Firefighter Communication System

Part 1: Defining the requirements

Vital members of any community, firefighters are trained to handle a variety of crisis situations ranging from structural fires to hazardous materials accidents, from forest fires to underwater rescue, and, more recently, anti-terrorism missions. From the Fire Ground Commander to the individual firefighters entering the building, each individual involved knows the duties and procedures they face. Should the firefighters fail in their duties or procedures, the consequences are grave – loss of life and high property damage top the list.

To avoid such consequences, coordination of firefighter activities is vital. Of particular interest to this project is the communication that occurs during an incident response. Of course, communication systems do not exist independently – they exist within a larger social system. In the following sections, we will describe the users, social systems, tasks, task environment, current communication systems, and requirements for a more suitable communication system.

Fire departments mostly consist of volunteers. Only 11% of departments are career or mostly career firefighters. This means that most firefighters have other full time jobs, which implies possible negative impact on experience and training as well as free time for additional training. Many departments require regular tests of strength, physical stamina and agility, as well as medical exams.

Only about 15% of firefighters are over 50 years old. Firefighters generally retire after 25 years of service or when disabled. This contributes to the generally young age of firefighters. At all levels, men outnumber women by 40 to 1. In contrast to the gender data, ethnic data generally reflect the makeup of the local population.

In every age group, the overwhelming majority of firefighters has either a high school diploma, an associate degree, or has completed some college but not a degree program. Career firefighters mostly work one of two shift schedules in a typical 50-hour workweek. The types of shifts they might have vary widely between and within departments. The Atlanta fire department has a practice of 24 hours on duty, off 48 hours with an extra day off at intervals. Other departments may have a 10-hour daytime shift for 3 or 4 days followed by a 14-hour nighttime shift for 3 or 4 nights, and finish the cycle with 3 or 4 days off. Volunteer departments work highly irregular schedules and frequently only arrive at the fire station within minutes of departing for a fire.

Regardless of which schedule a firefighter works, they may experience fatigue from the schedule alone. This inevitably leads to errors, especially in understanding and then communicating emergency situations. In addition, almost half of on-duty deaths are by heart attack. Only 30% are by fire-related means (burns, asphyxiation, etc.) This indicates a high stress lifestyle.

Firefighters receive considerable on the job training, sometimes in the form of an apprenticeship with a more experienced firefighter, but more commonly in a structured training and practice environment. Many departments encourage their firefighters to pursue fire science degrees at local colleges. Much of the off-time in the station is devoted to study. Additionally, at least in Atlanta, all firefighters are required to have 480 hours of Emergency Medical Technician training.

The leadership structure of firefighting resembles that of military service. Each firefighter has a rank that determines how the management structure will develop during an incident response situation. In order of increasing ranks, the leadership structure is:

• Firefighter
• Driver or Engineer
• Lieutenant
• Captain
• Battalion chief
• Deputy chief
• Chief

The fire service culture emphasizes aggressiveness, action, and ability to overcome obstacles while also upholding a rigidly hierarchical organizational structure during crisis situations. The emphasis on the chain of command can lead to communication difficulties, as firefighters are reluctant to circumvent the chain of command and risk being considered subordinate. This has lead to messages being routed to the wrong person (when more engine companies arrive, the organizational structure evolves) and consequent communication delays. Being used to working with the same people over time can also impede effective communication when the team structure changes, due to lack of familiarity. In some departments, a culture of heroism delays, sometimes fatally, the call for reinforcements. Firefighters operate in an environment that lacks situational awareness; there exist few cues for passing of time or awareness of nearby activities. This makes them prone to a sort of tunnel vision.

At the foundation of incident management rests the principle that a single individual can handle at most 4 or 5 simultaneous issues. This Simultaneous Issues Principle necessarily dictates the structure and evolution of the entire incident management system for dealing with large-scale crises.

Incidents involving few firefighters simply require one individual giving orders and a handful of others following those orders: getting a cat out of a tree does not necessitate much management. Larger incidents necessitate more extensive management and, of necessity, a form of triage: one person cannot conceivably give all orders required to extinguish a forest fire or deal immediately with all the pending emergencies. As an incident spirals from small to large, a dynamic management structure must also evolve. This structure must evolve rapidly in order to stay abreast of a rapidly changing situation. Keeping firefighters abreast of changes in the structure is a significant issue for a communications system.

As incidents evolve, the Simultaneous Issues Principle assists in forming the necessary management structure. At the beginning of the incident, teams or companies are already formed which consist of roughly 4 firefighters with one leader. These teams form the basic building blocks of the incident response. Additionally, a company is the smallest unit that ever responds to a situation.

