The Associations 1999 Annual Conference was hosted by ...
Tony McCarthy
in The Clonea
Strand Hotel, Co. Waterford.
The papers delivered included the following:
Requiered Change Through Partnership - Michael Fitszimmons, Chairman CFOA
Risk Management in the USA Fire Service - Stephen Foley, NFPA
REQUIRED CHANGE THROUGH PARTNERSHIP
The Chief Fire Officers in this country are tasked with working on behalf of their Fire Authorities, in partnership with the other Emergency and Care Services, to ensure that, as far as possible, the lives and the property of the people are protected from fire and, when fate decrees, to save those lives and property from fire and other threatening dangers. This is a responsibility of which all Fire Officers are acutely aware and which leads them from time to time to feel the need to ensure that everybody, especially those who influence decisions - particularly on the financial side, is made aware of the need for change.
When people leave the safety of their own homes and go into other places, whether for work or entertainment, they rely on somebody to ensure that those buildings which they must use but have no control over, pose no threat to them while they are there. This somebody is the Fire Officer, whether as the Fire Prevention Officer looking at new buildings or at the management of existing buildings, or as the Operational Officer responsible for the Brigade who may be called out in the event of some emergency.
When these officers become concerned about aspects of their responsibility and their ability to fulfil these responsibilities, it is incumbent on somebody to speak out. That task now falls to me to speak of issues which must be dealt with urgently. There are a four such issues which I should speak out on now;-
(1) The Retained Fire Service system and its limitations for the new millenium.
(2) The frustration of Fire Officers’ ability to control fire safety in buildings due to deficiencies in the present legislation.
(3) The inability of Fire Officers to adequately control fire safety in buildings, due to an extreme shortage of Fire Safety Officers in the country.
(4) The lack of progress, despite years of effort, in achieving real fire safety for the elderly, in their own homes. top
These are areas which have always been of concern to Fire Officers, especially since the Stardust Tribunal and its report; many recommendations of which have not been implemented 18 years on. In fact, it is quite frightening how quickly this tragic incident in the life of this country and its young people has been forgotten.
The Chief Fire Officers’ Association is anxious to emphasis that the changes being recommended must only be achieved by a partnership approach between all the parties involved. Consultation is essential to ensure that all aspects of a problem are appreciated before change is brought forward. That is not to say that total consensus or agreement need be achieved on the changes, as there are likely to be differing views, strongly held by many in the consultation process and in the end decisions must be made for progress to be possible. However decisions must not be unilateral and all aspects of the problems must taken into account. Chief Fire Officers are responsible to their Fire Authorities for all aspects of fire safety and must to be involved in all decision making in fire related matters both nationally and in their counties.
(1) I must first speak about the crisis of the retained Fire Service as a matter of urgency as the ability of this type of system to provide the standard of Fire Service which many of our large towns urgently require for the future is now seriously prejudiced It must be remembered that the retained Service was conceived in the 1940s when Ireland was a very rural and agricultural country. Since that time, Ireland has advanced industrially and socially very rapidly, through the economic boom of the 1960’s, and through to the present Celtic Tiger economy. During this time we have had wholesale migration of people from the rural areas, small towns and villages to the large towns, swelling them way beyond the capabilities of their planned infrastructure. There is no doubt that there are large areas of the country and very many towns and villages for which the retained Fire Service is still the best system. But towns which have populations of over 15000 or station areas with populations in excess of 20000 people, which are subjected to the socio-economic and industrial changes of this decade and the next millennium require a different system. It is no longer possible for a Chief Fire Officer, who is tasked with the responsibility of the rapid turnout of a highly trained and skilled workforce to the complex emergencies of these technologically advanced times, to rely on a system which cannot GUARANTEE the correct and most appropriate response.
I am calling for a task force, of all those who have a concern in this matter, to be set up to investigate this problem and to come up, very quickly, with a solution. . top
(2) The second point is the legal position of the Fire Authorities in carrying out their responsibilities under the Fire Service Act which is now 18 years old.The primary responsibilities for fire safety in a premises and the duty of care for the public on the premises lies with the owner and occupier of the building. The responsibility of the Fire Authority in the first instance is to help those owners and occupiers to properly fulfil their duties and responsibilities by advice from the Fire Officers, on the development and management of existing buildings, and by the examination of the design of new buildings and issuing of Fire Safety Certificates to indicate compliance with Building Regulations.
