By Robert Ulrich
“What is 10 seconds?” may seem like a simple, innocuous question. The answer is easy enough: 10 seconds is a measure of time, albeit a short one. There are 60 seconds in a minute, so it is one-sixth of a minute. There are 60 minutes in an hour, so it is twenty-seven-one-thousandths of an hour. It seems miniscule from this perspective – a blip of time in today’s world. But what if it’s actually much more than that?
Mask-up drill prompts questions
I was recently conducting mask-up drills – that last critical moment where we button up our completed PPE ensemble before entering an IDLH environment. The unspoken standard for me has always been 20 seconds or less. I don’t care if you use gloves, no gloves, pre-rigged hood in your coat, hang your helmet on your arm, or snap the chin strap. The end goal is the final button up and then go time. I used to quip to students in recruit schools that I didn’t care if you looked like you were having a seizure while break-dancing as long as your technique was efficient and you met the standard.
As the drill was progressing, one of my firefighters kept missing the mark. I was coaching and providing tips, but we were still hitting 23-27 seconds. I made my normal statements about finding your technique and finding your own shortcuts, without judgment, but noting that the tricks will help shave off 10 seconds. The frustrated reply: “What is 10 seconds? In the big picture, what does it matter that I am a second or two off? I can make it up elsewhere.”
I can’t say I was surprised by this statement, as I have heard it before over the years. And while it may be true in theory – you may struggle with one thing but be an absolute rock star in another so in theory, yes you can “make it up”; however, that theory, like many others, is riddled with holes when we look at the bigger picture.
The problem with time
Time is a constant. We can’t make more of it, so we must maximize it. When time is lost or an opportunity is missed, you will never get it back. Time is what we are really fighting, and we must maximize the time our victims have to live. We must minimize the time that the fire has to grow. We must preserve the time needed to suppress the fire to prevent a building from reaching its failure point.
How long can a patient/victim live in an IDLH atmosphere before they perish or suffer irreversible damage? By all medical standards, it is dependent on the level of hypoxia, plus the other toxicants present in the environment. It is our job to maximize that time for our victims. We are the ultimate timekeepers.
The question remains: “What is 10 seconds in the big picture?” It’s not just the 10 seconds of the particular skill; it’s about all the events that we can control or influence inside that fire.
Time studies
I started my career in the manufacturing industry where “time studies” were performed regularly. This does have an application here, not at the measure of maximizing time for scheduling or profit but rather to look at where we lose time for our victims. So, let’s perform an ad-hoc time study of a structural fire response.
We are not just going to focus on the act of fighting fire or rescuing victims. Go back to the preparation phase. We know from FEMA and industry studies that most fatal fires occur during sleeping hours (10 p.m. to 6 a.m.), which happens to be a common sleep time for us while on duty. That is the baseline for start times we will use for the following questions:
- Do you set up your uniform (station wear) to be quickly donned in case of alarm, or are you loosing 10 seconds?
- Did you make sure your PPE is stationed by your riding assignment in the most efficient way possible or is it unceremoniously heaped in the back of the rig or in a pile on the floor, where you might delay the response by 10 seconds?
- To the driver operator: Do you keep the rig on the shorelines for electric and air (if available) or do you have to wait for the apparatus to “air up,” losing another 10 seconds?
- To the officer: The same rules apply to you – station wear, PPE and knowing your first due. Do you know the building construction by district, travel routes, other apparatus responding, tactics to be employed? All of these little decisions that you might have to make at 0200 can be seconds of delay that add up to another 10 seconds. (Between the driver operator and the officer, you should be selecting the best travel route, knowing detours, slow roads or potential obstructions that rob you of another 10 seconds while en route.)
- Do you know where your water supplies are located or are you frantically looking through your map book or MDT, costing you another 10 seconds?
- When the apparatus arrives on scene, are there clear expectations for positioning based on common scenarios that allow the driver to get apparatus into position without a front-seat “mini-meeting” that takes another 10 seconds?
- Do we train our crews to read buildings and make decisions about line selection, pull and placement, or do we micromanage so much that members wait for orders on the color, size, length and nozzle that we want pulled (I have seen it), spending another 10 seconds?
- Back to the driver: Do you have your pump pre-sets made on the pressure governor? Do you have gauges marked with proper pressures for easy read/set? Do you keep your supply lines in ready-to-deploy configurations or are they tucked away in beautiful parade-ready locations, not quite ready to deploy without another 10 seconds of work?
- To the backstep crew: Do you don your SCBA while en route, saving 10 seconds?
- Is the line-selection process clear in your head? Are the preconnects packed perfect every time so they are easy to pull? When did you last practice to be as smooth as you can be with the line, shaving off 10 seconds?
- We have come full circle to the mask-up drill. Are you as proficient as you should be or are you adding 10 seconds?
The list goes on and on. Add all the “10 seconds,” and we have approximately two minutes. We are leaving 10 seconds on the table all over the fireground. Of course, many of the things described above may be overlapping; however, I didn’t account for laying supply line, dressing the hydrant, throwing ladders, forcing doors, navigating obstacles on the travel route or incident scene, among myriad other tasks and variables.
A message to firefighters
To the firefighters being put to the test with “timed events,” I certainly hope that you understand where we as officers are going with these standards. We are trying to maximize our time. We do not create arbitrary standards, and timed events are not meant to be punitive. Those standards help us to perform as a team at our maximum potential. Remember, we are not only talking about our victims’ time for survival, which is very short in that IDLH atmosphere, but also our own survival with documented flashover times occurring sometimes between 3-5 minutes for the first “peak event” to occur.
As you practice, accepting advice and constructive criticism will help you improve. It will feel good to be the fastest at a given skill. And even if you’re not the fastest, being better than you were yesterday is a great feeling. Success breeds success. Just keep hammering away at it – it’s what you took the oath to do!
A message to the officers
To the officers who are creating the standards, being a time-hunter means being aware of how time affects us at every turn. Hold time drills in a fair, measured and consistent manner. These drills aren’t just for pride or bragging rights. They serve as a measuring stick for yourself and your crew. Where do you need to invest more time? Is it in physical skills? Is it in mental awareness, science, building construction, hydraulics, pump operations, fire behavior? Processing and decision-making take time and bandwidth from that computer between our ears. The brain is an awesome tool, but just like a computer, it can be slowed down by too many things operating at once.
Working to improve the decision-making of all the members of you crew, shift, company or department can only help everyone involved. Give your personnel the agency to and ownership to select tactics, plus clearly verbalized expectations, freeing up decision bandwidth – aka time – for you! You can do this with time-based photo, video or quiz scenarios based on decision-making models. This is no different than practicing the physical skill for time; it’s just exercising the mind to decide and act with time constraints – a hugely important skill to practice and perfect.
Final thoughts
Those precious 10 seconds are all around us. We must make them matter for our personnel and the people we are sworn to protect. Time standards are just one way to focus your team on performance improvement, not only of our physical skills but also our cognitive skills. We must leverage these standards to build up our members and improve the business as we go. There are so many things that we cannot change, but taking the time to gain 10 seconds wherever possible will pay off in countless ways
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Ulrich is a lieutenant with the City of Georgetown in South Carolina. With 30 years of fire service experience, Ulrich has served in multiple volunteer, combination and career departments, and held multiple ranks within the departments, including fire chief. Ulrich previously worked as an adjunct instructor for the Pennsylvania State Fire Academy, Bucks County (Pennsylvania) Community College, and Penn State University.