Findings From the Wildland Firefighters Human Factors Workshop

Workshop Findings

Decisionmaking

• Different decisions necessitate different models. A rational model looks at strategic decisions and therefore prescribes best tactics. Naturalistic models look at decisions under stress with minimal response times and focus on making sense of the situation and taking rapid action to alleviate problems. RPD is a naturalistic model. Firefighters need training with both models and guidelines that help determine when each model is better.
  
  
• Current firefighters receive little or no training on decisionmaking skills. Firefighters need to recognize a need for balance between individual decisionmaking and group decisionmaking. They need training on how situations, stress, other people, and groups affect their decisions, and on aids for clear decisions. They need to discriminate between sensemaking and decisionmaking.
  
  
• Training needs to be specific to the job. Firefighters need to make tactical decisions, and managers need to make organizational decisions.
  
  
• Factors in decisionmaking:
  • Decision point or branch
  • Errors
  • Does person have prerequisite skills?
  • Biases
  • Cultural differences
  • Intelligence differences
  • Reliability of the information
    
    
• Need to study decisionmaking in crews, operations, and IMT's. Training should be group specific. Some positions, such as division and crew superintendents, may need more than one type of training due to variable roles.
  
  
• Currently there is no clear sense of what is expected of firefighters. Institutional messages are conflicting, so decisions are not always consistent with management expectations. Firefighters are asked to take risks, fight fire aggressively but safely. Where is the boundary between risk and safety. Who decides on where the boundary is: management, IMT, crew supervisor, or individual firefighters?
  
  
• There is a need to do a factor analysis on all the decision aids currently in vogue:
  
  
  • 10 Standard Fire Orders
    
    
  • 18 Watch-out Situations
    
    
  • 5 Common Denominators
    
    
  • 4 LCES
    
    
  • 10 Downhill/Indirect Line Construction Guidelines
    
    
  • 9 Urban/Wildland Watch-outs 56 total A factor analysis would reduce these to a bare minimum. They should be grouped into never violate, transgress with extreme caution, and watch outs to avoid. If all these aids are only guidelines, then we should not criticize firefighters who do not follow them perfectly and accept that they made the best decision given their experience, training, and awareness level. Putting them in order of priority would help. If we adopt a rule "safety first," then it must be reflected in all decision aids or at least be the top priority.
    
    
• Internal Watch-outs
  • Physical fatigue
  • Mental stress
  • Fear/Anxiety
  • Tight stomach muscles
  • Action tunneling
  • Want to speak out but don't
  • Overconfidence, confidence increases
  • Decisions made without feedback
  • Situation ambiguous or doesn't make sense
  • Microsleeping
  • Changing belief to match action
  • Accepting increased risk
  • Recent family problem
  • Organization or individual distrust
    
    
• Intrapersonal/Crew Watch-outs
  • Two inexperienced persons in direct line of command
  • Other person/crew is tired or stressed out and is making crucial decisions
  • Person won't talk or is hostile
  • Cocky, overconfident individuals
  • Group polarization
  • Declining communication and feedback; supervisors are reluctant to ask for help
  • It is unclear who is in charge of the " big picture"
  • Group consensus without sufficient information
    
    
• Management Watch-outs
  • You don't receive resources or the dispatchers argue about what resources you need
  • Resources will be late arriving
  • Politicians are in the area
  • Multiple agencies are involved
  • Dispatchers/FMO's keep track of things in their heads rather than on paper
  • Norms for radio discipline are loose
  • Agency is reluctant to ask for help
  • Administrators are getting on-the job training
  • Administrators say keep it simple
  • When overheads are unknown or tough to find
  • Dispatchers are more concerned with homes than firefighters
  • News media are in the area
  • Tensions and conflicts exist before the fire season
    
    
• Stresses that interfere with good decisionmaking include:
• Anxiety
• Sleep loss
• Frustration
• Vibration
• Noise
• Hunger
• Alcohol
• Cold
• Heat
• Time pressure
• Fluid loss
• Time of day
• Drugs
• Incentives
• Fear
• Punishments
• Anger
• Personal problems

Stresses are additive!

