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Monday, March 9, 2009 - Now that I have your attention with that attention grabbing headline I hope you will continue to read. It is quite a bold headline and yet it is pretty true.
Like all good stories we should probably start at the beginning. We turn the clock back to February 2006 at the Firehouse World Expo in San Diego, California. The talk of the show was a proposal that had been submitted to the NFPA 1901 committee to ban SCBA’s from fire truck cabs. The submitter was advocating a policy that has already been adopted by Phoenix and several other fire departments where all of the SCBAs have been removed from seatbacks and moved to high side compartments.
At that time it seemed like a fairly good idea to me. First, I thought that removing a potential high pressure projectile from the seatbacks might really make the cabs safer. Second, I thought about what happens when we arrive at a fire and the crew members rush out of the cab and run into a burning building. Not long before, I had the occasion to ask one of my new firefighters what floor are we on while we were inside at a structure fire. He didn’t know. So, I said to him, “If we get separated and you get lost, how are you going to call me on the radio and tell me where you are?” So reason number 2 could be that during the extra 30 seconds it takes to get the SCBAs out of the compartments, the firefighters might have a look at the building and do a quick size-up. That’s right - actually take a few seconds to look at the building and the visible fire conditions before going inside. What a novel idea!
I also thought that if we take the SCBA’s (and probably a bunch of other stuff) out of the cabs, it would make it easier for the firefighters to fasten their seat belts. For the past year we had been talking and talking about how to get firefighters to fasten their seatbelts. Maybe this would create a sanitized environment where the emphasis would be on personal safety and arriving at the alarm location in one piece. Maybe removing the SCBAs and all those extra straps would help solve the seatbelt problem.
We know that we attract risk takers to become firefighters and then train them to go into burning buildings and push hard to make that rescue, put out that last room of fire or make that floor above. But when we talk about responding to the fire, we want everyone to sit down, fasten their seatbelts and focus on arriving at the scene safely. Could something as simple as this proposal help solve our eternal risk management dilemma?
As we were having a group discussion about this proposal, one of my best friends yelled at me. He had never done that before. “When are we going to stop regulating everything and start holding people accountable for their own actions and for their own personal safety?” he asked. “Taking the SCBAs out of the cabs will only make a bad situation worse.” He was visibly upset.
He went on to state quite emphatically that if we take the SCBA’s out of the cab and put them in high side compartments, the highly motivated firefighters will take them out of the compartments and put back into the cabs – except now they won’t have the brackets to hold them in place. Would we be better off having those 20 lb projectiles bouncing around loose in the cabs, ready to launch the instant that the apparatus wheels leave the pavement?
Of course some will argue that this is an enforcement issue, or a supervisory issue, but let’s think about how much success we have had enforcing seatbelt rules? Maybe the simple solution isn’t as simple as I thought. By the end of that night in San Diego I had changed my mind. We would have to figure out how to convince firefighters to wear their seatbelts without taking their SCBA out of the cabs.
So, I went back to work at the Cross Bronx Express thinking about why firefighters don’t fasten their seatbelts. In a rare moment of supervisory brilliance I thought of asking my firefighters that question. Their answers were both interesting and compelling.
Danny spoke up first. “Loo, we can’t,” he said. “They don’t work.”
Notice he said “Loo, we can’t;” not “Loo, we won’t,” or “Loo, go stick that stupid idea were the sun don’t shine!” The rest of the crew joined in to inform me that they just don’t work. So, I said, “Fine, let me go get my digital camera and you go get your bunker gear on and then you show me why the seatbelts in our apparatus don’t work.
We tried the seatbelts in the engine that were integrated into the seats and then we tried the seatbelts in the ladder truck that were attached to the back wall of the cab. We tried them in the forward facing seats and we tried them sitting backwards. Ultimately they all managed to get the seatbelts fasten around them, but it was far from easy. In several cases it was difficult to the point of being almost impossible. A typical firefighter in full bunker gear could barely squeeze into the seat, then had to twist around to reach the belt and pull, tug and push to get it wrapped around all that clothing and equipment and properly buckled. I began to understand the problem.
I started to talk to some firefighter friends about what could be done to correct the problem. I called some friends in Fort Worth and a few other fire departments and asked them to take pictures of firefighters trying to put seatbelts on in their apparatus. I wanted to see if the same problems existed in other fire departments or if it was limited to just one fire department or one brand of apparatus or one model of cab or one type of seat. We quickly determined that the same problem was showing up in numerous fire departments across a wide spectrum of fire apparatus manufacturers. Some were better, some were worse, but we found numerous examples of seats and seatbelt systems that were not “firefighter friendly”.
A discussion with some of my friends brought out the suggestion that we should hold a meeting and invite all of the fire apparatus manufacturers, all of the seat manufacturers, all the seatbelt manufacturers, and any other organization or entity that was interested in the subject. The purpose of the meeting would be to bring up the problem and see who was interested in doing something to solve it.
