has struggled with substantiating adequate crew size for decades. One of the first national attempts to establish crew size was in the late 1980s and early 1990s through the NFPA 1500 standard on fire department occupational safety and health.
The debate brought out the worst in the fire service. It showed how fragmented the fire service was, and it still remains so to a large degree. The debate created a wedge between career and volunteer firefighters. There were many that supported minimum four-person per company staffing. However, the IAFF was the strongest advocacy group. The minimum staffing initiative met strong resistance from the volunteer sector, the IAFC and others.
Other studies were cited to substantiate the need for at least four firefighters per company. These included studies conducted by the Dallas Fire Department, the Columbus Fire Division, the Seattle Fire Department and others. The Phoenix Fire Department developed a video that clearly demonstrated the “compressed sequential” activities of fire suppression on a single story structure. The video was presented to the NFPA Technical Committee responsible for NFPA 1500.
In the end, the staffing initiative failed as it was perceived that the IAFF was only trying to grow its membership and put volunteer fire departments out of business. The NFPA determined that the issue was beyond resolution by the existing members of the NFPA Technical Committee. Consequently, it dismissed all the committee members and re-appointed a new Technical Committee on Occupational Health.
Eventually, the NFPA addressed the issue by forming technical committees that developed the NFPA 1710 Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments and the NFPA 1720 Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Volunteer Fire Departments. Both these standards were issued in 2001.
Meanwhile, in October 1998 OSHA issued its “2-in, 2-out” rule as part of its Respiratory Protection Standard (29CFR 1910.134). OSHA is quick to point out that this is not a staffing requirement, but a safety requirement. It does not mandate how many firefighters should be on an apparatus and does not require fire departments to hire additional firefighters. It simply states that there must be at least two people when entering a hazardous environment (interior firefighting) and at least two people on the outside. (The rule has a disclaimer if there are known savable lives at stake.)
It does not take a genius to figure out the best way for a career department to meet the “2-in, 2-out” requirement is to have at least four firefighters per company. Unfortunately (and at considerable risk), many politicians and government bureaucrats choose to ignore the requirement.
A copy of the NIST “Report on Residential Fireground Field Experiments” can be downloaded at no charge by typing its title in your computer’s search engine. More about the staffing issue in next month’s column.
Editor’s Note: Robert Tutterow is safety coordinator for the Charlotte (N.C.) Fire Department. His 34-year career includes 10 as a volunteer. He has been very active with the National Fire Protection Association through service on the Fire Service Section Executive Board and technical committees involved with safety, apparatus and personal protective equipment. He is a founding member and president of the Fire Industry Equipment Research Organization (F.I.E.R.O.).
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