Should an event require multiple companies in the initial response, the highest-ranking officer becomes the response leader. The leaders of each of the other companies communicate directly with this response leader while the company members only communicate within their own team. Thus, a small management hierarchy is already established in which each company leader communicates with the response leader and manages the detailed operations of his/her own team. The response leader remains free to manage the teams as discrete units from a higher-level perspective.

As situations require companies to be added to the response team, the response leader controls how they integrate with the response team. This quickly escalates to the point where the response leader is responsible for more than 4 or 5 teams. At such a time, the Simultaneous Issues Principle applies. The response leader chooses an operations leader who controls the operations of the team while he deals with tactical issues. Of course, as more companies join, the operations leader can segment them as appropriate – for example, with floor leaders controlling teams on each floor of a high-rise, structural fire.

Each incident requires the appointment a safety officer. The responsibility of the safety officer involves ensuring that all firefighters are following the appropriate safety measures and remain in as much safety as possible. As such, the safety officer remains in direct contact with the response leader. The safety officer is the only individual on the response team who can directly override the orders of the response leader. Thus, the safety officer watches the entire situation, usually while on the move through the incident environment, and attempts to maintain a picture of everything happening. This picture is focused only on firefighter safety and not on tactics which remains the province of the response leader. The safety officer can have assistants as required.

Additionally, the response leader stays in contact with other members of the response team such as the public relations officer, a planning team, etc. The important overarching principle of this remains the Simultaneous Issues Principle. The response leader must maintain a level at which he/she will not be overwhelmed by the management of the task and delegate portions of his authority as the situation evolves.

So what happens when a higher-ranking officer joins an incident response during the incident? The higher-ranking officer can choose in this situation. If the response leader seems to be handling the situation well, the higher-ranking officer will usually offer to assist the response leader in a way that the response leader feels is appropriate rather than assuming control. If the higher-ranking officer wishes to take control of the situation, he/she must obtain the following information first:

• What is the current situation?
• What is needed at the moment?
• What are the current plans?

At this point, the higher-ranking officer can assume leadership of the incident. Usually, this only happens if the higher-ranking officer feels that the response leader is handling the situation particularly poorly. This stems from the fact that changing leadership in the middle of a crisis situation tends to be a painful process. It would seriously impede communications through the chain of command hierarchy and may, in and of itself, impose undue hazards on the firefighters on the front line.

Atlanta firefighters work in shifts that tend to be scheduled in 24 hour increments, based on the schedules of the individuals that we interviewed. In fact, these individuals never referred to days or times, but made all of their time references in terms of shifts – i.e. "we were talking last shift" (emphasis added). These hours induce fatigue in incident responses. Additionally, long hours under stress in a crisis situation can quickly introduce extreme fatigue.

Firefighting, also, tends to be a highly dangerous job. While performing required tasks, there is a constant stress of knowing that a single mistake can cost a life, perhaps one's own. This extreme stress can easily manifest itself physically in fatigue. Thus, any communication system must be fault tolerant and extremely easy to use.

Needless to say, firefighters face daunting social pressures. The pressure to minimize damage and cost overshadows nearly everything. With a risk of high property damage and loss of life, firefighters must constantly struggle with the pressure to successfully perform their job. Combined with the physical stresses of working in a highly dangerous environment, firefighters can be expected to desire communications as an "everyday thing" rather than another problem to be solved. Thus, any communications technologies are going to be peripheral to accomplishing the task of firefighting under the difficult social and physical stresses and should be designed accordingly.

The wide variety of environments that firefighters face presents a significant challenge for which they must be prepared. Confined-space rescues occur indoors, usually with limited space, but not in all cases. These rescues can occur in broken elevators, airplane wings, or large warehouses. In the extreme, confined-space rescues take place in environments with very little free space for movement.

On the other extreme, structural fires do not wait for sunny days to occur. The firefighter standing outside of the structure can be faced with harsh conditions of wind, rain, snow, or sleet. Then, the firefighter must enter a burning building facing harsh conditions of water, fire, and heat.

The communication system that supports the firefighters must be tailored to dealing with all of these environments. From extreme heat to extreme cold, from low humidity to dripping with water, any communication system for firefighting must be physically robust enough to deal with nearly any environment.

Firefighters are responsible for a wide variety of crisis situations. Currently, they are responsible for:

• Structural fires – classic firefighting,
• Aircraft accidents,
• Hazardous materials accidents,
• Confined-space rescues,
• Weapons of mass destruction crises/Anti-terrorism,
• High-angle rescues,
• Low-angle rescues,
• Emergency Medical Response,
• And, of course, getting the cat out of the tree.

Within all of these situations, firefighting theory presents a common eight-step model, derived from past experience, to determine how to deal with the variety of situations. This model is designed to be specific enough to give guidance on handling the situation and general enough to be adapted to the specifics of the situation. The Eight-Step Model is as follows:

1. Site management and control
2. Identify the problem
3. Hazard and risk analysis
4. Evaluation of equipment
5. Resource management, organization, and coordination
6. Response objectives
7. Decontaminate
8. Conclusion

Next, we will explain the details of each of these steps. Where appropriate, we will give specific examples of how these steps can be tailored appropriately to different situations.

