Looking For Lessons Beyond FD LODD Reports

In April of 2016, Virginia State Trooper Chad Dermyer was shot and killed in the line of duty. Trooper Dermyer had served as a police officer in the city where I work before moving on in his career and more recently a U.S. Marshal was killed in Harrisburg, PA. I started wondering if there were lessons to be learned beyond firefighter line of duty death reports.

By now most firefighters have heard stories of police officers found dead with spent revolver brass in their pockets. The stories often involved officers who trained with revolvers who routinely policed their brass while shooting at the range, placing it in their pockets to prevent a mess that they had to clean up at the end of the day. The stories say that these officers were so ingrained with this habit that they performed this task even in the middle of a fight for their lives.

Many people associate the Florida and California shoot-outs with this muscle memory, so it is no surprise that instructors often use these stories in an attempt to prove the effects of muscle memory on performance. However, investigations performed after the aforementioned incidents have concluded that any story involving officer dying with brass in his pocket is rhetoric.

There are few, if any, documented instances of an officer found dead with empty shell casings in his pocket. These anecdotes, though well-intentioned, do nothing to advance the true lessons learned from these horrible tragedies and paint these heroes in a negative light. Let’s put the dramatic fiction away and look at some facts.

The truth is that the aforementioned police deaths came as a result of a complex situation. Any lessons gleaned from these tragedies should not be considered a condemnation of the brave officers who gave their lives; most of what we’ve learned suggests that there were factors in play far beyond their control, including lapses in training and significant equipment issues.

Both incidents cite similar training issues, including the use of static firearms training “ training where the officer stands still shooting at a silhouette target that doesn’t move. Most of the officers were not trained with moving targets or taught how to fire a service weapon while in a position of cover. Instead, they received standard basic training that did not simulate real world situations, training created to check a box on a piece of paper.

Does this sound familiar? Firefighting basic recruit training is very similar. It exists in a vacuum. It’s static, with very
few real world variables involved. New firefighters pull hose through buildings without furniture and search blind folded without ever touching a thermal imager. Once they leave the academy they have obstacles and elements to deal with that they never encountered in training.

Imagine what this does to their state of mind. Their stress
is already high then add several unknown factors and then see what their reaction is. Even when we do try to simulate real world scenarios in the burn building we put our recruits in situations that reinforce poor habits. Forcing recruits to push into high heat with thick smoke banked down

to the floor while flowing limited to no water is a recipe for disaster. Far too often we say “do not open the nozzle” because the instructors do not want to reset the fire or do not think they have enough time to get all the recruits through the evolutions if they are constantly resetting a fire.

Also, many fire academies have turned basic training burns into sadomasochistic rituals where we bake the hell out of recruits whole trying to pretend it is not that hot. Meanwhile we are telling the recruits they are pussies and need to suck it up. The education portion of burns has fallen by the wayside due to NFPA 1403 requirements, laziness, and our own sick goals of making sure the recruits “earn something’.

We need to build recruits up through training with a firm foundation in the basics. Yes we need to make sure recruits can take heat and stress, but punishing them in the name of training is not the way to do it. We do not need to ingrain the rookie firefighters to feel high heat and just sit there and take it.

The first few times they try a skill it should be in a well lit area in a slow and controlled fashion. Then start building speed with a desired end goal. Once they begin to show proficiency, begin timing them. There does not need to be specific time frame but timing alone begins to add a stress factor. From there you should start to effect their senses. I start by limiting vision, through black out masks or smoke, this ramps up the stress a bit more. The next thing I do is add heat, either through a live fire evolution or a jet heater. The final sense I effect is hearing. We use pre recorded fire ground radio channel played over an open radio channel. This is done until recruits are proficient in the basics needed to do the job and then we introduce things like thermal imaging cameras, larger hose-lines, difficult situations, changing tactics, and evolving scenarios involving multiple skill sets.

Some of the fallen heroes had service weapons that they never trained on or qualified with. They may have never even fired those weapons before. How many of you are not using the same equipment you used in the academy? Have you used that tool in the field? Do you know how to troubleshoot it?

Many firefighters just assume that a nozzle is a nozzle and a halligan is a halligan without looking into the specifics of the tool and those people are very misinformed.

We need to know everything about our weapons. Whether the nozzle is an automatic fog, adjustable gallonage, or smooth-bore. Does it have a stream straightener, or a metal strainer? We need to be checking to see if the nozzle has a split ball valve or solid ball valve. Firefighters need to know their hose loads, how to pull them, and how to troubleshoot them. Did the last crew repack the hose correctly? The only way you can be sure that everything works correctly is to check it/pack it yourself. We need to return to doing these things everyday and not just the first day back to work.

