Excellence in Fire Protection

Residential sprinklers – the next game changer in public fire protection

The term "game changer" refers to someone or something that dramatically changes the status quo. Using sports as an example, a game changer would be a player who took control and won the game.

When it comes to residential fire safety, we saw one game changer in the 1970's. We are about to see another.

Smoke alarms – the first game changer

Before smoke alarms came along, fire deaths in the US averaged around 6,000 per year. As the number of homes with smoke alarms increased, the fire death rate continued to decrease. Now that 95 percent of homes have smoke alarms, the annual fire death rate in the US has dropped to around 3,000.

Residential sprinklers –the next game changer

Fire sprinklers will be the next game changer in residential fire safety. Data from the NFPA show that smoke alarms increase the probability of surviving a house fire by 50 percent. For homes protected by sprinklers, the probability increases to 98 percent.

Sprinklers are also a game changer in fire suppression because they dramatically reduce the demand on firefighters. In my post titled, "How many firefighters does it take to stop a fire," I used a detached 1-family home as an illustration. Compared to a fire in an unsprinklered home, a fire in a sprinklered home can be handled by less than one half the number of firefighters. It is not at all unusual for the first-due company to handle the incident.

Some time ago, a fire chief asked me to predict how many companies would be needed in a new residential subdivision if every home were sprinklered. I had done several station location studies, and my experience revealed an interesting fact. If fire departments want to get second- and third-due companies to a fire scene in a reasonable amount of time, they have to significantly overlap the boundaries of first-due areas. In other words, higher effectiveness comes at the cost of lower efficiency.

I define effective fire protection as stopping a fire before flashover with no life loss. That is what residential sprinklers do. And because they do it with lower demands on firefighters, fire chiefs can reduce the overlap in first-due areas. The chief in question had planned on seven engine companies and three ladder companies. Sprinklered homes would have reduced the demand to four engines and two ladders. By saving an average of $1 million dollars per year to staff each company, or $4 million a year, his jurisdiction could increase fire protection effectiveness while increasing efficiency at the same time.

Residential sprinklers are going to change the game for all of us, both civilians and firefighters.

The paradox of successful fire prevention

This will sound heretical to my fellow fire prevention advocates, but here it is. I think that the success of fire prevention has hurt efforts to maintain fire department staffing levels.

Here is my theory. In general, fire departments continue to devote the lion's share of revenues to manual fire suppression. On average, around 95 percent of fire department budgets go to manual suppression. However, past fire prevention efforts have had more impact on reducing fire incidents and their severity than manual suppression.

Here are two cases in point. Beginning around the 1980's, prohibitions on open burning reduced fire incidents by 50 percent. After smoke alarms came on the market in the 1970's, the steady increase in homes with smoke alarms was accompanied by a steady drop in fire deaths.

Thus the paradox of success in fire prevention. Those two fire prevention initiatives alone halved the number of fire calls and reduced the impact of fires on life and property safety. But how are policy makers and citizens interpreting that success? Are the daily reports of closed fire stations and laid off firefighters related to the two fire prevention successes cited above? I believe they are.

Where effective public education and automatic fire suppression continue to reduce the number of fires and mitigate fire loss, I understand why civilians question the need for so many firefighters on duty. The problem is that fire incidents cannot be reduced to zero. Although they occur less frequently, they still occur.

Fire chiefs have two choices in addressing this paradox. One is to keep fire prevention bureaus the red-headed stepchild of public fire protection - underfunded, under-staffed and inadequately trained. The lack of fire prevention effectiveness will stop the trend of fewer fires and lower losses.

The other choice is to reduce the cost of maintaining adequate numbers of firefighters for manual suppression. As effective fire prevention continues to reduce fire frequency and loss, fire chiefs will be under greater pressure to reduce manual suppression ranks or find less costly alternatives.

