Chapter 5: Positioning the Fire Company for Success and Survival Flashcards
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What should the purpose and mission focus on, and what do they describe?
Should focus on the people we serve.
Purpose describes why the organization exist, the
Mission statement highlights the most important things that the fire department does, such as save lives, protect property and solve problems.
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What issue does Thompson see in the fire service concerning mission and purpose statements?
What is his stance on mission and purpose statements?
He sees confusion about the purpose and mission statements and fire departments as a growing populace believe the purpose and mission of the fire department should be generated internally without taking into consideration the expectations of the population they serve.
Thompson sees mission and purpose station statements as validation towards aggressive tactics regardless of the situation. As he says “giving up on them should never be an option”
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Success and survival on the fire ground:
Success and survival may oppose each other on the fire ground. There will be situations where the fire company will have to be prepared to choose between one or the other.
How company is positioned mentally prior to the event will greatly influence their physical position during the event.
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How does Thompson believe that a fire company that has been in position to put their safety before the survival of others is limited?
He doesn’t believe it’s realistic to expect a fire company that is been in position to put their safety for the survival of others to suddenly change that position for those high-risk events. It setting them up for failure
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In the event of a tragedy at TCFD how does chief Thompson see his reaction?
If we experience a tragic event it will be because were faced with the opportunity to be firefighters at the highest level, and this fire gave us just a little bit more than we could handle.
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What is meant by positioned for success and survival?
There are two positions that directly influence our company the physical and mental position.
LODD can occur because of the fire companies Mental Position, Physical Position, or combination of the two. The success and survival of the fire company is determined by both inside and outside the firehouse.
It means making sure that the fire company is in the best physical and mental position that they can be in when they are in the firehouse, at training, on the fire ground, etc.
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What five jobs have the greatest influence on the physical and mental position of each fire company?
- Fire Chief-direction and structure provided to the organization
- Training officer – accuracy of information and discipline maintained during training
- Shift commander – establish expectations and priorities for company officers.
- Company officer – Greatest Influence on positioning the fire company for success and survival. Company is a reflection of the officer.
- Senior member of the company – help with positioning company for success with training new firefighters, helping plan company training, reports, etc.
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What do training officers need to know, to set up companies for operational wins as they come through training?
Training officers must have a clear understanding of the Chiefs vision of success and operational philosophy.
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What is a symptom of the many things wrong with the fire service today?
Firefighter coming to work throwing his gear on the truck and doing little else
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Thompson argues that line of duty deaths from unprepared companies are what…
That these are not fire ground line of duty deaths, these are firehouse line of duty deaths.
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When there is distrust between fire administration and the firehouse what does chief Thompson typically find?
He typically finds while the complaints may be valid, the company officers are not successfully running their own firehouses.
CO blames FC and FC blames the CO recipe for disaster
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Most company officers have a tremendous amount of influence in their firehouse if they choose to to exercise it. If a company officer is not doing what they can to position the company for success at the beginning of each tour what are they indicating?
They are indicating to the company that they do not care about the success of the company
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What ensures we are ready to execute?
Where mental and physical position assures we have created an environment for success, preparedness make sure we are ready to execute.
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Who does the heavy lifting for positioning and preparing?
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Positioning the organization -Fire Chief
preparing the company – company officer
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In TCFD what are the four areas of preparedness the each level of the organization needs to focus on for their area of responsibility?
Mental
Physical
Mechanical
Procedural preparedness
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What does mental preparedness include?
- Developing strategic and tactical thinking
- Knowledge of building construction, fire skills
- EMS skills
- Managing stress
- Industry knowledge (training, mentoring, ProDev, cross training, feedback)
- Aligning core values with department core values
- Cultivating emotional intelligence (recognizing emotions and their meanings, used for problem solving, dealing with environmental demands)
- Mental maturity
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What does physical preparedness include?
- Mastering basic skills and techniques
- Continue developing skills, perform proficiently
- Maintain situational awareness
- Remain fit for duty (strength, cardio, flex, hydration, nourishment, drug alcohol free, well rested)
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What does mechanical preparedness include?
- PPE (including SCBA, radios, TIC)
- Tools (use, operations, maintenance, abilities/limits)
- Apparatus
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What does procedural preparedness include?
