By Carl J. Haddon
Last week, I got a visit from a very competent, young, rural officer who was extremely frustrated and looking for some advice. The night before his visit, he and his crew responded to a mountain road vehicle rollover with entrapment. During the call, this officer observed his people yelling and barking to and at each other while trying to effect a fairly difficult extrication and extraction—with the large SUV upside down, on the side of a rather steep embankment. He explained that his crew was seasoned and knowledgeable, but that the normally expected amount of chaos at the scene quickly and continually seemed to escalate throughout the course of the rescue operations. He said that despite his attempts to keep order and calm, both older and younger (than him) members continued to bark and yell.
I knew right away that this was not going to be a comfortable conversation for either of us to have, but in light of this officer’s desire to better himself and his crew, I felt that I owed it to him to tell him the hard truth, straight up. After all, his life, his crew’s lives, and their patient’s lives depended on it. I asked him two simple questions that got him thinking. The first question was: Has this type of crew behavior occurred on scene before? And the second (and much more difficult) question was: Who was in charge?
It dawned on me, after this gentleman’s visit, that I see this type of situation in many departments where I offer training throughout the United States and abroad. Is this an issue in your rural department? If so, do you know what causes it and, more importantly, do you know how to constructively rectify the situation. Unfortunately, this very issue has been the demise of many a rural volunteer fire department.
Brad (the names have been changed to protect the innocent) answered my first question by telling me that indeed this type of behavior seems to happen during high-intensity/low-frequency responses such as violent vehicle wrecks with entrapment, rollovers into the river, lost or missing children, etc. He also said that it seems to be happening more frequently. In answer to my second question, Brad sheepishly told me that he was in charge the night of the call mentioned above, but that it doesn’t seem to matter who is in charge when this happens.
I am no expert in or on any subject. I am still a student of my craft—I just happen to have more than 35 years on the job and see this type of thing more than I’d like to. That said, in my opinion, there are two simple deficiencies that typically cause unexplained yelling and screaming during operations: lack of training and lack of leadership, which can also be attributed to lack of training.
How much training do you get? How much training do your officers get? Please forgive me, as I know this is a sore subject, but if your department only does training one evening for a couple of hours each month, you are not getting enough training to remain proficient. Two hours x 12 months (provided that you make every training) = 24 hours per year. For the purposes of Brad’s issue, how many of those 24 hours are dedicated to vehicle rescue, high-risk stabilization, and possibly high- or low-angle rope rescue? See where I’m going? The old saying holds true: What we don’t use, we lose.
Career departments have a distinct advantage in this situation as most career departments require some sort of training or drill each and every shift. My math says that is an average of roughly 24 hours of training and drilling each month. Rural, suburban, and urban volunteer fire departments alike share the challenges of getting their people to training.
This situation was not lost on my depa