However, despite all our efforts to advise and guide owners and developers and despite the diligence and responsibility of most owners and developers, there will be those who will decide to ignore this advice, usually for monetary gain. In these circumstances, there is, rightly in my opinion, an expectation by responsible owners and developers and by the public, that the Fire Authorities, through its Fire Officers, will take action against those who decide to ignore their responsibilities in the pursuit of financial gain. Unfortunately the Fire Service Act is now all "carrot" and very little "stick". This is as a result of a number of legal challenges to the Act which has resulted in making it an almost an impossible task to punish someone who transgresses, except for very major offences. The ability of the Fire Authority to prosecute for overcrowding of premises and the locking of doors etc., which offences are the major concerns of the public, has practically disappeared. Fire Safety Notices are now almost practically unenforceable. The Building Control Act has many of the same deficiencies as the Fire Service Act.
These Acts should be reviewed immediately especially the Fire Service Act with a view to making it easier to prosecute those who deliberately break the law. In this age of the Celtic Tiger the Fire Officer is now but a toothless pussy-cat.
The Chief Fire Officers are willing to put at the disposal of the Department of the Environment and Local Government all their knowledge and experiences of enforcement and its problems to enable changes to be made to ensure the proper working of the enforcement sections of the Acts.
(3) The third point refers to the adequacy of the numbers of suitably qualified Fire Officers to give the required service to the public top
As I said before, Fire Officers have two roles in fire safety; one to advise and the other to enforce. The present level of the number of Fire Officers is totally inadequate to deal even with the advice side, especially with the number of Fire Safety Certificates which are now being handled, in this Tiger economy and the significant influx of new work is not compensated for by a commensurate increase in staff numbers despite the large income accruing to the Building Control Authorities as a result of the Regulations. Leaving out Dublin and Cork county there are approximately 4000 Fire Safety Certificate applications annually and only twelve additional Fire Officers have been recruited to deal with this increase in workload. Dublin and Cork county have over 2500 applications annually and have achieved an increase of twelve staff. The total income from all these applications is over £7 million annually. In conjunction with the inadequacy of staff numbers to deal with the present level of Fire Safety Certificate Applications, there is no staff with time to carry out enforcement work to ensure that the buildings are constructed in accordance with their Fire Safety Certificate or to ensure that buildings are not built without benefit of any Fire Safety Certificate. From the results of the small number of inspections during construction being carried out we are sure that many buildings are not being built, due to lack of knowledge, in accordance with the Building Regulations even where owners and builders are endeavouring to comply.
Improvement in the management of existing buildings is an area where much work is required and is the area where most offences occur. "During Performance" Inspections are essential for enforcement in this area but you can not expect a Fire Officer who has spent his whole day dealing with Fire Safety Certificates to turn out at 11pm, do disco inspections until 2am and then turn in to work at 9am the following morning for more of the same.!
A serious effort will have to be made by all Fire Authorities to increase the number of Fire Officers on the Fire Safety and Building Control side to ensure that the law is applied equally to all and to ensure that a proper standard of safety in buildings, especially in places of entertainment, is adhered to and that offenders are punished. top
(4) The last point to be dealt with, and by far the most important, is to try to ensure the fire safety of people in their own homes. Unfortunately, despite all our efforts at fire safety, the place where most people should be safest i.e. the home, is often the most dangerous. Last year 100% of all fire deaths happened in the home. Two thirds of all deaths happen at night and two thirds of all those who die are over 65. These are statistics which can not be ignored. The Chief Fire Officers Association has decided that it will launch an initiative in conjunction with the National Safety Council and the Department of the Environment to try to address this problem of Fire Safety in the home, especially for the elderly. I am calling on all my colleagues as Chief Fire Officers and all other Fire Officers to co-operate with our initiative throughout the whole year not just in Fire Safety Week. It will be centred around the primary schools where children are most receptive to these messages and will encourage care for elderly relatives. the National Safety Council are also considering a Multi-Agency approach to this problem and the Chief Fire Officers are offering all their resources to the National Council to help in this project.
I appreciate that new projects in Fire Safety such as this will only increase the already heavy workload of Fire Officers but we have to try to find time to squeeze this very worthwhile project into our time schedules. An increase in staff numbers would also allow more work to be done in this area.
