One of the very best things about the fire service as a whole is our respect, and in some cases reverence, for history and tradition. This sets us apart from many other trades and professions. While in most cases this is a commendable trait, in some cases it can also be a detriment to our profession. In many cases some of these traditions and long-standing ways of going about our job lead to the continuance of practices that place us in areas of elevated risk and danger. But because these practices have been in place for such long periods, our members see them as "part of the job" and simply the way we must do things. This is often a fatal misconception.
In the vast majority of the fire service there still remains a cultural attitude that every call is an emergency, every truck must respond as quickly as possible, every second counts, and we need to use warning lights and sirens on every vehicle for every call. While this sense of urgency and desire to do the best possible job is commendable in some respects, in others it is this mentality that is responsible for continuing some bad and unsafe practices that place us in an inordinate and unnecessary amount of risk to ourselves.
In 2004 the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) first published their 16 Life Safety Initiatives (LSI) that were developed by a group of fire service subject matter experts. Number 1 in the 16 initiatives is: Define and advocate the need for a cultural change within the fire service relating to safety; incorporating leadership, management, supervision, accountability and personal responsibility. Many people believe this to be the most critical of the 16 LSIs and that if we were successful in achieving this one, most of the others would settle themselves.
Yet perhaps the hardest thing for any individual, leader, or organization to accomplish is a true change of culture. Cultures tend to evolve over long periods of history and it is difficult to simply change them overnight. Their evolution and acceptance over time in many cases lead to members of an organization truly believing that practices are acceptable and must be continued for any number of reasons. Truly visionary leaders can tell when the need to change a previously accepted practice is upon them.
In this article, we will examine some of the cultural safety issues associated with the operation of fire department mobile water supply apparatus. These vehicles are more commonly referred to as tankers or tenders depending on which side of the Continental Divide they are being operated. For the purpose of this article, we will refer to them as tankers.
Making Tankers Safer
Much attention has been focused on the safe operation of tankers in recent years. Much of this was generated by a research project and report that was done by the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) in 2002. Their report titled "Safe Operation of Tankers" (PDF) highlighted the hazards associated with operating these vehicles and it recommended changes to make their operation safer.
The report noted that tankers account for an estimated 3% of the total fire apparatus in the United States. However, over the past 20 years or so, about 22% of fire apparatus-related fatalities have been in tanker collisions. More firefighters were killed in tankers than in pumpers and aerial apparatus combined. This statistic becomes even more dramatic when you consider that in most departments the tanker only responds on a small percentage of their total of number incidents.
The report notes a number of primary causes for these collisions and the resulting fatalities that occur as a result. Chief among them is the fact that more than 80% of the firefighters who were killed were not wearing their seatbelts (that topic is for another article at another time). The other two primary reasons for fatal tanker crashes are:
- People drive tankers too fast.
- Drivers fail to keep all of the tanker's wheels on the road surface.
These two are clearly related. The faster you drive the vehicle, the more likely you are to have the vehicle's wheels leave the road surface (usually on the right/passenger side), especially when entering a curve. It can just as easily happen on straight sections of the road if the apparatus is being swayed by water movement in the tank or the driver is distracted by operating the radio or warning devices.
What’s the Hurry?
When exploring this issue, with a mind independent from the cultural traditions associated with emergency response, one should ask themselves: What is the hurry? Why is it necessary to be driving the tanker, which is clearly the most dangerous vehicle the fire department operates, at an excessive rate of speed with lights and sirens activated? The truth of the matter is that there is no legitimate reason for driving these vehicles at unsafe speeds and really no reason to be operating under emergency response (commonly called Code 3 using lights and sirens) conditions.
Please follow along with me as I lay out my case. Most fire departments follow a risk management model to guide their emergency scene operations. There are various versions of these models, but they all end up being similar to the following:
- We will take significant, calculated risks to save savable lives.
- We will take only inherent risks to save salvageable property.
- We will take no risks in an attempt to save lives or property that have already been clearly lost.
As stated above, tankers are the most dangerous vehicles that the fire service operates. Driving or riding on tankers under Code 3 conditions is one of the most dangerous positions in which a firefighter can be placed. It is clearly a significant risk.
So allow me to pose this question to you: In all of your fire service experience, or for that matter in the history of the American Fire Service, how many saved lives can be directly attributable to the water on a tanker that was the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th arriving apparatus at a fire? I am talking about cases where if it were not for this water arriving rapidly at the scene someone would have died? I can tell you that I have never found one case in the research that I have done. I can also relate that I have taught seminars on this topic to probably more than 50,000 fire service members in the past 15 years and when asked this question I have never received a response from the attendees. I am quite certain that we have killed many more firefighters in tankers than members of the public we have saved with them.
So why are we taking this significant risk if it is not saving lives? Clearly, most incidents at which tankers are needed involve situations where property is being protected or a structure is already a total loss. So what is the hurry? Maybe we should think about responding to incidents with tankers at a non-emergency rate. If you look at their use realistically, they are simply support vehicles in much the same sense that air/power/light units are. Driving them at an emergency rate qualifies as an inherent risk in the risk management model stated above.
Many, if not most agencies are still locked in that dangerous culture that says everything is an emergency and requires all vehicles to respond Code 3. They believe people will die and buildings will be lost if we do otherwise. This philosophy has already been disproven in places like Salt Lake City, Phoenix, and St. Louis and many others that have proven not responding to every call at an emergency rate has no measureable reduction in service level but a very measurable reduction in collision rates. They are doing it with primary response units, which in most cases tankers would not be considered unless they are a pumper-tanker that is used as an attack apparatus.
Increasingly, fire agencies are realizing that there is little or no tactical advantage to driving tankers under emergency response conditions and procedures. In fact, many of them have reinforced that decision by not equipping their tankers with traditional red or blue warning lights and sirens. Fire departments such as Phoenix, Orange County, CA and Camp Pendleton, CA have switched to equipping their water tenders (tankers) with all-amber warning lights and no sirens. The amber lights are only activated if they are needed for scene protection when they are parked. None of them are reporting higher losses of life or fire losses in the jurisdictions they serve.
The aspect of the fire service culture we need to change here is to realize that water tankers kill a heck of a lot more people than they save. In fact, if only one person was killed in these vehicles that is likely more than those that were ever saved by the water they haul. For those agencies that take enormous pride in their tanker operations, this will be a tough pill to swallow. However, it has been said many times that if we fail to learn from our past mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. This seems to be the case with the operation of fire department tankers. It is time we recognize the serious issues involving their operations and do what is necessary to mitigate them. That starts with recognizing that in most cases there is no valid reason to be driving them under emergency rate conditions.
MIKE WIEDER is the Executive Director of IFSTA at Oklahoma State University. He has more than 35 years in the fire service and holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in fire protection, occupational safety, and adult education. He was the author of the USFA "Safe Operation of Fire Tankers" report.