• Stress affects decisionmaking by:
  • Lowering awareness
  • Lowering concentration or ability to focus
  • Making it harder to access long-term memory
  • Locking us into repetitive, habituated behaviors
  • Focusing more on task, working harder, and ignoring environment
    
    
• There is a crucial need to study factors involved in deciding whether to engage or disengage a fire. This includes initial attack and standard fireline duty. This whole area is vague to firefighters.
  
  
  • What objective factors are involved?
    
    
  • What subjective factors are involved?
    
    
  • What is official agency policy? Rules take pressure off individuals.
    
    
  • What rewards and punishments affect the decision?
    
    
  • Where is the boundary between safety and normal, risky, aggressive firefighting? How narrow is the margin of safety?
    
    
  • After difficult engagement decisions are acted upon, we need to follow up with good feedback and debriefing, then use the incident to improve decision factors.
    
    
  • Must use a common language so it can be discussed more accurately.
    
    
• Should agencies enforce the use of LCES at all levels? Needs to be top to bottom, bottom to top. If institutionalized, LCES would be part of every briefing on the fireline, as well as for the IMT, FMO's, and dispatchers.
  
  
• Can LCES be an absolute, never violated? What are safety zones if a spot fire is in the middle of a 5-squaremile brush field? Do you need a lookout? Or does the procedure that says to discuss fire in relation to LCES become the basis for situational awareness on which to make the decision to engage?
  
  
• Making decisions without feedback shouts watch out. The tendency is to be overconfident when feedback is weak. No learning without feedback. Should give feedback to others and expect it from them.
  
  
• Explore types of decisions and when they are made. When are most crucial decisions made? Do we make them in an active or reactive state? If much information is being processed, is the information reliable, timely, and necessary? Are inputs assumed or is a checklist used?
  
  
• Consider adoption of the Campbell danger rating system or one like it to foster better decisions.
  
  
• Currently, there is no training to teach you when you're in over your head. Usually, by the time it sinks in, your safety has been compromised. Tendency is to hang on too long because it is admitting defeat if you do not. There needs to be more agency direction here to take pressure off the individual. Need training to recognize cues and early warnings to pull out or to ask for more resources before the situation becomes desperate. FMO's, dispatchers, and others need to monitor fire activity and assume a more active role in these decisions from a position of mutual respect with the IC.
  
  
• When there is a difference between expectations/beliefs versus action, we change our expectations and beliefs to fit our actions. If we are trying to foster new expectations such as " safety first," then we need to use incentives to reinforce the expectation and use feedback to correct inappropriate actions.
  
  
• When a group of risk takers is put together, the group will take more risks than any individual would take alone. This and other factors associated with risk taking need to be incorporated into the decision process. Even the way you think about risk affects risk taking. When we talk about saving something we are more conservative in taking risks. When we talk about losing something we will take greater risks.
  
  
• Information occurring close in time tends to be automatically linked together even when it is unrelated. Be aware of this when making decisions. When unsure of information, request clarification. Also be careful about how you put information together to brief others.
  
  
• Factors affecting whether to engage or disengage:
  • Fire resources committed
  • Fire resource timing
  • Risk assessment
  • Fire behavior—actual and expected
  • Urban interface
  • Public pressure
  • Political pressure
  • Value of resource you are protecting
  • Recognized options
  • Clear management guidelines

Communication

• Functions and Problems (Kanki and Palmer 1993)
  
  
  • Functions
    • Provides information
    • Establishes interpersonal relationships
    • Establishes predictable behavior
    • Maintains attention to task and monitoring
    • Is a management tool
      
      
  • Problems
    • Lack or misinformation
    • Interpersonal strain
    • Non-standard, unpredictable behavior patterns
    • Loss of vigilance, situational awareness
    • Lack of or misdirected leadership
      
      
• Communication on the fireline
  
  
  • Good within a crew but not between crews
    
    
  • Better between similar crews (i.e., hotshots)
    
    
  • Better between people who know and trust each other
    
    
  • Hard during transitions; need guidelines
    
    
  • Need more skill training on maximizing information with fewest words
    
    
  • Need to foster a cultural attitude of respectful interaction to promote trust
    
    
  • Temporary employees have a hard time communicating upward
    
    
  • Need nonthreatening method to communicate personal experience level. Try to communicate face-to face as soon as possible.
    