Another issue, particularly in the Miami shoot-out, related to the FBI agents use of 9mm revolvers. The revolvers held a limited number of rounds, required a manual reload (they did not have speed loaders), and didn’t have much stopping power. The suspect responsible for the deaths of Special Agents Ben Grogan and Jerry Dove was actually shot early on in the incident. The bullet stopped a few inches from his heart, but he was able to continue on his rampage. Ballistic experts agree that had the officers fired
a larger caliber weapon, the suspect would have been killed instantly. As a result of the ballistic investigation, the FBI changed their weapons and bullets. Furthermore, the FBI agents were aware that the suspects had high powered long rifles that they used in previous robberies, but they still attempted to apprehend the suspects using small caliber hand guns and a shotgun.

Prudence alone would suggest (1) the use of a larger caliber weapon against such an attacker and (2) FBI testing of service weapon effectiveness. Applying similar prudent strategies to the fire service requires that we ask ourselves this question: How often are we “outgunned” when we enter a burning building? I’m willing to bet it happens far more often than we like to think.

The solution to this problem? We need to flow test all
our lines and make sure we are properly maintaining our nozzles. All firefighters should flow their nozzles regularly so they are aware of what the proper nozzle reaction and stream pattern is supposed to be. We should also stretch the proper lines to the proper place with the proper nozzle for the upcoming fire fight. We also need to field test our “weapons” (nozzles). Do we know our flow rate for all of the nozzles on our specific engine? This information is key. Know your flow rate through your hose configuration and nozzle combination. We need to overwhelm the BTUs with superior GPMs. As Brian Brush says “if you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.” You wouldn’t bring a knife to a gun fight, so why pack low GPM? Be smart. Make sure you’re not in a fair fight.

The automatic fog nozzles in my department were only flowing at 75gpm when flowed at 75psi nozzle pressure (NP) We were unaware that the nozzles needed to be taken apart and cleaned yearly and this was causing our flow issues. Our 2.5” nozzles were even worse. When flowed at 75psi NP they were only putting out 175GPM. Our solution was to follow the recommended NFPA flow of 300GPM in the first two lines and aim for 150gpm minimum for 1.75” lines. We were unable to obtain 150gpm with manageable nozzle reaction so we did a nozzle study. We brought in multiple vendors and tested their nozzles with all of our own equipment. The goal was to flow 150gpm with
one firefighter. We were able to find an excellent nozzle and hose combination and replaced all of our automatic fog nozzles with smooth-bores on all of our apparatus. Regardless of whether you are a smooth-bore or fog fan your goal should be 150gpm from your initial line. I prefer smooth-bore nozzles and can back up my feelings using NISTs 2009 wind driven fire report. The study touched on nozzle impacts on temperature and heat flux (the intensity of radiant heat) and its impact on firefighter survival in flashover. NIST states a fully geared up firefighter would survive for only 30 seconds in 500 degrees Fahrenheit with a heat flux of 20kW/m2 at the floor.

According to Jason Vestal in “A Quantitive Approach to Nozzle Selection”1, “even in areas remote from the fire compartment, radiant heat at floor levels greater than 20 kW/m2 can be expected and rapidly provide the necessary radiant heat energy to cause a flashover in the adjacent room or compartment where advancing firefighters are likely positioned.” The smooth-bore nozzles immediately dropped the temperatures below 500 degrees F in 30-

50 seconds where the fog nozzles initially increased temperatures and heat flux. The smooth-bore nozzle also decreed the heat flux to below 20kW/m2 on average 20-35 seconds faster than the fog nozzle. The article by Vestal indicates you would need to flow 672 GPM in a fog nozzle to get the same effect as 150 GPM in a smooth- bore. Obviously 672 GPM is cannot be achieved by a single firefighter and an interior attack fog nozzle.

A few of the officers were not wearing their body armor or did not fully load their guns because they were heavy to carry. This one is pretty easy to relate to the fire service. WEAR ALL OF YOUR GEAR. It may be heavy and restrict movement but it is designed to save your life. If you want proof, pull up the video from the fire where Fresno Fire Captain Pete Dern fell through the roof. Wear your gear. No excuses.

At the end of the day, firefighter LODD reports and NIOSH reports are an excellent resource for our profession and they will continue to be part of my daily reading, but we should not limit ourselves.

We should be students on a never ending journey to gain information. If you put the job specific issues aside and read the reports of the military, police, or any other dangerous job while substituting their professional terminology for ours, we can all learn a great deal while also honoring those heroes who paid the ultimate sacrifice for protecting us. Expand your horizons, it may save your life.

1. Vestal, Jason. “Quantitative Approach to Selecting Nozzle Flow Rate and Stream Part 2” Fire Engineering 2011