My concern is that fire chiefs are trying to solve 21^st century fire protection problems with 19^th century methods. I believe that one 21^st century solution is to augment fire suppression staffing with public service interns. I discuss the concept in my post on fire department staffing.

On the need for better performance measures

In my last post, I stated that fire chiefs are at a disadvantage when competing with other public services for funding. Here is why I believe so.

Since 1993, public agencies at the federal, state and local levels have made great strides in learning how to measure effectiveness. It all began with the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993. The legislation mandated federal agencies to develop budgeting systems that were directly tied to the quality of results instead of output. And thus the program's title, Managing for Results (MFR).

While public services continue to move away from traditional performance measures and embrace MFR, fire departments (with rare exception) have not. Where MFR helps city councils set budgets for public agencies based on results, fire chiefs are left to defend budgets and staffing levels with facts like response times and apparatus staffing. City councils want to know how much bang they are getting for the buck, and output data cannot tell them that.

Here is a brief description of outputs v. outcomes, or results. The key to understanding the difference is this. When you think of output, think "quantity." When you think of outcomes, think "quality."

Inputs, Outputs and Outcomes

Organizations use three types of data to assess efficiency and effectiveness. The first is input data. Inputs are any resources needed to accomplish an organization's goals. Using auto manufacturers as an example, inputs include things like financial investment, the number of manufacturing sites and number of employees. Input measures for fire departments are similar, such as annual budgets, number of stations, amount of apparatus and staffing levels. Input data do not measure effectiveness but are used to measure productivity, or efficiency.

The second type of information is output. Outputs measure performance. Examples of an auto manufacturer's output are the number of man-hours expended per auto, the number of autos produced per day, etc. But the automobile output data like man-hours per auto or annual production describes quantities. They tell you nothing about the quality of the product.

The same goes for fire departments. Knowing a fire department's average response times, firefighters per apparatus or annual number of fire incidents tell you nothing about the quality of the results. To measure effectiveness, fire departments must measure outcomes just like private industry does.

The auto industry has several measures of results. One is the number of defects per car when they come off the assembly line. Another measure is the length of time before a repair is needed. Are similar "quality indicators" available to measure the effectiveness of fire protection? I think that they are. I believe that every fire incident can be graded, just as automobile quality is evaluated.

My two measures of the quality of incident outcomes are life loss and flashover. Fire incidents where no lives were lost and the fires were stopped before flashover should be graded as "Wins." Those that result in lives lost or went to flashover before being stopped should be graded as "Lost."

Now before you grab for a noose, let me say this. Grading a fire in the "Lost" column does not knock the efforts of firefighters. In the above paragraph, I refer to fire protection and not manual suppression. That is because manual suppression is only one part of public fire protection. When analyzing the results of a fire incident, one needs to assess the roles of public education, code enforcement and built-in protection as well as manual suppression in finding out why it was a Win or Loss. I'll have more to say about this in a later post.

What is excellence in fire protection?

Over the years, I have asked fire chiefs to rate their departments on a scale of 1-10 with a score of 10 equaling "The Best" and a 1 equaling "The Worst."

My poll is admittedly unscientific, but it has yielded two interesting facts. The first is that the majority of fire chiefs rate their departments between 7 and 10. In other words, most fire chiefs think that their departments are way above average or even excellent.

What I find more interesting is the second fact. After asking for their rating, I ask chiefs what their ratings were based upon. While there is close agreement on where chiefs rate their departments, there is no agreement the means of comparison.

Here are the typical reasons why fire chiefs rate their fire departments from above average to excellent:

More firefighters per capita than neighboring departments.

Better equipped firefighters.

Better trained firefighters.

Newer apparatus than surrounding departments.

More stations per square mile than neighboring departments.

An all-career department.

High level of customer satisfaction.

Fast response times for first-due companies.

A lower PPC rating from the ISO than neighbors.

Accredited by a national accrediting organization.

The number and diversity of reasons concerns me. For one, it shows a lack of agreement about what constitutes an excellent fire department - or an adequate one for that matter. For another, I think that the lack of such agreement is putting fire chiefs at a disadvantage to other public services.

