Bailing Out on Safety

Have we become too reliant on self-survival techniques?

By Timothy Sendelbach
FireRescue Editor-in-Chief

It was 1997 and I was a young training officer serving in Missouri City, a small city just southwest of Houston. I was filled with energy and enthusiasm, as I had just attended a weekend training program at the Illinois Fire Service Institute. The program was the now-famous “Saving Our Own”; I was fortunate to have been a student in the second offering.

As I arrived back home in Texas, I began developing lesson plans and securing the necessary supplies to begin teaching this program countywide—it was that good. Over the next few years, I teamed up with a lieutenant from our neighboring department and we taught hundreds, if not thousands, of firefighters on the Denver Drill, the John Nance sub-floor rescue technique (Columbus Drill), the Ladder Bail, the Rope Slide, Stair Carries, etc. We studied USFA technical reports, NIOSH reports and anything related to firefighter safety and survival that might provide insight into how to improve our methods.

“Saving Our Own” spread like wildfire. The punitive effects of a rapid intervention team (RIT) assignment were beginning to fade and firefighters of all makes (volunteer and career) began to understand and endorse the importance of the RIT concept and the related safety and self-survival techniques.

A few years later, “Saving Our Own” suffered a major setback following an incident in California where a firefighter fell to his death attempting to perform a ladder bailout during training. For a while, many state academies and weekend fire schools banned the technique, but eventually safety measures and alternative methods allowed the bailout to be reinstituted.

Today, more than 10 years later, the bailout and nearly every one of the original “Saving Our Own” drills have become a hallmark of the Firefighter I and II curricula. NFPA standards now reflect many of these concepts, and virtually every entry-level training manual dedicates a chapter or two to firefighter rescue and self-survival techniques.

The “Saving Our Own” program has unquestionably changed the face of the fire service and brought about a much-needed focus on firefighter safety and self-survival techniques. But has it created a level of confidence that puts us at risk in certain situations?

Shortly before writing this, while surfing various fire service websites, I came across two incidents in which firefighters from two different organizations were forced to bail out of upper-story windows due to rapidly changing fire conditions. Later that afternoon, I received one of my monthly fire service periodicals, the cover of which depicted yet another firefighter bailing out of a smoke-filled upper-story window. A quick search on YouTube reveals even more examples of the many tragedies that have been averted by bailouts.

My point: What was once considered taboo, last-ditch, a technique of last resort, has suddenly become the operational norm.

For sure, today’s fireground is a far cry from the one we faced just a few years ago. But to consider that these changes have created such a dramatic risk to firefighters that we now routinely employ last-ditch self-survival techniques begs us to question our efforts. Have we become so reliant on the fire service equivalent of a “reserve chute” that we fail to take the time to properly evaluate, prepare and coordinate the safety of our tactical efforts? Have we allowed the haste of opportunity, the peer pressure from kitchen-table conversations, the misconception of mission over safety to cloud our vision of personal safety? Have we become so self-confident of the tools and techniques designed to support our safety—our “reserve chute”—that we consciously or unconsciously “normalize” the risk? Is the heightened safety that self-survival techniques provide neutralized by higher levels of risk taking?

Contrary to popular belief, a RIT deployment, a ladder bailout or a rope slide each represent a compromise of our safety system (and in some cases are a precursor to a potentially greater problem). True, accidents do occur and some hazards present themselves without sufficient evidence or lead time to change our course of action, but an over-reliance on the reserve chute is a risky way of doing business.

The modern fireground is rapidly becoming less forgiving of high-risk tactics. Our quest for safety can only be accomplished if we demonstrate and endorse strong discipline, coordinated actions amongst interior and exterior crews, strict accountability and constant communications. Fireground conditions that cannot be tamed with our time-tested interior tactics must be countered with alternative tactics that impose less risk and afford a greater degree of safety to our personnel.

The bottom line: The reserve chute that was designed to be our safety blanket cannot and should not become the operational norm