Hidden Fire
Unseen threats to
Emergency Services
By Alan Perry
February 11, 2015
Many a life and countless
millions in losses can be attributed to the effects of hidden fire. These fires
spread undetected, concealed in walls, floors and utility chases, destroying the
structure and spreading to remote locations with catastrophic consequences. It
is a threat every firefighter should know well and aggressively seek to identify,
locate and extinguish before declaring a fire under control. This principal is
an easy one to understand but also easy to overlook in the heat of battle. Many
emergency services have similar threats to their ability to achieve their primary
purpose and mission due to hidden threats within and outside the organization.
Many appear well on the outside only to collapse under pressure when the
underlying structure fails due to these “hidden fires”.
The structural integrity of your organization
can be compromised by inadequate training, poor morale, lack of public or
political support, overextended resources, poor communication or any number of other
threats and weaknesses you can name. The critical needs of the organization can
be overlooked while distracted by ancillary programs, new services and trying
to keep up with new trends. Some organizations seek out new responsibilities,
programs and stature, enticed by State or Federal funding, setting up new
services at the expense of those critical needs. I will argue
that emergency services should do more to prepare for large scale events,
integrate with more effective healthcare or cultivate needed specialized
resources. These are all part of the public expectation and our mission just as
the core services we provide are, there must be a balance between these “nice
to haves” versus the “must haves”.
Identifying the threat or existence
of the hidden damage is not difficult if you are in-tune with your
organization. Objective quality control monitoring of your resources, human and
physical, will give you the best and quantifiable evidence. Structural collapse
rarely occurs without giving some evidence or clues to a developing problem, that’s
why we sound floors and look for smoke and heat where it should not be.
Similarly, problems within your organization will reveal themselves if we use
common management tools to evaluate failures in our equipment, processes and personnel.
Long standing problems will compound and accelerate the
damage, like a hidden fire in a structure already weakened by termites.
To locate the source of this insidious
damage we have to look at data, ask questions, and sincerely want to improve
the situation without fear, or presumption, of what will be found. How effective
are your firefighting operations? How reliable is your apparatus? How
frequently do your providers deviate from operational or EMS protocols and SOP’s?
Are there training issues? Funding issues? Do your personnel have the right
tools and resources? Do they function well as a team? Are all concerns heard
without reproach? These questions may reveal the symptoms; the cause may be
well removed and must be located before it can be corrected and the damage
stopped.
Stopping the destruction will
require correction of the identified fault. It may also involve correcting
other faults propagated elsewhere secondary to the origin. As with hidden
fires, there will likely be extension to other parts of your organization. Your
organizational culture can help you manage these shortcomings, or it may be
decayed and damaged by the process itself. As with structures that are
hopelessly corrupted by fire, the only solution may be demolishing it and
rebuilding. That would be an extreme
outcome that will permanently alter the persona of the organization, but it
would certainly give it the opportunity to rebuild the organization as it
should be and on a solid foundation. An alternative that may be more appealing would be targeted
restoration of affected components, like remodeling a kitchen, retaining the
existing structure while upgrading the area in need, taking care to carefully
examine other parts of the organization for weakness. So what kind of "house" do you want to inhabit? One with a solid structure, but perhaps without the fancy kitchen and showers, or a showplace that has cracked walls and creaking floors. Choose wisely.
Be Safe,
Alan