When the firefighters arrive on the scene, their first goal is to bring order to the scene and insure the immediate safety of the firefighters. This might involve moving bystanders to a safe location or clearing the scene of the incident in another manner.

During this step, the fire crew tries to identify the crises involved in the situation. This may be a very obvious evaluation – "the house is on fire" – but it may be a more difficult situation such as understanding a hazardous material leak -- "what is leaking and where is it leaking from?"

At this point, the fire ground control evaluates the current risks for resolving the crisis situation. For a hazardous materials incident, this includes identifying the type of hazardous material spilled. For a structural fire, this might include determining which parts of the building are unstable and should not be entered.

The response team must evaluate the current equipment according to the situation. If the equipment or training needed to tackle a problem or solution is unavailable, then backup – teams with the necessary tools to perform the job –are called in to resolve the situation. If more firefighters are needed to deal with the situation, they are dispatched at this time.

There is no guarantee that firefighters will have all of the necessary resources at their disposal in a crisis response. This stage involves obtaining the needed resources and ensuring that they will last throughout the crisis. Additionally, it involves ensuring that the correct individuals have the resources that they will need to do their jobs. For a structural fire, this likely involves locating the fire hydrant and potentially calling the city’s Water Department to obtain higher water pressure. For a high-angle rescue, this involves obtaining the appropriate cranes or helicopters to reach the victim.

At this point, the firefighters directly attempt to resolve the crisis situation. In a structural fire, they would begin trying to extinguish it. In a hazardous material leak, they would begin cleaning up the spill. When asked what firefighters "do," the response objective is generally the answer.

While at the incident scene, decontamination occurs during and after meeting the response objective. With fires, decontamination includes cleaning the Kevlar jackets that the firefighters wear because they become more flammable as they gather more soot. If the firefighters are exposed to hazardous materials then they receive emergency medical treatment onsite.

The conclusion stage involves the closure of the firefighter crisis activity, but does not close activity from the site. Further handling of the incident scene can be passed to another team once the firefighters leave. For example, cleanup of the scene may be passed onto a cleanup team separate from the fire department. In a fire situation that had a questionable beginning, the fire department may assign an arson specialist to do further investigation after the crisis is over. This stage is to insure that the main hazard is fully resolved. (There have been problems with firefighters "extinguishing" fires only to have them re-ignite after the firefighters left the scene.)

Applying the eight step model to a single hierarchical task analysis for a common structural fire would be:

1. Site management and control
2. Identify the problem
1. Talk to the tenants about fire origin
2. Ask about individuals stranded in the structure
3. Hazard and risk analysis
4. Evaluation of equipment
5. Resource management, organization, and communication
1. Radio for reinforcements
2. Designate command hierarchy
3. Secure water supply
6. Response objective
1. Create ventilation holes in building
2. Rescue trapped individuals
3. Spray fire to block expansion
4. Administer emergency medical treatment
7. Decontaminate
1. Administer medical treatment to personnel who may have been exposed to dangerous chemicals
2. Clean firefighting equipment to maintain fire protection
8. Conclusion
1. Ensure fire is extinguished by examining smoking embers
2. If arson is suspected, assign fire investigator to follow up on the cause of the fire
3. Pass site control off to clean up crew

The plans for a single incident may vary wildly for the steps taken to resolve a crisis vary depending on a tremendous number of situational variables. The basic actions (the 8 steps along with rescuing individuals, hosing the fire, and creating ventilation) remain generally the same, but the order that they are attempted are a result of the judgement of the fire ground commander.

The system that we are focusing on is the communication system used to accomplish firefighting tasks. The current standard communication system is radio-based. If the radio at some point fails, then the firefighters switch to a standard hand-signal communication system.

We have been able to gain information on three major radio systems. Two are classic modal radios, while the third is a wireless system designed for hazardous material treatment. The most basic of the modal radios is the handset radio that is similar to an overweight, oversized cell phone. The second of the modal radios is the radio with the speaker/microphone attachment. This microphone/speaker portion attaches to the outside of the firefighter’s coat while the radio portion remains on the inside of the coat, similar to the radios typically used by police officers. The third system with wireless headsets is designed for hazardous materials and other non-fire situations, such as confined-space rescue. This system allows users to talk to have full duplex communication without having to press any buttons to speak or receive.

