Introduction
Entrapment investigations always reveal a litany of problems faced by the company officer (crew boss, engine boss, etc). In many cases the number and variety of problems overwhelm the company officer’s (CO) decision making process. The nature of the business requires the CO to walk a fine line between valuable aggressiveness and reasonable risk many times each operational period. Our COs make many of these decisions every day all summer long each year. With each change in tactics or the fire environment, the company officer must assess the appropriate degree of risk for the company. Many entrapment investigations have disclosed inadequate awareness of recognizable risks. If we can control our thoughts about our awareness, we can ensure that we will recognize potential risk in time to make sound decisions about reasonable risk. Recent research (2) has shown the relationship between Situation Awareness (SA) and effective decision making. This paper presents one method of controlling awareness.
Situation Awareness
SA, good or bad, is at the heart of fireline decision making. Your decisions are only as good as your perception of reality. SA for firefighters is a term used to describe the firefighter’s awareness of the total working environment. Knowing that the total working environment, including tactical and logistical information, can overwhelm effective decision making, you may need to put a priority on safety SA to the exclusion of all other matters in some situations. You know that the wildfire environment presents entrapment potential in virtually every assignment. Effective safety SA means that you control your thought processes to ensure an early warning of any fire run that could result in an entrapment. This early warning is an essential part of an effective LCES. To ensure good “Risk Management” (1), your SA must monitor several inter-related factors about fireline safety. Your safety SA must include the current status of:
A mental checklist of potential hazards.
An awareness of fire behavior data gathered visually and from incident sources.
Continuous observation of surroundings for visual cues of potential hazards.
An awareness of the current status of the quality of each component of your LCES.
An awareness of barriers affecting good SA.
A current awareness of changes in time, movement and tactics.
Inadequate SA can occur when you have allowed your attention to one or more of these factors to slip out of your current awareness or to be blocked by some over-riding factor or barrier. The new NWCG class on Human Factors on the Fireline (1) describes many of the barriers to effective SA and decision-making. The barriers described in this course include:
Stress.
Attitude
Task saturation
Information overload
Fatigue
Distraction.
Knowing that effective SA is essential for safe and aggressive tactics, and knowing that these barriers are present during most fire assignments presents a real challenge for one who wants to fight fire aggressively without taking any inordinate risks.
Responsibilities
The company officer and each crew member is responsible for maintaining a current SA and for keeping each other informed about any new hazards. The CO is responsible for making decisions about tactical action and appropriate risk. If the CO has encouraged good communication about SA, and if the CO is using the standard decision model (1), it is likely that the company can continue aggressive tactics in any dynamic situation without taking any inordinate risk.
Communication
Regular Intra-crew discussions about S.A. can raise awareness and improve the decision making of the company officer. Putnam (1995) and others (2) have shown the relationship between Intra-crew communication and good decision making by the company officer. They have also illustrated that a breakdown in communication usually precedes a breakdown in effective decision making under stressful situations. Fire companies must find ways to keep their communication alive so the discussion of the environment ensures effective safety SA.
The Human Factors course also illustrates many barriers to effective communication, and it also covers the problems associated with indirect communication. Firefighters must learn to make concise and direct comments about any perceived hazard or any awareness failures of the crew. The good news is that once we are aware of these problems, we can avoid them through consciousness decision-making and improved intra-crew communication. One way to overcome these problems is to use the Harral Color Coded System for Total Control. This system provides a simple and direct way to control your awareness state and to communicate about hazards and awareness.
Harral System for Total Control
The Harral System provides a simple language for thinking and for intra-crew communication. Harral has identified four levels of awareness that affect one’s ability to stay focused on hazards. In two of the levels we are fairly unaware of our surroundings.
In one of these awareness levels we can recognize that we are missing the visual cues about the fire environment or the "Watchout Situations". This low awareness level can occur because of complacency, or because we can be forced into this level by normal incident situations of stress, fatigue, “Missionitis” (1), and task saturation. Harral has color-coded the awareness levels to facilitate simple, direct communication.