These four items are matters of extreme urgency for the Fire Service in their task of protecting and saving the lives and property of this country and derve to treated as such by those who are in a position to bring about change. top
Risk Management in the USA Fire Service
An Occupational Safety and Health Approach
By Stephen Foley top
Introduction
Effective risk management can save your life. Ineffective risk management cost you your life. These are true regardless of where you are or what you are doing. It is impossible to live our lives in the absence of risk. Even if we never leave home and have no contact with the outside world, there are risks: starvation, a plane crashing on our house, falling and breaking a leg. When we do leave home, the risks are far more numerous and potentially dangerous: car crashes, violence, disease. The list is endless. It is how we manage these risks that determines our success, survival and enjoyment of life.
Risk, and management of it, are not foreign to us. In fact, they are such an integral part of our lives that we may never have consciously considered them. We've all heard, and probably used, terminology such as "it's not worth the risk" and "risky business." However, do we know what we actually mean when we say those words?
Many people believe that risk management is an administrative exercise. It is not. Rather, it is a decision-making process that each and every one of us use continually in our everyday lives. It provides a systematic method for making choices.
NFPA 1500, Standard on Fire Department Occupational Safety and Health Programme, first included language pertaining to risk management in the 1992 edition. The committee members believed that emergency services organisations (ESO) needed guidance on the development of a comprehensive plan under which a safety program would logically fit. Since risk management as a discipline has been used successfully for years by other organisations, it seemed the appropriate vehicle for fire departments as well. In the 1997 edition of NFPA 1500 risk management is included in two chapters.
The requirements of 1500 regarding risk management are as follows:
• Stress the practicality of applying effective risk management techniques
• Define risk and the risk management process
• Highlight the differences between risk management for an organisation that responds to emergencies, and one that doesn't
• Outline the different types of risk management that an emergency services organisation can utilise.
The Risk Management Process top
The effective management of risk is a process, not a static event, nor a document that resides in a binder. As such, it has various components and definitions associated with it. While the deformations vary, their meaning does not. A hazard is something that increases the chances of an. accident occurring. Without a hazard, there is no risk.
We use a risk management process to address our risk to the hazard. The process is composed of a series of logical steps, similar to a decision tree, that lead us to a course of action which will hopefully be as risk free as possible. This step-by-step process is often referred to as the Classic Risk Management Model.
Tolerance for Risk, or Risk Management in Reality top
The emergency service organisation, under the guidance of its leaders, attempts to put into place appropriate programs, policies and procedures that will help to protect its resources (people, facilities, apparatus, equipment, etc). However, each of the programs, policies and procedures depends upon effective execution by a person, and everybody is different.
On a personal level, each of us has a different tolerance for risk. Some of us will take more risks that others. That is why some people choose skydiving as a hobby, while others are more comfortable collecting stamps. Apply that premise to a group of fire-fighters, and the same will be true. Some of the group will be more comfortable in a hazardous, or risky, situation, than others. The dilemma for the organisation is to establish policies and procedures that will apply to everyone when each of us is different.
Fire-fighters are quick to pass judgement on the actions of others. The steps taken to make a heroic rescue will be deemed by some to be stupid, while others would consider the actions of the rescuer to be routine. That is since we each have a different tolerance for risk. In fact, an individual's tolerance for risk can vary by day, by season, by mood, or by any combination of those and other factors. Some days we feel stronger and more confident than others. Some days we believe that we could single-handedly perform a primary search in a fully involved residence, while other days we might be uncomfortable even donning an SCBA. Worse yet, these factors are very personal, and can't be quantified. There is no "risk tolerance" test that we can administer to definitively measure somebody's capabilities.
Therefore, it is vitally important that all fire-fighters be as effectively trained as possible. Training, in conjunction with the appropriate personal protective equipment, policies, and procedures, will help to direct each fire-fighters Beyond those, however, factors such as physical condition, judgement, and, ultimately, the individual's tolerance for risk at that very moment will determine what actions are taken.
