"Safety has to come first on every fire every time," says Jerry Williams, the Forest Service's national director of fire and aviation. Williams spoke to the International Wildland Fire Safety Summit in Missoula on Tuesday. Photo by KURT WILSON/Missoulian

Wednesday, November 7, 2001

Researcher says firefighters have too much to do
By the SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian

Summit opens with suggestion to focus more on minds, less on standard orders

The 10 standard fire orders - the rules of engagement for wildland firefighters - cannot be followed because human beings cannot do 10 things at once, a veteran fire researcher told hundreds of wildland fire managers gathered for a safety summit Tuesday.

"There is a big, big discrepancy between what we say we ought to do and what we do," said Ted Putnam, an expert on firefighter entrapments and deaths retired from the U.S. Forest Service's Missoula Technology Development Center.

In their shirt pockets and on their helmets, wildland firefighters carry the orders: Fight fire aggressively, but be safe. Base all action on current and expected fire behavior. Watch the weather; know the forecast. Make sure all instructions are understood. Know the fire's status. Keep in communication with supervisors and other firefighters. Find and protect safety zones and escape routes. Designate lookouts. Retain control. Stay alert, keep calm, think clearly, act decisively.

"Each of those orders reflects a hard-earned lesson," Jerry Williams, the Forest Service's national director of fire and aviation, told the opening session of the fifth annual International Wildland Fire Safety Summit, meeting in Missoula through Thursday.

"The 10 standard fire orders are the most important part of getting the job done right," Williams said. "Safety has to come first on every fire every time. Because the unexpected happens, our rules of engagement have to be firm. We don't break them. We don't bend them. We don't just do the job, we do it right."

Problem is, Putnam said during a presentation later in the day, the orders cannot be - and are not - followed.

"If you're driving in a snowstorm and you're having trouble seeing the road, you can see better if you turn off the radio," he said. "It's true. You can. Your brain can only attend to one thing at a time. If you quiet the car, you'll be able to pay more attention to the road."

People who talk on cellphones while driving have four times the accident rate of non-callers, Putnam told the 400 assembled firefighters. They have 5.3 times the accident rate of drunk-drivers.

The point, of course, is that firefighters are expected to do 10 things at once, he said. And they're expected to do them in less-than-ideal conditions.

"When we are tired, when we are preoccupied, when we are complacent, when managers and supervisors do the human thing and miss something or lose their way or otherwise somehow fail," Williams said, "that's when we get in trouble. That's when we've got to be doing it right. That's when the 10 standard orders matter most."

Instead, more times than not, when things go bad, "we do the best we can with what we have and hope to hell it turns out all right," Williams said. "And most of the time, it is. But that's not good enough. The consequences are piling up."

Wildland firefighters, he said, die every year.

"Our behaviors, the very qualities and spirit that we value as firefighters, are the attributes that in a heartbeat can put us at risk," he said. "It's that attitude that defines us. It's that can-do spirit. In this business, the slimmest of margins separate can-do from make-do and make-do from tragedy."

Putnam, a smokejumper before he became a scientist and psychologist, said fireline stresses can actually strip firefighters of their long-term memory. "So right at the time you most need your training, you don't have access to it," he said. "And that's exactly when we tend to do things that are irrational or to say things we don't mean. It's when we start talking to ourselves rather than paying attention to what is going on around us."

Putnam suggested a new set of orders, topped with this: "Mindfully attend to your current state of mind and stay alert, keep calm, think clearly, act decisively."

"Mindfully is the key word," he said. "We need to start paying attention to what is going on in our heads."

The rest of the standard orders can deal with the business of fighting fire, if a firefighter first tends to his or her mental state, Putnam said. "Your thinking ability is always lagging behind the fire. As long as you recognize that, you're OK. When you forget, you're in danger."

Ninety percent of the time, firefighters catch a wildfire with ease, with little cost and few losses, said Williams. Two percent of the time, a fire is immediately "over the hill" and a full-blown incident management team is called to the scene.

"It's the other 6 percent of the time - when a fire changes from one we thought we controlled to one we do not control - when we are vulnerable," he said. "The other 5 or 6 percent of the time is when people get hurt. That's where we have our entrapments, burnovers and fatalities. And right now, we don't have a strategy for dealing with those fires."

Firefighters will continue their summit at the University Center on the University of Montana campus through Thursday. A schedule of speakers and other events is available on the Web at www.umt.edu/ccesp/wfs or by calling UM's Center for Continuing Education at 243-6305.