Fire departments compete with other public services for tax dollars. Over the years, the competition has developed valid performance measures. Such measures enable policy makers to compare cost v. effectiveness and make informed decisions about allotting tax dollars. With very few exceptions, fire departments lack measures of effectiveness, and that makes them less competitive for the public dollar.

Of the reasons listed above, only one – response time - makes reference to performance. But response time is a measure of output and says nothing about fire department effectiveness. To measure effectiveness, one needs to evaluate outcomes instead of output. With effectiveness measures in hand, we will be able to determine excellence in fire protection, which I define as providing the highest level of fire protection at the least cost.

On a future post to Achieving Excellence, I'll discuss two simple ways to measure effectiveness in fire protection.

How many firefighters does it take to stop a fire?

If someone were to ask you that question, your response would likely be, "that depends." You would then rattle off several factors that can effect the needed response, such as the size of the building, its contents and the occupants. You would likely also note the role that that the stage of the fire at the time of arrival plays.

When fire chiefs appear before their city councils to justify staffing levels, they could really use some answers to that question. Other city departments routinely quantify their demand and use the data to justify budgets and staffing levels. For fire chiefs, saying "it depends" just isn't going to cut it anymore.

I believe that fire chiefs can provide valid answers, but they must do some homework first. The first step involves quantifying structural fire risk. To illustrate, let's take a single-family detached home and ask how many firefighters are needed to stop a pre-flashover fire with a reasonable degree of risk to firefighter safety.

In order to perform fireground tasks with a reasonable degree of safety, firefighters need to perform many of the tasks either simultaneously or in a highly-coordinated fashion. For examplele, the attack team should not enter the home until the ventilation team is ready to open a path for fire gases and smoke to exhaust. The same goes for the backup team being ready when the attack team goes in.

Then there is water supply. Once the attack line is opened, the attack team has just a few minutes until the booster tank is empty. That means that a hydrant line must be laid quickly enough to maintain the water supply. The numbers are adding up and we haven't even mentioned S & R, command, etc.

I call those tasks which must be performed simultaneously or in a highly-coordinated order "critical fireground tasks." The number of those tasks adds up very quickly. They also require that second- and third-due apparatus be located close enough to reach the fireground shortly after the first-due company.

In my experience, the average number of firefighters needed to stop a typical house fire - again, with a reasonable level of safety to firefighters - is 13-15.

I categorize the homes described above as intermediate risks on a list of categories running from minimum to high-hazard. If fire chiefs analyzed their varying risks in terms of demand on initial responders, voila, they can answer the question of how many firefighters it takes to stop a fire.

Lest you think that I am over-simplifying things, I am not. Such a risk analysis will be based upon a set of  assumptions, such asthat a is alerted in time to perform an offensive attack, occupants are evacuating, etc. When any of those assumptions are violated, then the number of critical tasks and the associated number of firefighters and apparatus may overwhelm even the best-equipped and staffed fire department. When that happens, it's time to call upon reserve capacity. I'll discuss my views of the role of active v. reserve capacity in a later Squad Room discussion. 

Fire department staffing

The economic downturn is affecting all types of fire departments, from the largest career to the smallest volunteer department. As I visit web sites and blogs, I see a lot of concern and frustration being expressed over the situation. The solutions being offered are generally limited to the obvious, such as convincing one's city council that cutting staff levels endangers public safety.

Speaking as a former fire chief, the problem is two-fold. For one, fire chiefs have not yet found effective ways to justify staffing levels. For another, the solutions offered are pretty much the "same-old, same-old" stuff like "add more stations and companies."

I'll be happy to discuss how fire chiefs can improve their effectiveness in justifying fire department resources, but I want to hold that for later. Right now, I want to present some ideas on effective alternatives to traditional staffing models.

Fire Protection and Public Service Internships

A Win-Win Situation?