    
  • Need for more dialogue when people first meet, even if on radio, as this reduces the number of words needed for effective communication later as the people better understand each other's point of view.
    
    
• Story telling is an effective method for communicating agency values and lessons learned.
  
  
• Essential to have a common language (English), common terms, and common expectations (size-up and LCES) to convey more information in less time.
  
  
• Need for training, especially supervisors, IMT, FMO's, and dispatchers on interacting more effectively and removing mistrust and communication barriers. Need language and training to resolve differences of opinion as opposed to avoidance or going around someone we have difficulty with.
  
  
• Everyone in the fire community needs to talk and interact more with their counterparts both during the fire season and off season. This will reestablish a feeling of fire community and trust and improve communications when the tempo increases in severe fire seasons.
  
  
• Greater information flow up, down, and across improves everyone's experience and competency. This process takes years to develop. We should start now, stay enthused, and expect change over a longer period of time.
  
  
• Need for open dialogue when problems occur. Discuss and manage problems while they are small and less emotional. If you're thinking it, express it out loud.
  
  
• Firstline supervisors set the tone for communications. Agency must send clear signals to supervisors concerning their responsibility to promote open, two-way, respectful interaction. Supervisors should lead crews to avoid emotional-laden topics until mutual respect and crew cohesion have formed. Supervisors should clearly communicate expected norms of behavior, then use incentives and feedback to ensure compliance. Crews and individuals want cohesion and trust if it's allowed to develop naturally.
  
  
• Need a common tactical language such as the Campbell danger rating system to foster clearer communication of fire behavior, expectations, briefings, and feedback.

Leadership and Cohesion

• Leadership is a crucial skill for improving firefighter safety. An open, democratic leader promotes crew spirit, cohesion, and maximum crew growth. This occurs through an active teacher/mentor role to foster crew knowledge. A cohesive, knowledgeable, open crew is a safe crew.
  
  
• After a size-up, a good leader shares the information with the crew. Individual crew members are encouraged to do their own size-up, determine the outcome, and ask questions about why their size-up or the leader's size-up was on or off target. The leader should quiz crew members, who in turn should quiz the leader.
  
  
• A good leader provides maximal feedback to the crew to foster crew learning. The leader shares experience, training, and knowledge with the crew.
  
  
• In times of declining budgets and training dollars, a crew leader must take the classroom to the field on the job.
  
  
• On initial attack and transition fires, it is not always clear who is in charge. When authority is delegated, the chain of command should be clear to all firefighters. Official transfers should be face to face and signed in diaries. If a leadership change occurs on the fireline, the change should be relayed to dispatch and recorded.
  
  
• All leaders must have leadership and supervisory training, even if their official jobs do not require that skill. To be a leader on the fireline, you must be trained. Too often untrained leaders regress to being regular firefighters when conditions become stressful.
  
  
• Leadership training for firefighters is poor. Being an office supervisor does not equate to being a leader on the fireline. We need to determine what skills a fireline leader needs, then train people in those skills. Many problems occur on the fireline due to assuming office rank equates to fire rank.
  
  
• There is no good system in place to promote individuals who excel in fireground leadership. More FTE's should be set aside to create a career track for people who exhibit fireline leadership. They are the nucleus of the fire crews, and their experience is essential for safety on the fireline.
  