The meeting was scheduled during the Fire Department Instructors Conference in Indianapolis and held under the auspices of the Safety, Health and Survival Section of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. The first part of the meeting was a friendly kind of getting to know you session. Then I described the problem and showed the pictures of firefighters struggling to try to use their seatbelts. Some of the people in the room accused me of trying to make excuses for fire departments and officers who don’t have the courage to enforce their own rules. Some just thought that I was nuts. There was a lot of finger pointing and playing the blame game until finally a group of cooler heads decided that maybe there really is a problem and maybe we need to work together to solve it. We had struck a nerve in the fire apparatus engineering community.
Over the next few weeks we started to collect systematic measurements of firefighters and supply the engineers with some real data. They quickly began to recognize that some of the design standards, including the seating requirements in NFPA 1901, were based on old data and incorrect assumptions about firefighters and protective clothing. Some of the cab designs and seating configurations that are popular with the fire service simply don’t provide enough room for firefighters to sit comfortably and easily fasten their seatbelts. The standards need to be updated and some of the designs need to be changed.
It is easy to understand how we got to this point. In a generation we have gone from riding on tailboards to riding in seats with built-in SCBAs in fully enclosed cabs. As this was occurring, firefighters were becoming bigger, taller, and heavier; modern bunker gear was invented; pockets were filled with tools and equipment, self-evacuation rope bags were attached and radio pockets and flashlight straps were added. The apparatus manufacturers are making great trucks, the seat manufacturers are making great seats and the seatbelt manufacturers are making great seatbelts; however it appears that nobody was bringing all of them together. The engineers would describe it as a systems integration problem.
So, where are we now with this project? In discussions at a second meeting, which occurred at the Firehouse Expo in Baltimore in July it was determined that two courses of action are needed. The Safety Task Force of the NFPA 1901 Committee is working on developing changes to the standard for the next revision cycle. We are in the process of measuring at least 1000 firefighters, across North America, in what is called an anthropometric study. This data is being gathered to figure out what kinds of changes are needed to fit modern firefighters into the seats in modern apparatus. This will ensure that the seating in new apparatus is designed to meet realistic requirements. The IAFC Safety, Health and Survival Section agreed to take the lead in efforts to develop retrofit solutions for existing apparatus. Several apparatus and component manufacturers are already at work trying to engineer new designs.
The project to obtain measurements for 1000 firefighters is only a preliminary step. The initial study is being performed with simple measurement techniques, such as a tape measure, so that it can be dome quickly and easily by fire departments and the data can be reported back to the project team. It was suggested that we might also want to do 3-dimensional body scans, using a laser scanner to get more accurate data, and expand the anthropometric study to include many other safety and size concerns.
It soon became apparent that we had opened a Pandora’s Box as a lot of other related issues were identified. For instance, we know that NFPA standards require 14-inch spacing between the rungs of an aerial ladder. What scientific process was used to determine that 14 inches was actually the correct rung spacing? The rung spacing standard has not been updated or even considered in the past 40 years. Is it still valid? The same questions could be asked about dozens, maybe hundreds of other size requirements that may or may not be valid in today’s world.
Most of our current equipment is designed to fit the general population or the military or some other group for which anthropometric data was available. Very little of our equipment was specifically designed for firefighter use. A more detailed anthropometric study of firefighters would provide the data to validate many good products that are already available and to improve or develop new products based on solid scientific data.
The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation was instrumental in setting up a meeting with NIOSH (the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health) at their headquarters in Morgantown, West Virginia. The scientific research group that does anthropometric analysis at NIOSH expressed a serious interest in working with the group that performs firefighter fatality investigations to conduct a detailed study of firefighters. It was determined that a pilot study should be conducted with 3-D laser scanning of between 160 and 200 firefighters. It was also suggested that a range of motion study should also be conducted at the same time.
The pilot project would be the foundation for a full blown study that would include laser scanning and range of motion measurements of over 1000 firefighters. This project would probably take at least 3 years to complete.
What does this mean for you and me as line firefighters? There is a potential for the data gathered from this study to impact on every facet of firefighter safety for decades to come. Imagine apparatus that we can fit into, seatbelts that are user friendly, steps to fit the boots that we wear and handrails placed on apparatus where we can actually reach them. Think about bunker gear that would fit better and flex easily where we need to bend, gloves that would actually fit and ladders that would be easier to climb.
This is truly an exciting time in the fire service. Everyone involved really wants to help make firefighting safer and the level of cooperation among all the groups involved, including IAFC, NFFF, NFPA, FAMA and NIOSH has been outstanding.
With all of this said, the fact still remains you still have to fasten your seatbelt. No excuses!! NONE!! Even if it is difficult, it is important. Using the seatbelts we have now is absolutely better than not wearing any seatbelts at all. Just ask the two departments in the last month where firefighters became projectiles and were ejected out of fire apparatus. One firefighter had her arm trapped under the truck for over 15 minutes --- and she was the lucky one.
As we continue through this process I will update you through this column as events warrant.
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