HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., MIFireE

There is a storm brewing in the American Fire Service. Some people want to talk about dollars, while others are talking about safety. There are those who see things as they might have been 20 to 30 years ago. And then there are those who want to step up to the plate and address several of the key components of firefighter safety and fire department efficiency.

By now you must be thinking, "What in the heck is Harry talking about?" Quite simply, I am referring to the current hubbub over the new fire department deployment standards from our friends at the National Fire Protection Association. The standards are split between the world of the career firefighter and the world of the volunteer firefighter.

As you all know by now, I am fairly plain spoken when it comes to controversial matters. One need only go to the archive’s section of my web site and review my words of the past year or so to get a flavor of how I feel about many matters. But since this is an extremely contentious matter, I want you to know from the start that my comments on this matter do not reflect the views of any organization to which I belong, or with whom I may be affiliated. They are my view of the situation and reflect my thoughts on a wide range of fire department deployment issues.

To those who say, "We don’t need no stinking standards to tell us how to do our jobs," I say quite simply, BULL! How often have I attacked stingy municipal officials and non-thinking fire chiefs from my personal bully pulpit? One need only look back to the Keokuk tragedy of 1999 to see the dangers of sending an understaffed response to an emergency incident. There is no way on the face of God’s Green Earth that a crew of five or six people can handle a working fire in an occupied structure.

How many months have I been literally screaming about under funded fire departments? How many times have I pounded the keys of my poor computer in an impassioned plea to wake up and start providing adequate fire protection? From the dangers created by a short-staffed Rutland, Vermont Fire Department, to the tragedy in Keokuk, we have reviewed the need for an adequate fire department response time and again. Many have agreed with my positions, while others have not. But guess what? There are just too many similarities out there to pass these deaths off as coincidental, or so my research has indicated to me.

It is situations like these that have led the many professional thinkers within the fire service to come together behind the concept of deployment standards. How controversial is this topic? Various factions within the International Association of Fire Chiefs are fighting over the stand the Board of Directors ratified that affirms the value of the proposed NFPA Standard 1710. This is the Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments. Other groups who are campaigning against this standard include the International City Manager’s Association, and the League of Cites.

It is easy to see why the two groups listed above might protest the standard that specifies response times and staffing levels. They might actually have to hire enough fire personnel to staff a safe operation. And therein lies the single most important reason why I think that response and deployment standards are so essential: Firefighter Safety. For that reason, I am expressing my support for the NFPA 1710 standard. I agree with the position of my old union, The International Association of Firefighters, and support their efforts.

I have been a participant in many substandard staffing responses. We faced that issue every summer when I worked in the City of Newark. I have found that it is not safe and it surely isn’t pretty. All these short-staffed scenarios are allowed to continue because the city administration and their front office people know that we in the trenches are a very dedicated group. They are confident that we will work to get the job done even if it kills us, and some of us it has, and/or the poor citizen who is awaiting their rescue in the burning building.

The latest chapter in the continuing saga of short-staffing tragedies comes to us from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A tragedy in Ipswich back in January, took the lives of a mother and her two children. A third child was saved when her mother threw her out of the third floor window of their blazing home. What makes this story so heart breaking is that the first unit that arrived at the fire was a hook and ladder truck, with a lone firefighter on board.

I have reviewed the Boston Globe stories about this fire. In essence, they are a rehash of the facts that have surrounded numerous tragedies over the past few years. You cannot say with any certainty that a full, minimal complement of 12 firefighters responding on two engine companies and a truck under a chief officer would have saved these people. But I can damned sure say that one guy, all by himself, was not enough, no matter how brave or valiant that man was.

How can any thinking person, city administrators or politicians alike, think that one man is an adequate response to anything? That poor guy that got there all by his lonesome will have to live the rest of his days bathed in the aura of that sad night’s tragic events. Any guilt he feels comes as a result of those penurious political people who think that one firefighter is enough. And lest you think that this level of response is a rarity, I have identified a number of fire departments in Massachusetts, and other places, that consider one-person crews to be the standard for daily operations. Some of the real sports among the politicians will toss in a second person so that the driver won’t be lonely.

I know a number of fire chiefs in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And they are, for the most part, kind, caring, and thinking individuals. But after extensive conversations with a number of professional associates, I must declare that they labor in the vineyards of communities where the politicians and administrators who run the show are simply boobs, cretins, or to quote a buddy from south of the Mason-Dixon line, "morons".

These political patronage buffoons wouldn’t recognize a valid budgetary justification if it smacked them in the face with the force of a two-by-four. They could care less about providing an adequate level of fire protection. But if it was their family hanging out of the window of a blazing three-decker on a dark and stormy New England night, well by golly, that might make a difference. But it might not.

It is for this reason, primary among others, that I believe that it is imperative that we have a minimum recognized national standard which can guide the fire service of our great land in its deployment decisions.

But why stop there? Why not pursue funding for a large-scale research project to determine the relative merits of how we should conduct firefighting operations in the new millennium. How do we know that what we are currently doing is the best way to operate? I would hate to use an argument along the lines of the old standard childhood response of, "... because!" I had that discussion with my webmaster a few days ago. While discussing some local budget requests, he suggested that I ask a couple of simple questions, primary among them being, "Why do you need that?" He and I agreed that ‘because I said so’ is not an acceptable rejoinder.

Think about it folks. The last major analytical studies conducted in the area of fire department task and staffing procedures, were performed way back in 1984. That was the Dallas Study, conducted by my late friend and professional mentor, John T. O’Hagan, former Chief and Commissioner of the New York City Fire Department.

We need to answer the following key questions with verifiable, reproducible statistics:

• What tasks form the basic arsenal of fire department suppression services?
• How many people are required to safely perform these tasks?
• What level of apparatus response is appropriate for the various types and kinds of hazards and occupancies?
• Such other questions as are deemed to be appropriate.

Is NFPA 1710 the total answer to our staffing and deployment problems? Not totally, but it is a start. We have to have a standard that tells the world that fire suppression is a critical infrastructure element. This standard has to serve as a minimum starting point for the development of fire suppression in the 21st Century. And it needs to become a part of the lexicon of fire protection service delivery in North America.

I do not know about you, but I am going to be praying for the Lord to comfort that poor Ipswich firefighter who was forced to face tragedy all by himself. No one man should have to shoulder the burden of tragedy because of the penurious pirates who populate positions of public power. Let us show our support for both NFPA 1710 and NFPA 1720, Standard on Volunteer Fire Service Deployment.

The commentary in this column does not necessarily reflect those of Firehouse.Com, Firehouse Magazine, their employees or parent company Cygnus Business Media. Harry R. Carter, Ph.D., MIFireE, is an internationally known municipal fire protection consultant and contributing editor to Firehouse Magazine. He recently retired as a Battalion Commander with the Newark, New Jersey Fire Department. His commentary appears regularly on Firehouse.Com. For more commentary and information, visit Carter's web site at www.harrycarter.com Harry has published several books available for online ordering, including Firefighting Strategy and Tactics and Management in the Fire Service