  
• It is essential for crew leaders to debrief their crews after each incident. Leaders should insist on a debriefing from the IMT or IC and give their own debriefing to the crew. This feedback is essential for learning to occur. Leaders should give orders, then explain them as much as possible.
  
  
• Crew supervisory job descriptions should be revised to reflect the need for people who are open and honest, and who can act as teachers and mentors as well as being skilled in leadership and knowledgeable about fire behavior.
  
  
• All incident leaders need to foster more intermixing between people and crews to create an open atmosphere for sharing experiences and knowledge. This should be expected behavior among all firefighters.
  
  
• Identify skills needed for effective fireground leadership, including:
  • Command and control practice
  • Time and space relationships
  • Quick, bullet-type communication
  • Stress awareness
  • Experience
  • Situational awareness and assessment
  • Criteria on when to engage or disengage
  • "Hot-seat" decisionmaking under stress for quicker decisions—RPD type decisions
  • Task assignment
  • Mission awareness
    
    
• Leadership training courses should be mandatory for all IC's and division superintendents. Courses should be Marana style (upper level) with simulations under stress.
  
  
• There is definite skill erosion during light fire years. Leaders should be heavily involved in prescribed fire to hone skills.
  
  
• When leadership changes on the fireground it should be formal:
  • Face to face
  • Declared to dispatch and entered in the dispatch log
  • Both IC's should sign diary with time and date of exchange
  • Consider other positions for sign off (in addition to IC's)
    
    
• Leadership, crew cohesion, and safety are strongly correlated. Open leadership style fosters better cohesion and safety.
  
  
• Good crew supervisors do not focus on safety but rather on good supervision, crew cohesion, and work ethics. Safety is the result. Supervisors who constantly talk about safety have more accidents than those who focus on working relationships.
  
  
• A lot is known about crew leadership, cohesion, and trust, which takes 6 to 8 weeks to develop. It may develop quicker for fire crews. Is there a way to study this and accelerate the effect?
  
  
• When people off districts, forests, etc., are brought together to form a crew, they are much more effective and safer if they spend a day together getting to know each other before going on the fireline. This technique should be further investigated as a method to speed up group cohesion.
  
  
• There used to be a better sense of fire community among firefighters and managers. Has this sense been lost or has the fire family become dysfunctional?
  
  
• Leaders need to work with crew members and promote respectful interactions; encourage their input so they feel part of the crew. Once leaders get input, crew members should expect leaders to make decisions and lead them to accomplish goals.

Adaptability/Flexibility

• Adaptability skills need to be addressed. How flexible are wildland firefighters to quickly change tactics as environmental conditions change? Do our crews stay too long at the task at hand when a new approach is called for?
  
  
• Need flexibility to keep reassessing the situation on a routine basis.

Assertiveness

• Assertiveness is natural for some firefighters. But for others, it is a skill that must be learned, then practiced.
  
  
• Leaders of teams and crews are pivotal in creating a climate that encourages all firefighters to speak up.
  
  
• Firefighters have a tendency to internalize what's bothering them rather than speak up about it. We need to emphasize more external dialogue.
  
  
• We also need more assertiveness between leaders to communicate their size-ups to others and to discuss their experience level with others. We need this exchange so both leaders perceive the same external environment as a basis for future decisions and know what to expect from the other person based on their past experience.
  
  
• Assertiveness is also necessary to request fire and weather information, briefings, debriefings, etc., when they are not given. This includes asking questions or requesting that someone repeat information you did not understand.

Assessment and Feedback

• The current system for reporting entrapments is working, but not very effectively. Some entrapments are reported only after long delays, and some aren't reported formally until someone follows up on rumors and pressures a person or crew to fill out the forms. This system should be reexamined and made more effective. Firefighters should not have the option to fail to report entrapments without penalty. They should not be penalized when they do report entrapments in a timely manner.
  