An additional burden is time, or the lack of it. Decisions that will determine the actions that are ultimately taken have to be made quickly. Lives depend on it, and there is usually no second chance. Use for an example an off-duty fire-fighter who is faced with a civilian in trouble - in this example, a rafter thrown out of the raft and being carried away in a fast-running river. Immediate action is required. What does the fire-fighter do? By training and experience, she knows to instantaneously size up the risks involved for both the rescuer and the victim (drowning, hypothermia, trauma from hitting rocks), measures them against the potential benefit (saving the civilian), calculates the odds of success (likelihood of reaching the victim, likelihood of the victim surviving), and decides what to do. Her choices can range from going to the nearest phone and dialling 9-1-1 (if she has concluded that the odds are not in her or the victim's favour and the risks greatly outweigh the benefits), to diving in and attempting to make the rescue (if she has concluded that the odds are in her favour, and that she has a reasonable chance of reaching the victim, is a strong enough swimmer, has the appropriate rescue skills, and 3- ultimately, feels up to it at that moment). There is no policy or guideline that can dictate which action should be chosen. There are just too many variables, many of them human factors that can only be calculated in the moment.
When we can come to understand and accept these limitations our discussion of risk management will be more meaningful. Our efforts are directed at doing the best we can for the vast majority of situations that we can reasonably anticipate. Ultimately, however, people will make the choices and take the actions that will make a difference. If we have done our jobs their decisions and actions will reflect good judgement, and result in the taking of only calculated risks with an acceptable benefit attached to them. NFPA 1500 tries to succinctly capture this concept by saying we will risk a lot to save a lot, and risk nothing to save nothing,
Risk Management for an Emergency Services Organisation top
Risk management, both as a term and as a discipline, carries many different meanings. This is especially true when an emergency services organisation addresses risk management issues. While the focus of NFPA 1500 is the health and safety of our members, it is important that we not lose sight of the fact that by its very mission the fire service is charged with controlling the uncontrolled risks of others. In Risk Management Practices in the Fire Service, published by the United States Fire Administration, three levels of risk management are addressed. They are:
• the community as a whole
• the emergency response organisation
• emergency response operations'
For the purposes in this paper we will consider how the following four types of risk management are intertwined within the operations of an emergency services organisation. The four risk management applications are:
1. Administrative
2. Non-emergency
3. Pre-emergency
4. Emergency incident
Administrative Risk Management top
While many would consider this to be nothing more than a necessary evil (the job's not over until the paperwork is done!), don't be misled by its title. While administrative risk management does encompass the documentation of all of the components of the organisation's programme, it also establishes a thought process, an approach that will allow members to react, we hope safely, to almost any situation. It can and should be considered the base from which all other risk management programme elements will be developed.
The core of the administrative risk management approach is actually a sequential, logical decision tree. This is used with the ultimate goal of understanding what the risks to the Organisation, and its members, are, which ones have a higher priority for control actions, and ultimately, deciding how to best control or eliminate them. It has the following five major steps:
1. Risk Identification
2. Risk Evaluation
3. Establishment of Priorities
4. Risk Control/Risk Reduction
5. Risk Management Monitoring
These five steps are what make up the requirement outlined in NFPA 1500.
Risk Identification top
The first step in the process is to identify the risks that must be addressed. Or, another way to think about it, answer the question, 'What might go wrong, in addition to what has already gone wrong?". This exercise of identifying risks should include actual risks (risks that have created losses), and potential risks (nothing bad has happened yet).
On the other hand, few departments have lost their fire station due to fire. That doesn't mean that the station can't bum down (the potential is there), but so far it hasn't happened. Therefore, the station being destroyed by fire would be a potential risk.
The goal of this step is just to create a list. In fact, a piece of white lined paper and a pencil are the only tools required. At this point the items on the list don't even have to be in any kind of order. Later in the process the identified risks will be evaluated and placed in priority order.
The identification process should be logical and systematic. Otherwise, the list of risks may be incomplete, and any risks that are not identified here will be excluded from further consideration. Therefore, use a logical process to make a comprehensive list.
There are several sources of information that will be of assistance during this risk identification step. Some of the more common ones are listed below and briefly described.
Past loss experiences top
This is probably the best predictor of future problems. If the ESO has been consistently experiencing a particular loss, that loss will likely continue to occur until some steps are initiated to change the trend. Records of past losses should be available from the insurance company that handles the affected line of coverage, or maintained in-house by the ESO.
Members of the Organisation
Who knows better about what is going on than the members of the organisation? If those who are responsible for carrying out the risk identification process inquire about potential problems the result will probably be a wealth of information.
Health and Safety Committee
This committee, which is required in NFPA 1500, should be an excellent source of risk identification information.
Health and Safety Officer top
Since this individual will likely be heavily involved in the risk management process, he/she should play a key role in all steps of this model.
