Keeping It Safe Robert Tutterow
I recently had a change of mind about a safety item involving slide poles. This prompted me to write this column, as mind changing is difficult for many, especially for health and safety concerns.
Yes, I realize most fire stations are single-story and a slide pole is unnecessary. But, the intent of this month’s column is to discuss the difficulty in changing one’s mind. I was against slide poles, and there was a trend a few years ago to do away with them, and I thought this was good. However, watching a presentation involving this subject made me change my mind. More on this later.
Let me set the stage for why I was against slide poles. In looking at the history of the Charlotte (NC) Fire Department, where I was the health and safety officer for 24 years, here is how I became “vaccinated” against them. From the fire department’s history book, the following was written: “…became the Department’s seventh on-duty fatality when he died at Station 4 on April 1, 1934. He had pulled an extra shift, and Engine 4 had been busy that night. An alarm came in; he got up out of bed, tripped over the suspenders on his quick-hitch pants, and fell headfirst down the pole hole. He died later in the day of a fractured skull.” This story also highlights the issue of possible sleep deprivation, the unhealthy practice of keeping turnout gear by the bed (I did this as a volunteer firefighter for 10 years; did this contribute to my bout with cancer?), the location of the slide pole, and the guards around the pole.
Then, during my tenure as safety officer, we had three more slide pole incidents at Station 1. A civilian employee decided to slide the pole (without any training or supervision) and did not know how to control her descent. She ended up paralyzed from the waist down. When I retired, this incident was the most expensive workers’ compensation claim the fire department had ever had. Then, a captain broke an ankle when he landed at the bottom of the pole. And then, a kid slid the pole (again, untrained and unsupervised). His hands got hot from “braking,” and he let go, falling hard to the floor. He was transported to the hospital, where he was checked out and released. With all that tragic background, I felt that slide poles were an unnecessary hazard. We had a couple of other two-story stations without slide poles, and there were no injuries from using the stairs.
Now to today. I had the privilege to see Rob Manns, of Manns Woodward Studios, an architectural firm out of the Baltimore, Maryland, area, present on how fire station design can be a positive factor in reducing response times. Rob’s specialty is fire station design. Part of his presentation is about slide poles, and he shows where they can be located (not beside the apparatus), how they should be designed within context of the station, and how to protect firefighters from accidental falls. He has conducted some time studies in at least six stations and shows that slide poles are four times faster than stairs. And, that is for an entire company deployment. For one person, I suspect that time is even faster.
I saw this presentation at the F.I.E.R.O. Fire Station Symposium last year and found it interesting. I then saw it again at the Fire Department Safety Officers Association’s Annual Conference earlier this year, and I told him afterward he had changed my mind on slide poles. With his photos, diagrams, and science-based data, his presentation was compelling.
As I reflected on my change of mind, I could not help but think that this happened because stubbornness is in my DNA. I th