  
• A new system must be implemented to record and track near-miss situations for all wildland fire operations. It should include all accidents and incidents, even minor ones. This baseline information is necessary to determine where we currently have problems and if management or training changes decrease nearmisses, accidents, and incidents. This system should be modeled after the airline industry where there is no penalty for calling in an accident or near miss when reported at the earliest opportunity. An open, nonthreatening system will promote more frequent and more accurate reporting, therefore greater safety.
  
  
• It would be useful to have trained individuals or teams go out on the fireline each fire season to observe crews and individuals in action. The information gathered would show whether training or management objectives have transferred to the fireline. IMT and crew members could be quizzed or interviewed to determine skills and knowledge.
  
  
• The agencies should require that leaders reassess their situation every 15 to 60 minutes, depending upon fire danger. Taking time out to reassess allows you to determine if new actions are required. There should be a formal checklist like LCES.
  
  
• Every person in the fire community and on the fireground needs to increase communication and feedback up and down the chain of command to maximize learning. Everyone needs to become more expert at both giving and receiving feedback.
  
  
• Attitudes don't always predict behavior. So it is important to determine what behavior is encouraged or discouraged in the actual work environment. What are the real consequences for following various orders. Stories, games, and videos are three methods of communicating expectations and consequences.
  
  
• Once entrapments and close-call data are analyzed, the facts must get to individual firefighters for learning to take place. This feedback heightens situational awareness and the ability to recall the information if needed. The individual and crew names can be removed as long as the key facts are well communicated.
  
  
• Firefighters need quality briefings when they first arrive on a fire. If they start out behind, they will remember and process less information in critical situations.
  
  
• Individuals must practice behavior before it happens automatically.
  
  
• Consider a 1-800 hotline to collect safety data. It should be a nongovernmental agency to ensure higher reporting rate and anonymity.
  
  
• Try to teach in the field as much as possible. It promotes better learning and recall because that's where it will be needed in a critical situation. Prescribed burns are a great classroom setting.
  
  
• An agency protocol is needed for briefing each other on our current firefighting qualifications. The red card ratings are deceptive and there needs to be more face-to-face discussion of qualifications to size up individuals or crews you will be working with. That is part of the overall situational awareness. What is agency protocol if you feel the other person isn't qualified?
  
  
• There is a need to explore alternative training and feedback methods:
  • Interactive investigative books
  • CD games
  • Hot-seat simulations
    
    
• MTDC should publish a quarterly human factors newsletter similar to Health Hazards of Smoke. Target all fire safety personnel and firefighting crews in addition to normal region/forest/district distribution.
  
  
• Are extended initial attack, transitions, urban interface, helicopter downwash, etc., really our most risky, hazardous situations or is this rumor? What are the trends and how significant are they? What are the situations that cause the most firefighter injuries?
  
  
• Start using computers to move people to and from fires and while on fires to eliminate all the waiting time. Figure out ways to use down time for training.
  
  
• Small individual AM receiving radios are a dollar or two. If each firefighter wore one, it would be a means for broadcasting weather, fire behavior, news, and other general information.
  
  
• Situation checks should be required within a crew and among crews as a double check that everyone agrees with the situational analysis. The check could follow LCES. Respectfully discuss differences. When a situation gets critical, ask the recipient to repeat the analysis back to you.
  
  
• Fire safety officers should do spot checks on safety equipment and practices. They can determine what training has been given and if firefighters know the basics. They can ask firefighters to give them a situation size-up based on LCES and hazards in the immediate area.
  
  
• Need better, consistent post-fire debriefings for individuals, crews, and IMT's. The process should encourage feedback both up and down the chain of command.
  
  
• Need a long-range look at what we are about and what we do. Need longitudinal field studies to accomplish this task. This would make it clear whether management objectives get incorporated into behaviors in the field.
  
  
• Greatest safety factor on the fireline is clear thinking. Look for clues, analyze the input, and predict. If you can't predict, then stand back and watch what's happening until you can predict. Then take action based on clear thinking.

---

Top

Back | Next

Table of Contents

Visitor since November 12, 2004