- Fire operation guidelines
- Best practices
- Command-and-control (IM, accountability, comm, RIC)
- Medical protocols
- Understanding of rules and regulations
- SOPs SOGs
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Preparedness should be a priority for every company officer but it extends past just the fire company. Who is involved with preparedness?
Every level of the organization should be responsible for preparedness at their level. The responsibility of preparedness correlates with the responsibility and accountability for risk management.
Once Preparation is an important step of mitigating operational risk.
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What are best practices?
Best practices include everything that is not covered in policies, standards, and guidelines. Best practices are those actions and decisions that have proven through actual experience to consistently produce predictable and desirable results.
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Operation guidelines
Operation guidelines typically provide direction for action and decision making. They are designed to leave room for officer discretion, or they define the minimum level of service to be delivered.
The Biggest Advantage of operational guidelines is providing operational consistency to shifts in stations.
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What is required to initiate a culture modification process?
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- A vision of success – need to start the clear understanding of your destination. Each position should be able to define what success looks like from their level of the organization.
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Core values
The heart of the organization in the chosen culture. They represent what we believe personally, as a small group, and as an organization. Core values and core value action steps fill the gaps between policies, procedures, rules, and regulations.
Core values are often the foundation of their commitment to being in the firefighters.
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Behavior standards
If our departments regulate anything, it’s behavior. Important due to liabilities and public image. Well written up-to-date policies required. Mentoring new hires and promotions, providing mentors organizational structure and effective supervision.
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Excellence vision and success standards
Document developed by Chief Thompson that describes the foundation for leadership and operational philosophies, and the chosen learning culture.
These standards are critical components of quality training, preparedness, service delivery, supervision, hiring, promotion, mentoring, all professional developments efforts. It’s important to understand that is not just the contents of the document but the process of developing the document that is every bit as valuable as the contents.
The excellence vision and success standard defines our roles as representatives of the American fire service, public servants, community role models, and brothers and sisters in the fire service family. It states the operational philosophy, core values, and the organization’s commitment to preparedness and excellence. The remainder of the document list specific goals, perceived challenges, and benchmarks for service delivery, leadership, and risk management.
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Processes and systems
Processes and systems are part of the support infrastructure identified in the Conley project.
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Just as in sports winning or being successful is a process (process and systems). You must commit to the process because …
While it doesn’t guarantee success, it positions the team for the best chance of success.
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Just like sport teams, firefighting teams the processes based on _______ to assure they are always positioned for success/survival.
Fundamentals
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Part of TCFD process and systems is to prepare for their bread and butter fire, single-family dwelling. They develop tools for company officers to help them prepare and maintain proactive mental and physical position on these fires. What do these tools include?
These tools consist of processes, systems, operating philosophies, operating guidelines, and identify best practices.
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What do processes consist of
Processes consist of all things that lead to a desirable outcome – in this case, fire ground success and survival.
Packaging presented in a way so they can be explained by leaders and supervisors, envisioned by each member, broken down by position or responsibility.
Most importantly, they’re realistic, logical, and relevant to the situations the teams may face on/off the field.
Finally, processes can be taught, measured, easily modified, and have changes implemented before the next event.
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Depending upon the activity, process is likely to include its desired outcomes in the form of:
Define task Sequence of task Necessary resources Objectives Productive and positive environment Position
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How do processes help you achieve the level of coordination necessary?
To achieve the level of coordination necessary, you’re going to have to micromanage people or the process.
Without a process, the initial incident commander has to tell each company exactly what they need to do.
Operational success comes from micromanaging processes, not people.
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Thompson when developing his processes and systems for TCFD notice what about other suburban fire departments?
He noticed that they had processes for promotions hiring grievances but lacked processes for operations were extremely uncommon. Even more uncommon work performance standards at fire events.
Our lack of processes and system performance standards contributing to close calls and LODD’s
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What were the valuable things learned from the governors island birds conducted in New York by NYFD, NIST, UL in 2012
One of the most relative recommendations was the emphasis placed on the value of coordinated fire attack.
It’s the ability to coordinate ventilation fire attack and search that often determines the success of the operation.
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Moral to Chief Rice’s bridge story, on his way to work.
By the time he gets to the end of the bridge he needs to be in the state of mind that will allow him to do the things that may be required of him in the next 24 hours.
Including putting himself in harm’s way, ordering several of his crews into harm’s way, possibly deciding the fate of someone’s loved one.
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