As Firehouse Sees It: When Leader Accountability Is Most Important: Member Health & Safety

When you’re appointed to a leadership role, the stakes are high. The organization needs someone to outline its mission, set the course and communicate the plan. If a plan already is in place, it might need to be tweaked, but the leader’s role doesn’t stop after the announcement is made.

The means to get the message out and to get buy-in includes transparency, trust and accountability.

Some failure stems from a lack of accountability. Leaders might let the “little things” go, creating the normalization of deviance. Bringing those policies back to the forefront or ensuring that the newest firefighters understand the policies is key to success.

Every department has incident standard operating procedures/guidelines (SOPs/SOGs) that are based on their staffing, equipment and related factors. Some are rather cut and dried, from hose and equipment testing to training requirements and station duties. There are a few factors that vary greatly, and it often is as plain as day to see whether action items that are involved in that chief’s plans are being carried out as outlined.

Some SOPs/SOGs don’t fit every incident, because no two incidents are the same. However, those policies create a great framework from which to begin the mitigation of any incident. As incident conditions change, it’s likely that you can determine whether the established policies were executed on scene. If not, an examination of what’s successful, what must be updated and how to get to the next stage is required.

Even with post-fire operations, the success of a good policy in overhaul operations is very measurable when damage is limited, when no rekindles are dispatched or when the policies were carried out correctly.

Reducing exposure to toxins
There’s a series of post-fire procedures in place at thousands of departments where true success of SOPs/SOGs aren’t measurable in the minutes, hours or months after the fire: the goal of reducing exposures to cancer-causing toxins. It’s the responsibility of company officers or battalion chiefs who are on scene, of deputy chiefs and of fire chiefs to ensure that members and the entire department not only are learning the process of reducing exposure but buying in and being proactive.

Last month, I attended the annual Fire Service Occupational Cancer Alliance meeting. National Fallen Firefighters Foundation (NFFF) CEO Victor Stagnaro made a striking statement halfway through the meeting that changed the course of the gathering. In a discussion about firefighters who truly take part in post-fire cleanup efforts and those who take the threat of cancer with a grain of salt, Stagnaro said, “We can no longer look at cancer in the fire service as an emerging threat.”

It was 18 years ago when firefighter cancer first came up at Firehouse. Billy Goldfeder had a multipart podcast series that was based on research by Grace LeMasters, PhD, including the carcinogens that are found in smoke that’s inhaled by firefighters. Since that research, SCBA facepieces are the norm on most firegrounds, decon efforts are becoming familiar and exhaust capture is an automatic effort on return to the station.

With accountability as a cornerstone of effective leadership, officers and chiefs must step up and reinforce the policies and hold themselves and their firefighters accountable.

When I joined the Rush Fire Department in upstate New York in the mid-90s, the department had a policy that, without a seat belt on, the rig wouldn’t be switched to drive. That was unheard of at that time. Ten years later, while riding with Dr. Burton Clark behind the wheel of an engine in Maryland, he wouldn’t take in the box alarm until he won the dispute with someone who was in the back of the cab over wearing a seat belt.

The early efforts of Clark spearheading the National Seatbelt Pledge more than 20 years ago paid off. There has been a reduction of firefighter deaths and injuries that involve unbelted firefighters. The message became a mainstay at conferences and at NFFF programs. Seat belt indicators became basic technology in apparatus. Now, the technology is on the rig’s black box.

Leaders must invest in their members, and firefighters must trust that their officers are invested in their long-term and short-term wellness and safety. Those are difficult conversations to have, but, as an officer, if you can’t have that conversation, do you belong in the right front seat or in the chief’s buggy? No, because if your members can’t trust you to lead them through the easy times, how can you handle the situation under fire?