Staffing problems

Fire departments of all sizes face a common challenge, providing adequate staffing.  Budget restraints are often the key challenge for career departments. The same goes for combination departments. While volunteer departments may face funding problems, the lack of volunteers is often a larger issue. But regardless of department type, the weakened US economy has turned staffing problems into crises.

If staffing was inadequate in the past, what are fire chiefs to do when budget shortfalls require layoffs and even fewer people are willing or able to volunteer? One answer is to tap a resource that exists in many jurisdictions, college students who are willing to perform a public service in return for a free college education. This article explores the concept and gives an overview of how such internships can help ease fire department staffing problems.

The concept

In regions where sufficient numbers of colleges exist, public service interns would serve four-year terms as full-time firefighters. For their service, interns would receive free housing, tuition and living expenses. At the end of their service, interns would have college degrees and no education debt. They would also be experienced firefighters, an advantage should they decide to pursue fire service careers. Fire departments that employ public service interns would lower their operating costs and pension burdens.

Some fire departments have been employing college students as firefighters for years, so the basic concept is not new. Three college fire departments, the University of

Alaska-Fairbanks, University of California-Davis and Clemson University have full-time student firefighters. More typical are college fire departments that provide free housing for students who volunteer their time when not in class.

The public service internship concept differs from existing student firefighter programs. For one, interns would not be limited to attending a specific college or university. Instead, they would be free to attend any college within a reasonable commute that offers competitive tuition rates. This greatly increases the pool of candidates. For example, the Minneapolis-St. Paul (MN) metropolitan area has ten colleges and universities within a one-hour commute of dozens of career, combination and volunteer fire departments. That number should yield a substantial pool of intern candidates.

How it works

Fire departments would recruit interns in the spring of each year, screening and testing potential candidates who have been accepted into a college within the required commuting distance. During the summer months, fire departments would train the interns to Firefighter II and EMT certification levels. Successful candidates would then be assigned to shifts and work full-time.

On duty days, interns would be given enough time off to attend classes, and would then return to work for the remainder of their shifts. On duty days with no classes, they would work the entire 24 hours. Internships would be year-round, thus supplying interns during summer months to fill in for vacationing career firefighters.

Cost comparisons

Preliminary data show that fire departments could support four interns for the cost of one firefighter. The median average starting salary plus benefits for firefighters is $60,000.00. The median average annual cost to attend a public college is $12,000.00. Assuming a cost of $3,000.00 per intern for initial training, the data support a ratio of four interns to one firefighter.

When figuring the annual cost for a firefighter position, one has to calculate the “fully burdened” cost. That cost is the annual salary plus the remaining expenses like health insurance, pension contribution contributions, etc. An average figure for the fully-burdened cost is the annual salary plus 35 percent. For an annual starting salary of $48,000.00, the fully burdened cost is $60,000.00.

For interns, the fully-burdened cost estimate includes housing, meals, transportation and living expenses. Fire departments that provide housing and cooking facilities can further reduce the fully-burdened cost of internships.

Interns for volunteer departments

When volunteer fire departments face increased call loads but lack available firefighters, staffing solutions are limited and daunting. They can hire career firefighters to be on duty when enough volunteers are not available, but that can present a budget challenge. In addition, hiring full-time personnel to work with volunteers can create management challenges.

Jurisdictions that have benefited from the low cost of paid-on-call firefighters will likely chafe at the budget increases needed to hire full-time firefighters. For example, hiring enough firefighters to staff one apparatus with four personnel on a 24/7 basis costs an average of $900,000.00 per year. The estimate assumes that fifteen firefighters would be hired. Staffing with five firefighters per shift will provide an average of four on-duty firefighters while avoiding overtime costs to replace firefighters who are absent for vacations and sick leave.

Interns for career departments

Career departments of any size can use interns to some degree, but two factors will limit the number that can be used. The first factor is the interns’ limited training and experience. The second factor is the range of services fire departments provide that require advanced training and experience. 

