I had something to say... It is a fact that fire department operations on the scene of an emergency are complex systems nested inside of more complex systems. One of the hallmarks of a complex system is that they are sensitive to initial conditions. What determines the outcome in large part is the state of the system when the emergency begins. To fully understand the behavior of the people at the scene of this Joplin fire or my behavior at the scene of my last fire you would have to understand the fullness of experiences that led up the fire and the conditions that I faced at the time of the fire. These things are impossible. That does not mean that we do not try to create knowledge around fires or our reaction to them. I think it is a part of the human condition to try to explain the natural world. But it does means that we have to remember always that our knowledge has limits. Like Svensson says so often, “…it depends.” We have the luxury of talking about fires in retrospect though we fight them in the present. From the retrospective frame of reference we have the benefit of outcomes to shape our perception of effectiveness. Science, the laboratory, the theorists, give us the added benefit of figuring out if what we experienced, if those tactics that “worked” can be extended to a fuller range of circumstances than those we have been exposed to. One of the more tragic dangers we face is extending success in one area to generalizations. Remember that another hallmark of complex systems is that similar or exact inputs can lead to radically different outputs; they are not repeatable. Whether or not we can push fire is a great theoretical debate. I mean it makes the day go faster, for me at least, to sit a keyboard waiting to see what Paul Grimwood is going to say about what I just said. Understanding flame behavior, fire behavior and the like is a crucial part of the response system. It is more difficult to control a fire if you don’t understand fully how they behave than it is when you do. But understand also that we have been fighting fires since fire was known, right? Even the cavemen had some idea of how to fight a fire even though they were likely unable to apply the same sorts of behavior models to it as we now are. Our grandfathers put fires out too. Arguably they dealt with different materials in the built environment, they dealt with different construction features, they had different gear, but their fires are not still burning. So a couple of things have changed since my grandfather fought his last fire. One of the most important is the cultural frame of reference that we currently face. The internet has been a great tool of democracy and information availability. I remember the first time I got in touch with Paul Grimwood, he responded to an email I sent him on September 21, 2007. (Yes I kept that email). Back then his was the only “scientific” work that I could find on the internet outside of what NIST was doing. For the record we disagreed on key points even then. The point is that we now have a much wider range of information available, research based information, but the truth is that even the people who don’t agree with it or who don’t read it are still putting fires out everyday. It may be caveman style but they are still going out. I had a long offline conversation with Sean Brooks the other day. We sort of laughed. He was the ladder truck man and I was the engine man many years ago. He offered that he never hesitated to break a window that he figured needed breaking. For the record all the windows needed breaking in his mind. I offered that it only worked out because I never hesitated to put a hose line in service quickly. In our world speed of action, decisive aggressive action, balanced out any of the critical mistakes that we made in terms of pushing fire, ignoring flow paths, and or not coordinating. I would advise against using our tactics unless you are resourced like we were. Back them we had, within minutes of the alarm being sounded, three or four engines stretching lines staffed with five or six people and two or three ladder trucks with similar staffing all doing stuff sequentially. I am older now. I still go to fires but not quite as quickly as I once did. I work in a place where our staffing is not as robust. I work with people who I don’t live with like I lived day in and day out with those guys back then. I also have the benefit of a more robust understanding of what I don’t know. Perhaps that is the key, what I don’t know. When I was younger I did not consider that UL suggests that I had a few short minutes between when the window was broken, the flow path established and when I was putting the fire out. I really didn’t care. Now I do. My frame of reference has changed. The other thing that has changed is that we as a society are less willing to accept the death of a firefighter in the line of duty. Our rhetoric has changed and we operate under the notion that we should be able to engage in risky tasks without experiencing adverse outcomes. Now I don’t think that having a firefighter die for no good reason is a bright idea but I also don’t think that we can continue to fight fires without continuing to see firefighters die. The system is too complex to ever believe otherwise. I have been in the same room across from Kerber, Hartin, Svensson, Madrykowski and been amazed to learn all the things that I don’t know. Simply amazed. To the point where I went home and declared that I was an idiot. But on the other hand I have been to more than one fire with Sean Brooks, and Danny McCoy and Steve Kerber and many others without them. What I know is this….the science of how the fire went out did not change but my approach had to change. It had to change because if you are not getting smarter you are wasting time. Of course there is much more to this. Read the work of Weick, Zeigler(Thackaberry), consider the current research on decision making under stress and time pressure. I offer that while the fire research is taking us a long way to being better educated firefighters, fire research alone can only take us so far. The research in my mind has been a great tool for providing a series questions, many of them that don’t have real answers. Arguably some of the best questions don’t have real answers. And that is where the last hallmark of complex systems comes into play. In a complex system the parts are the whole but the whole is not simply the additive effects of the parts. When you put all the pieces in motion something strange and synergistic happens and what you get is this whole new thing that can only be understood and acted on in the local context even though it may have huge impacts in a more global sense. I want these sorts of discussions that we have on Facebook to continue, I want to continue to push the limits of rational thought in the relative safety of the social media medium simply because when faced with the actual danger I cannot afford, except in the most exigent circumstances, to allow the system or myself be pushed to its boundaries. In real life I have to assume some things that may or not be true from the relative safety of the “box’” only thinking outside the box when absolutely necessary. There, I said it....
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 19:29:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015