Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders

Question 1

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p234-335

Lesson one:
Responders with poor situational awareness can still have a good outcome, if only by good luck

What does this lead to?

Answer 1

When people make good decisions, by luck, while operating with flawed situational awareness they may never understand the situational awareness was flawed the first place.

This may give false confidence in their situation awareness and reinforce the flawed approach that led to their low situational awareness.

Question 2

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p235-236

Listen two:
A decision made with good situational awareness can still have a bad outcome.

Answer 2

Not every bad outcome can be linked to a problem with situational awareness, though there may be a connection. In highly unpredictable, unstable environments the unexpected can happen.

Question 3

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p237

Lesson three:
Maintaining situational awareness requires a physical, mental and emotional commitment to paying attention.

Answer 3

Capturing cues and clues (level I SA), processing those clues and cues into meaning in the current environment (level II SA), and making predictions of future events through mental modeling (level III SA) requires meta-awareness.

You have to consciously thinking about taking the steps and examining your own situational awareness.

It’s absolutely critical to conduct self checkups, otherwise your situational awareness can slip away without you realizing.

Question 4

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p238

Lesson four:
What you should pay attention to is not always intuitive or obvious.

Answer 4

This is where primal instincts can be a hindrance.

Under stress we are wired to fixate on loud, bright, moving, close objects/things. We can also fixate on what we perceive to be the most important clue/cue narrowing our focus.

We can’t control the lizard brain

Question 5

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p241

Lesson five:
Responders rarely realized there losing their situational awareness until it’s too late.

Answer 5

Summer Lucky may have an epiphany, a “I am losing it” moment, but most do not. It may not be until you feel overwhelmed that you truly realize your loss of situational awareness.

Question 6

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p233

Lesson six:
it’s critically important to be able to form mental models both the past and future.

Answer 6

A rearview mirror view of the incident is critical to forming situational awareness. You must form a mental model of what happened prior to your arrival. Doing so enables you to draw on your tactic knowledge and form some expectation of how the incident is progressing.

You need to determine the speed at which the incident is moving. This will help determine if you have enough resources to confront the incident offensively or if you need to go defensive on this fire.

You next need to form mental model predicting the future events. This will help you determine where the incident is headed, how long it will take to get there, to current resources have the ability to move the event in a favorable direction without putting personnel in jeopardy.

Question 7

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p245

When forming a mental model predicting future events you need to ask yourself three essential questions.

Answer 7

1. Where’s the incident headed?
2. How long to get a take to get there?
3. Can the resources I have, at this moment, change the course of the incident in a favorable way without jeopardizing lives.

Question 8

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p246

Why should your mental model envision what a successful outcome would look like?

Answer 8

Your model then becomes a barometer by which you can judge the progress of your current incident.

Question 9

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p246

What should you do if your intuition says things are not going as planned?

Answer 9

Look at the clues/cues and compare them with your expectations. Chances are very good that they don’t align.

Question 10

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p247-248

Red Flag #1:
Failing to process the meaning of crucial clues/cues.

Answer 10

Each type of emergency has its own list of 5 to 7 important critical clues. For example, for structure fires one of the critical clues is smoke. At a structure fire smoke is a vital sign, miss the vital sign and you’re likely to misdiagnose the problem.

Question 11

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p248

Red Flag #2:
Underestimating the speed of the incident.

Answer 11

This is an easy trap to fall into. We take a rapid snapshot size up, in time because because conditions are changing so rapidly. The downside is difficult to comprehend changes in clues and cues. Therefore it’s vitally important to watch the incident for. Time to get a sense of how fast it’s moving. The speed of the incident helps determine if your resources available are sufficient to overwhelm and stop progression.

Question 12

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p250

Red Flag #3:
Overestimating the abilities of the personnel.

Answer 12

Several reasons for this.

1. Crews are unique and have varying abilities.
2. Unrealistic timelines by command
3. Conditions of the incident

Question 13

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p252

When the crew has not accomplished the task in the precedent appropriate amount of time one of the choices command has for how to proceed?

Answer 13

1. Give the crew more time – crew could just need time, command may be hesitant to admit defeat due to personality, crews may want to stay for a bit longer unaware of conditions change
2. Allocate more resources- viable solution as long as backup resources are adequate to overcome situation. However many times this is not the case as outlined in many LODR, it just puts more people in danger
3. Withdraw – in addition to personal self-esteem wounds admitting defeat, responders may turn against commander criticized as lacking aggressiveness. Property loss
4. Estimate crews abilities – crews that don’t meet the preconceived expectations of the commander can cause frustration and stress within that commander which reduces their situational awareness

Question 14

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p254-255

Red Flag #4:
Feeling pressure to take heroic action without considering risk and benefit.

Answer 14

Do a risk assessment, know survivability profiles. Understand when there is nothing to gain and everything to lose. Regardless of your feelings about winning or losing, which is stupid, understand the job that you’re about to do is keep your personnel safe for first and foremost.

Question 15

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p256

Go or no go decision

Answer 15

These decisions are made with emotion, however that emotion needs to be balance with the weight of possibly losing firefighters.

Question 16

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p256

What is the result of a department with a always aggressive interior all-out at all times tactics?

Answer 16

Because not every incident warrant such tactics the result will be a higher propensity for casualty.

Question 17

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p257

What happens when aggressive tactics are not accompanied by negative consequences (no one gets hurt or killed)?

Answer 17

May lead to a false sense of confidence that such behavior is acceptable.

This phenomenon is known as the standardization of defiance, drift towards failure, and error creep.

Question 18

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p258

What are the two sides of the argument on whether someone should reap a reward for conducting a “act of heroism”?

Answer 18

One side would argue that it takes great courage to go against the odds into her Baroque act without regards to one safety. Others argue that taking undue risk is irresponsible, and to recognize the reward as such is even more irresponsible.

People will do things to get attention – good or bad.

Question 19

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p259

Firefighting is a risky job but what is the distinction in the type of risk we take?

Answer 19

There’s this distinction between assuming the risk of an incident and creating risk through reckless behavior

Question 20

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p260

Red Flag #5:
Focusing on the wrong things or trying to process too much information.

Answer 20

Fire scenes are full of cues and clues that responders must collect and process. Given that our minds only have the capacity to track seven unrelated pieces of information, and to make matters worse many times we are not in control of what information gets remembered it’s easy to see why overload can happen. You can improve your chances of capturing the right information through practice.

Remember overloading equals shredding (forgetting). Know that others emotion can put prominence on a fact that’s not important. Just knowing that can help you consciously guard from it, and judge the data on its own merits.

Question 21

Chapter 18: Lesson for Life Responders p260

The number of unrelated pieces of information a person can recall, give or take two

Answer 21

Seven, give or take two

your brain simply does not have the capacity to do more than that.