Match Standard Actions with Standard Conditions for a Standard Outcome

In last month’s spellbinding column, we discussed standardizing incident conditions along a 1 to 10 scale of severity. This approach can be a big help to fire officers who must rapidly evaluate conditions and decide on an effective action plan that will produce the outcome that logically (not emotionally) goes with the condition/action combo. The process of standardizing critical incident factors creates a set of simple, understandable evaluation and decision-making “hooks” arranged along the 1 to 10 scale. Evaluating where a condition is on the scale and then hanging it on the appropriate hook creates a quick and effective tactical orientation of how fire conditions escalate from nothing showing (1) to burned down (10). Understanding the entire range of the scale creates the perspective to know what led up to where the condition is currently on the scale and what the future will look like if that condition is not stabilized (brought under control).

Directly connected to the standard scale is another parallel action-oriented scale that describes the standard operational response that corresponds to where the condition is on the scale. As we gain experience, we use the scale (and the system) quickly, instinctively, and unconsciously. Making the condition/action/outcome (C/A/O) connection using the standard scale is what we actually load into our mental “slide tray” (and “slot machine”). Firefighting is very episodic, fast, and violent and can appear/feel-even to us-to occur in a very random, jumbled-up, confusing, and unmanageable way. Until and unless we create a regular (i.e., standard) way to make those mental deposits into our experience accounts, we just keep going to our very first fire.

Using the scale is a big help, but fire command will always be challenging simply because all the stages of severity are not created equally-some early stages can be pretty “lazy” and sometimes go on for 20 minutes. Given the current burn rate of modern and very dangerous synthetic stuff, once the monster gets going, the exciting middle (which is right up against the beginning of the end) of the scale can “burn up” that stage in 20 seconds (literally).