Give your crews an A on the fireground
During the past decade, the international wildland fire community has faced ever-increasing complex life safety hazards that continue to challenge fire managers and officers who are trying to emphasize safe fireground working conditions.
Recent emphasis on aviation motor vehicle safety, forest health, physical fitness, work time and rest standards, and other wildland-related risk management safety concerns consistently reinforce the dangerous occupation of wildland firefighting.
Since 1991, multinational firefighting agencies have been using the fireline safety acronym LCES. Developed by former U. S. Forest Service Hotshot Superintendent Paul Gleason, LCES as you know stands for Lookouts, Communications, Escape Routes, Safety Zones. Gleason and other professionals theorized that during stressful circumstances human beings remember four to six key fundamental learned behaviors. By encompassing the 10 Standard Firefighting Orders, 18 Watchout Situations, Downhill and Indirect Fireline Construction Checklists, and Common Denominators of Fire Behavior on Tragedy Fires, Gleason consolidated these 40-plus safety rules and guidelines to four fireline safety fundamentals. Firefighters easily can apply, re-evaluate and validate the LCES process throughout fireline operations.
But after a decade of instilling the widely accepted and field-validated concept of LCES to firefighters worldwide, is the acronym LCES still applicable today? Does LCES adequately address human factors and other recently identified safety issues associated with present day wildland firefighting activities? Should it?
As early as 1994 retired California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Deputy Director William C. Teie added the letter “A” to Gleason's LCES acronym to formulate a new acronym, LACES. Teie's LACES acronym adds awareness to the well-known safety practice. Teie's letter “A” emphasized the need for firefighter awareness regarding fuels, weather, topography, fire behavior, and understanding of work assignments and other operational activities surrounding wildland fires. LACES also captures the basic principal objectives of the NWCG's Look Up, Look Down, Look Around fireline safety training curriculum.
For years, both adult education and learning practitioners and researchers have concluded that human beings relate basic concepts, ideas or mental pictures to commonly known objects, photographs, illustrations or previous experiences as a learning tool. This concept is further reinforced during stressful situations, as Gleason and others have previously indicated. By referencing the acronym LACES to a firefighter's workboot shoe laces, the LACES concept is further reinforced and conceptualized.
Since the debut of LCES, other wildland fire professionals have debated the meaning and need of adding the letter “A” to LCES. During the Fourth Annual International Wildfire Safety Summit held in Edmonton, Alberta, Rob Thorburn, wildland fire management team leader for the Alberta Environmental Training Center, advocated using the letter “A” in LACES to emphasis the importance of anchor points in safe wildland firefighting tactics. During breakout sessions at the same Safety Summit, the LACES debate included referencing the letter “A” for firefighter attitude or incident accountability.
Anchor points, situational awareness, firefighter/leadership attitude and incident accountability are indeed very real behavioral issues challenging fire training officers and administrators alike. Maybe it is time to re-evaluate and end the LCES versus LACES debate. Does LCES adequately relay to the driver, firefighter, pilot, dispatcher, command and administration the importance of attitude and awareness regarding human factors such as stress and fatigue? Do our true firefighting “anchor points” always revolve around overall firefighter/public safety and welfare concerns? Does LACES adequately relate to these same behaviors and values? Should the letter “A” have a definitive word association such as awareness? Perhaps when teaching and using the LACES process, the letter “A” could have multiple meanings or references such as accountability, apply, awareness, attitude, anchor points, abort, adhere, entrapment avoidance and after-action review.
It's time that the international wildland fire profession updates, teaches, applies, validates, refines and officially sanctions LACES over LCES. When examining the 31 recommended Forest Service Thirtymile Accident Prevention Plan action items, the LACES process often is a viable solution. Consider these points:
- Item A-1: Incorporate LACES in both the NWCG's Incident Response Pocket Guide and the U.S. Federal wildland fire agency's Interagency Standards for Fire and Aviation Operations “Red Book.”
- Items A-5/A-6: Incident personnel must be aware, adhere, and be held accountable to agency/department firefighter fatigue, work/rest specific policies and procedures.
- Item A-12: Apply standard protocols during resource dispatching and transferring incident command.
- Item A-13: Include LACES in the next scheduled revision of the NWCG's Fireline Handbook.
- Item A-20: Apply the lessons learned and agency sponsored wildland fire leadership curriculums.
- Item A-21: Apply simulation programs during wildland fire and aviation training.
- Item A-25: Training curriculum shall include situational awareness and accountability.
- Item A-26: Apply behavior-based safety programs referencing items such as after-action reviews, awareness and accountability.
- Item A-27: Use and apply situational awareness in NWCG's endorsed “Risk Management Process.”
- Item A-29: Emphasize fire entrapment avoidance during fire shelter training.
The list goes on.
As illustrated, the LACES process clearly relates to present wildland fire and aviation safety challenges. I welcome constructive comments, concerns, and criticisms regarding this thought provoking wildland fire safety discussion.
Eric Kurtz is a fire training and safety officer with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation's Fire and Aviation Management Bureau, Missoula, Mont. He can be reached at ekurtz@state.mt.us or at 406-542-4282.