Interns will be trained to have basic firefighting and EMS skills. They will not be qualified to fill positions that require advanced skills such as apparatus operator, advanced EMS, heavy and technical rescue, etc. Those positions will require career firefighters.

Smaller career departments that have less need for advanced and specialized tasks could use a higher ratio of interns. But even here, the number of interns will be limited. For example, a four-person crew will have an officer and apparatus operator, positions that require more training, experience and ability than interns can acquire during their four-year terms. But whatever the ratio of interns to career personnel, fire departments that use public service interns will have lower operating costs than those that staff with 100 percent career personnel.

 

Theory versus practice

While the concept of work/study interns looks feasible in theory, fire chiefs will need to address several issues in order to create viable programs. The core issues are listed below.

· Qualified candidates

The goal of work/study internships is to provide interns who are as qualified as career firefighters. Basically, interns will be full-time temporary employees, and will be expected to perform at the same level as permanent employees. If the intern selection process is the same as the hiring process for career firefighters, finding qualified candidates should not pose a problem.

A related issue is the number of qualified candidates needed to sustain a viable internship program. Preliminary research indicates that the ratio of candidates to students may be as low as 1:1000. However, that number is based upon a limited number of fire departments, and further research is needed.

· Motivation

Firefighting differs greatly from typical public service programs. The dangers and stresses of the job call for individuals who understand what is expected of them, are willing to live in a paramilitary environment, and are motivated to support their fellow firefighters to the nth degree. Chiefs of college fire departments that provide student volunteers with free housing say that motivation can be a problem. For example, applicants who are more motivated by the idea of free housing do not make good firefighters.

In the author’s experience, a thorough interview process can identify candidates with the right and wrong motives for becoming career firefighters. The same interviewing expertise can be applied to selecting public service interns.

· Retention

Fire chiefs who hire college student firefighters cite turnover as a potential problem for internship programs. Some candidates who apply for a college firefighter position see it as a stepping stone to becoming career firefighters. Once they receive their firefighter training, they are apt to search for full-time firefighter jobs and drop out of college once they secure a job.

Public service internship programs can do two things to reduce turnover. First, the interview process can help identify a candidate’s motivation for applying. Second, fire departments can develop reimbursement policies for interns who leave before completing their commitment. For example, leaving during the first year could require a 100 percent reimbursement of training and tuition expenses. A sliding scale could apply to drop-outs during the rest of the four-year term, 

· Acceptance

When it comes to accepting change, fire departments are no different than other organizations. When organizations adopt changes, some members may become anxious, skeptical or scornful of “new” ways of doing things.  They may question how the changes will impact on their value to the organization, or whether the change will threaten their jobs.

Making internship programs succeed will take strong and knowledgeable leadership, but fire chiefs who have successfully implemented changes in the past will be able to make internships a Win-Win situation. Any chief who introduced changes like First Responders, basic EMS, paramedic/firefighters and HazMat technicians can relate how they had to deal with the typical reactions to change that were noted in the above paragraph.

Job security will be of major concern for career firefighters. They have seen or read about jurisdictions wanting to replace their career firefighters with private fire departments or volunteers. Therefore, the prospect of working with public service interns will certainly make career firefighters wonder if internship programs will threaten existing jobs. After all, interns cost a lot less than career firefighters. It will be natural for firefighters to fear that jurisdictions might go “all intern” just like some have wanted to go “all volunteer” in the past.

Per the discussion in the earlier section titled “Interns for career departments,” the answer is “No.” Fire department leadership positions and advanced positions such as apparatus operator, technical rescue and hazmat response dictate the need for a certain number of career personnel.

Public service interns will be capable of performing basic manual fire suppression and EMS, and they will not have the ability to advance beyond those levels. In order to stay on the program, interns will be required to steadily advance toward college graduation and maintain passing grades. When career firefighters are training for leadership roles and advanced positions, the interns will be doing their college studies.