Trade Journals
For the past several years a great deal of emphasis has been placed on member health and safety. Almost without exception trade journals carry articles that can assist with the identification of risks.
On-line Inquiries
With the explosion of resources available on the Internet and the World Wide Web, a search relating to fire-fighter health and safety is likely to yield a lot of hits.
Neighbouring Departments/Brigades
As with the trade journals, a nearby department may share the results of their risk identification with you (and vice versa).
Professional Associations top
International, national, regional, and local professional associations are the perfect forum for comparing notes on a variety of common issues. Risk management, specifically risk identification, could well be one them.
Risk Evaluation
Once the risks have been identified, they need to be evaluated. It makes sense to believe that not all risks have the same potential to cause problems. Therefore, we want to identify which are a higher priority for action to control them.
We use two criteria for evaluating risks. The first is frequency, and the second is severity. Initially we examine them individually, but in order to determine priorities for action we ultimately combine our evaluation.
Frequency is how often a loss occurs because of a particular risk. For each of the risks fisted in the identification step we now determine how often it happens, or might happen. There is no generally accepted scale for measuring frequency, so factors such as past experience, judgement, and tolerance for losses must be used when determining frequency. When recording the findings from this step a measure as simple as low, medium and high is adequate.
The second evaluation criteria is severity. If a loss does occur, how severe will the consequences be? There are several ways to measure severity, including dollar loss, time away from work, cost for repair/replacement, service interruption, etc. Just like frequency, there is no scale we can use for severity, so low, medium and high can also be used.
Risk Evaluation top
High Frequency High Frequency
Low Severity High Severity
Low Frequency Low Frequency
Low Severity High Severity
Severity
By way of example, let's use an intersection crash between a piece of fire apparatus and a civilian vehicle. For the department in question, this is an incident that does not often occur, so it carries a frequency designation of low.
However, following the crash, which injures several people, including the fire department members who were on the apparatus, the costs and other impacts are high. Between the dollar costs, the time spent completing reports and ensuring uninterrupted service delivery, and carrying out insurance-driven activities, this incident would carry a severity rating of high.
Neither frequency nor severity alone provides enough information for establishing priorities for action. They need to be considered together as we try to estimate the impact of each identified risk on the ESO and its members.
Establishment of Priorities for Action top
As stated above, our ultimate goal is to decide what action to take to control each risk. During this step in the process we determine some means for deciding which risks to tackle first. Using the results of the evaluation step above, we now need to combine the results of the frequency and severity determinations.
One good method for doing this is to use the diagram above. It presents a scatter diagram with various coloured boxes. Naturally, the risks that fall into the red box would deserve immediate attention. The yellow boxes need further contemplation before we decide which ones to handle next. We probably all agree that the risks in the green box should be handled last.
Risk Control/Risk Reduction
This is a key point in the process. It is finally time to decide what to do about the risks, and then go about doing it. Risk control/risk reduction measures fall into three very broad categories. in order of their effectiveness they are risk avoidance, implementation of control measures, and risk transfer.
Risk avoidance is exactly that - don't do the activity that presents the risk. In the fire service, this is often impractical, but it is not out of the question. On the impractical 'de, if a particular department is suffering a rash of vehicle collisions, the risk avoidance technique would be to quit driving the apparatus. While effective, it would be impossible to deliver any service to customers, so it flunks the reasonability test. On the other hand, let's say that the loss being suffered is < >. It may be very practical to stop doing that activity.
Second on the list is the use of control techniques. For the fire service, this will be the most common method of controlling risks. There are many types of control measures - safety programmes, health and safety committees, use of personal protective equipment, training, SOPS, etc. These control techniques fall into three categories Administrative, Engineering, and Personal Protection. Expand on these three.
The third method of controlling/reducing a risk is risk transfer, Simply put, transfer all or part of the risk to somebody else. Again this may be impractical in many cases, but not impossible in all. For example, when Emergency Medical Services (EMS) responsibilities are removed from a fire department, the risks associated with EMS operations are transferred to the agency that will now handle the calls. The risks haven't been eliminated, they are just somebody else's concern.
One very common form of risk transfer is the purchase of insurance. While the physical consequences of the risk are not transferred, the financial consequences are. We buy insurance to protect the financial resources of the Organisation. However, the purchase of fire insurance on the fire station does nothing to control whether it bums down!