Condition White
In condition White you are generally unaware of hazards in your environment. You have no reason to believe that you should be looking for hazards at that moment. This could flow from a complacent attitude, or from allowing your focus to drift to competing thoughts. You may be able to recall an example of this in your driving experience. If you are driving down the road, and you are hungry, your thoughts could be focused on your lunch plans to the degree you are missing visual cues of traffic hazards. Your selective perception can exclude the more important road hazards, while you are thinking about food or reading restaurant signs because your focus is driven by your thoughts about food. The same kind of wandering focus can occur on the fireline. This is usally caused by over-focusing on tactical issues to the exclusion of effective safety SA. You can eliminate this problem by making a conscious decision to move up to the next level whenever your are on the line at a wildfire.
Condition Yellow
In condition Yellow we make a conscious decision to assume a heightened level of SA. There are no immediate threats to our safety, but our training has taught us that we need to scan our horizon on a regular basis to perceive the cues of fire behavior factors that can lead to an entrapment. This is a relaxed awareness: we are continually seeing, listening, and searching for anomalies. In condition yellow we should also be doing some "what if?” thinking, such as “how soon could the fire hit our location if we experienced a 90 degree wind shift?
Once you have learned to think and communicate about condition white and condition yellow, you will notice how often you allow yourself to slip into condition white. Moreover, you are also more likely to recognize a false sense of urgency from others who might suggest a “high tempo” operation that can push you back into Condition White. One of the values that users have reported is heightened awareness of their “blind spots” and more communication about potential hazards. Staying in Condition Yellow can be difficult. Many of the SA barriers can push an alert firefighter back into Condition White. Using this system on a regular basis will improve your awareness of the barriers. If the whole crew is communicating about awareness levels, one or more members may make the comment that can break the error chain leading to an entrapment.
Condition Orange
Condition Orange means a member of the crew has recognized a potential hazard. The company officer will evaluate the risk and follow the “standard decision model” (1) for an appropriate action. This is the “Hazard Assessment Step” in the “risk Management Cycle” (1). The company officer ensures that someone (lookout) keeps an even higher level of awareness about the specific hazard. The lookout has a primary responsibility to stay focused on the Condition Orange factor (spot fire), so the rest of the crew can focus on getting the job done. The hazard may be minor or latent (smoldering spot fire) and only need watching. The leader has predicted that, under current conditions, the crew can get to the spot fire before any flare-up can occur. The lookout remains in Condition Orange about the new hazard, so the crew can continue working in condition yellow about the complete environment. Users have reported that talking about “condition Orange factors” can be a useful way to describe all of the environment factors that have potential for increased risk. A crew that collectively monitors the variable levels of awareness and ensures that someone is always in Condition Yellow is not likely to ignore any high-risk situations.
Condition Red
Condition Red is an automatic response mode. In this mode one is desperately trying to save their life, and they are not likely to see anything except their path to safety. If you did some good “what if” thinking in your earlier awareness levels, you might be able to overcome the faulty decision making associated with this awareness level. If you didn’t, you may become a victim of over- training or bad habits. Putnam has reported one example of this. The old habit of always carrying one’s tool has significantly slowed some fleeing firefighters who were ultimately trapped.
Using an improved awareness of conditions white, yellow and orange and communicating about these with your crewmembers can help you overcome many of the barriers to effective SA. Talking about condition Red may help you identify some old habits that could hinder a timely escape. Talking about all of the awareness levels can improve your crew’s ability to remain aggressive while maintaining very high levels of Situation Awareness. This kind of SA can improve any crew's collective decision-making capabilities.
References:
Human Factors on the Fireline, 2000, NWCG, Boise, ID.
Findings From the Wildland Firefighters Human Factors Workshop, 1995, MTDC, Missoula, MT.
Harral, What Color is Survival?, 1994, California Fire Instructor’s Workshop.
Putnam, The Collapse of Decision-making and Organizational Structure on Storm King Mountain, Wildfire Magazine, June 1995.