Career firefighters are also likely to see internships as a way to cut firefighter positions. They are not. Public service interns are a way to fill firefighter positions with qualified personnel and maintain staffing instead of cutting jobs and closing stations. In fact, internship programs will likely increase the need for officers and thus open another path for advancement. Officers will be needed to supervise and schedule interns. They will be needed to monitor progress through college and mentor the young men and women who are assigned to them. 

While fire chiefs can adequately answer the questions about job security, assurances will go a long way to reducing fears. One way to do that is through formal policies on the role and limits for interns. For example, fire departments can adopt formal policies that interns will be trained to handle typical fireground tasks, but will not be trained for tasks such as apparatus operator, technical rescue, advanced medical response or fireground command.

The selection process itself may help gain the support of career personnel. Candidates who understand the dangers and stresses of the job, as well as the restrictions of 24-hour duty shifts, will have an advantage over candidates who lack that awareness. Family members of firefighters will be better able to demonstrate that they know the realities of the job. The prospect that firefighter’s children have improved chances of getting a free college education should help improve acceptance.

Chiefs of volunteer departments should find internship programs easier to adopt than career chiefs. When volunteer departments hire career personnel, conflict between career and volunteer firefighters is common. The volunteers will fear that the career firefighters are “taking over” the department and do not appreciate the volunteers’ work and dedication. Chiefs of combination departments constantly toil to maintain a cooperative environment and make their volunteers feel valuable to the organization.

Acceptance by volunteer firefighters should be easier to attain for two reasons. First, the interns will not be permanent employees. Second, they will be supervised by the volunteer officers. Both of these factors should make the volunteers feel that they still “own” the organization.

· Sustainability

As noted above, internship programs will need a continual supply of recruits to replace interns who complete their public service. One way to improve the odds of success is to create outreach programs that motivate high school students to consider internships as their form of public service. For example, chiefs could create high school fire cadet programs along the lines of military ROTC programs. Such programs would provide cadets with the knowledge, skills and abilities to pass the internship entry tests.

Finding answers

A graduate student in Indiana, Ms. Karen Woodard, recently completed a feasibility study of the public service intern concept. Her goal was to identify the potential incentives and barriers that will be factors in creating successful and sustainable public service internship programs. The data from Woodard’s interviews and questionnaire will help fire chiefs determine if the concept might work for their departments. Readers who are interested in her research can contact her at kwoodard@woway.com or (812) 598-0169. 

Pilot projects

While Woodard’s analysis is valuable, it cannot predict how well the public service internship concept will actually work. Pilot projects will. The old saying that “The proof is in the pudding” applies here. The only way to confirm the viability of internships is to implement such programs and monitor their effectiveness. It would be reasonable to create several pilot projects to cover volunteer, combination and career fire departments.

Federal grants should be a key source of funding for pilot projects. The federal government funds projects whose goals are to improve fire protection and firefighter safety. Internship programs hold the promise to do those very things in a very cost-effective manner, and thus should be a funding priority.

The recently adopted federal Economic Recovery Act includes 500 million dollars for constructing and renovating fire stations. SAFER and Fire Act grants will support intern training, uniforms and safety gear, tuition and related expenses. Grants should be awarded for multi-year periods in order to evaluate cost-effectiveness.

Adapting to local conditions

Public service internships can be modified to take advantage of local resources and adjust to the lack of same. In jurisdictions with an excess of housing stock, for example, fire departments could purchase homes to house interns instead of adding dorm space onto stations. Jurisdictions that lack enough colleges could let interns perform four years of service and give them the funds to attend college when they are done.

Is the fire service ready for change?

The public service internship concept offers fire departments new options for addressing the serious problems that stem from understaffing. However, internship programs will require that fire chiefs alter traditional staffing methods. The seriousness of fire department problems increases the likelihood that they will embrace this change.

 

The Squad Room is open for discussion.