Risk Management Monitoring top
This is the step that really makes effective risk management a process rather than a static event. We need to continually evaluate the results of our efforts, and make modifications and improvements where needed. NFPA 1500 suggests that this formally be done a minimum of every three years. However, routine monitoring will be more effective.
This is the process whereby we have discussed the identification of risks, their evaluation, determining priorities for action, taking action, and performing periodic monitoring to ensure effectiveness. Administratively, this process can take hours, even days. It is usually a methodical process which involves many people. There is no need to rush since, typically, none of the risks demands immediate attention.
However, it is a different story at an emergency incident. This same process is followed, but much more quickly. The first arriving officer performs a size-up (risk identification and evaluation), decides what to do (establishment of priorities/or development of a strategy), and assigns members to carry out the strategy (determination and implementation of appropriate control measures/or assignment of tactical objectives). Once the action is implemented, changes are made based on the effectiveness of the measures (monitoring). From experience, we recognise that these initial steps take place in a very short period of time, yet the process is intact.
Yet what has happened is that the emergency services organisation is driven by justifying service levels, both in a non-emergency and emergency environment. Consequently the discussion of a cost-benefit analysis in the risk management process maybe the driving force.
What is Cost Benefit Analysis? top
Cost Benefit Analysis is a process used by managers to make policy decisions that involve scarce resources. CBA attempts to measure the complete set of costs associated with a policy decision against the complete set of benefits. CBA helps managers directly weigh the usefulness or a policy option against what it will cost. Costs and benefits are usually presented in a single standard unit of measure, usually in some monetary measurement, so that costs and benefits can be added or subtracted from one another on a level playing field. Subtracting the total costs from the total benefits gives the net value of a policy option which better reflects the utility (or value) of a policy option. A positive net value indicates a policy option whose benefits outweigh its costs.
Net value can help establish a willingness to pay for a particular option that more accurately reflects the actual value of a new piece of equipment or a new training programme to a fire/EMS unit than the market price alone. In theory, willingness to pay should equal the net value associated with a decision minus one dollar. That is, willingness to pay can meet but should not exceed the net value of the programme in question.
Aside from giving emergency managers a sense of what they should be willing to pay for health and safety, CBA can also help managers choose between policy options by comparing CBAs to help identify the option with the highest net value. This makes CBA useful in terms of decision-making. CBA can also help determine when to sunset an existing program, consider program augmentations or upgrades, and identify the consequences of inaction.
The Five Steps of Cost Benefit Analysis top
Cost benefit analysis can be broken down into the five basic steps listed below.
The Five Steps of Cost Benefit Analysis
1. Conduct Risk Assessment
2. Identify Costs, Benefits, & Assumptions
3. Collect Data
4. Calculate Costs and Benefits
5. Analyse Results and Make Decision
Step One, risk assessment, was discussed previously. Step Two involves identifying all of the pertinent costs and benefits related to a policy option. This requires managers to identify several different types of costs and benefits that can be incorporated into CBA.
Step Three, collecting data, involves researching the actual prices of the costs and benefits. Data can be as simple as the price of a new piece of equipment but can also include local statistics regarding such things as the number of staff injuries and treatment costs.
Step Four requires the basic CBA calculations. CBA usually involves a few straightforward calculations such as adding the costs and benefits but can also involve more complex manipulation of the data than simple addition. For example, because expensive technology upgrades sometimes take years to pay off (such as buying a new fleet of fire engines/appliances), the effects of interest payments should be accounted for in CBA. Because there is often risk of injury and death to fire-fighters but it is seldom (or never) a foregone conclusion, CBA must sometimes deal with uncertainty.
Step Five, analysis, involves the decision-making aspect of CBA and can include either choosing or rejecting a policy option, comparing several policy options to one another, and pinpointing a level of commitment depending on budget constraints.
Conclusions top
The education process to inform the citizens (customers) of the risks in their jurisdiction, how the fire department/brigade responds to those risks and at what level, become critical in discussing the ever-changing roles of the fire department. Intangibles will continue to be part of the inherent dangers of the profession, but as Chief Alan Brunacini, Phoenix Arizona Fire Department, has always said: "fire-fighters have suffered the most unfair occupational discrimination in the United States, as it relates to health and safety". This risk management process will continue to drive cultural changes, both internally and externally, to the benefit of both the customer and the fire-fighters
1. United States Fire Administration, Risk Management Practices in the Fire Service, 1996