Firefighter safety information and the value of storytelling
The Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System has lots of good reports to read through, especially for a new guy like me. There’s lots of safety awareness to be gained simply by reading the experiences of others.
For instance, after a recent incident, I strapped a pick-headed axe back into a bracket on one of the truck compartments. This is a fairly simple act–it’s just a bracket that the axe head fits into, and a support arm about half-way down the handle, with a velcro wrap that goes around the handle to secure it to the bracket. The first “weekly near miss report” that I clicked-on today was from an engineer who was doing a routine inspection of their apparatus. When he opened a similar compartment on one of their vehicles, an axe and halligan fell to the floor in front of him, with the axe head facing out and landing first, digging-into the concrete truck room floor.
Did anyone get hurt? No, but there was certainly the potential for serious injury. How many of us volunteers come into the truck room when we stop by the station, and just do a quick once-over of the equipment in our street clothes? Maybe we open a door to check on air pressure and battery status, or look to be sure that the box lights are charging, or just to make sure a compartment door that has a slightly ajar handle is actually closed. What could have happened to someone in their street shoes if I hadn’t secured that axe after our recent incident? What could have happened to me if someone else hadn’t secured their tools and it was me doing a routine inspection of our apparatus?
An article in the most recent edition of one of the firefighting industry rags (maybe Firehouse? I can’t remember) talked about how important storytelling can be to information transfer and retention. We seem to have a good group of guys in that regard–I never want for stories when we get together. The article mentioned the importance of storytelling to volunteer retention, too. Sure, stories are entertainment, but they’re also a good way to pass-along lessons from prior incidents. Many of the guys I serve with now have seen more fire than I will in my lifetime, and there are lots of good things to learn from them.
Always learning….