The current communication systems have a variety of limitations, some quite serious. From interviewing firefighters, it would be an understatement to say that these limitations are merely annoyances. The limitations that were most strongly noted are:

• Most equipment has been adapted from other uses. As a result, many of the portable radios are not waterproof.
• Portable radios have been miniaturized to the point where it is difficult to operate the switches and dials while wearing protective gloves. Larger radios, however, add weight and bulk that also adds difficulties to their effective use.
• It can be difficult to communicate while wearing fire gear due to the facemask that firefighters wear. The facemasks interfere with both face-to-face communication and radio communication. If a firefighter chooses to remove his facemask in order to communicate, he runs the risk of inhaling lethal vapors. Workarounds for facemasks have received mixed reviews from firefighters.
• Portable radios use LCD displays that are difficult to read in a low visibility environment even when backlit. They are also prone to cracking if dropped or hit, which frequently occurs. Sometimes this makes it impossible for the firefighter to determine the state of the radio.
• Two-piece radios with a shoulder-mounted microphone/speaker are difficult to use while wearing a coat. The wire must lead from the inside of the coat to the outside collar and is prone to getting caught on things if in an enclosed area. They are nearly impossible to use with hazardous material suits – "body bags with a window".
• Integrated communications equipment sometimes fails locally due to a problem in a part that may be many miles away.
• Inadequate capacity of the communications system. High volumes of radio traffic may overwhelm a commander and prompt firefighters to turn down their radios to avoid distractions. In an auto parts store fire in Chesapeake, VA, two firemen died due to command traffic occurring on the same channel as dispatch. Five trapped firemen died in a Hackensack, NJ fire when their distress calls went unheard due to excess traffic on a single channel system.
• Multi-channel systems are sometimes too complex to use because of the multitude of modes available. The Regis Tower fire in Memphis killed two firefighters because the commander was monitoring three radio channels while managing the scene.
• Background noise on either end makes communication difficult.
• Short battery life – approximately 12 hours – is problematic.
• The radios tend to be sensitive to heat, which is a problem when working in a fire situation.
• Often the line of sight between radios is blocked, something that occurs frequently while dealing with an underground situation – such as subway incidents – and confined-space rescues. As such, frequently communications are lost due to blocked signals and firefighters must think carefully about placement of repeaters. In these cases, it also tends to be difficult to determine what has not been heard. The incident commander may believe a message was delivered when it was not in fact received.
• The radios are simply heavy. Over time, this becomes fatiguing.
• Requiring one hand to operate a radio, making it unavailable for operating firefighting equipment, creates a potentially dangerous situation and severely limits the situations where it can be safely used.
• Finally, bombs and other terrorist devices frequently use radio signals to trigger detonation. As firefighters are being used more frequently to deal with terrorist situations, this is beginning to pose a problem.

The system must stress robustness above all. Also, recognition of errors and the ability to recover from them are of paramount importance when lives are at stake. Learnability, on the other hand, should be emphasized less. Firefighters require a significant degree of training to do their jobs, and use of the communication system is already stressed heavily. The system should be made as learnable as possible, and incorporated in all firefighter-training activities, but not so much that robustness is decreased. This decision is made under the assumption that any deficiency in learnability can be accommodated by the strict training requirements whereas if the radio is broken, training will not fix it. While learnability is not of utmost importance, expert ease of use is vital. When dealing with crisis situations, an expert user should not have to think about the use of communication systems. These facts lead us to the following usability criteria:

• Observability
• Physical Robustness
• Safety
• Customizability

The system should be designed to reduce the possibility of failure, but even more important, it must be able to detect and notify the user of failure if and when it occurs. When a failure that disallows communication occurs, the system should provide the appropriate feedback to all relevant parties that the failure occurred. If the failure is repairable, that would be nice, but the users need to be able to know to rely on the backup communication systems when a failure occurs.

Testing of this criterion is easy. Simply give testers a system that will fail. Observe the testers when the failure occurs to see if they are capable of detecting it.

The list of difficulties which firefighters have with communication technologies emphasizes the necessity of physical robustness. Firefighting equipment must be able to withstand a great deal of abuse including exposure to extreme temperatures and water and dealing with hard physical contact such as being dropped. We must also take into account other physical constraints such as weight and size.

The system can be tested by subjecting it to the extreme situations that it must withstand. Testing the system with actual users doing training drills would let us see if the physical constraints are met.

Sending a mayday should not set off a bomb. Firefighters should not be required to expose their bodies to flames or hazardous materials to operate their equipment. Distress signals are of paramount importance and there should always be a backup system available for that purpose. Furthermore, distress signals should not be lost, delayed or obscured by other communications.

Testing of this may be problematic. Though we would love to seek funds for an exploding experiment, this is unlikely to be approved by the College. In this case, perhaps we would be best advised to rely on the experience of our firefighters.

Communication systems must work for a variety of different firefighting teams in a variety of different circumstances. Each team must be able to adapt the communications system so that it will suit their specific needs. Additionally, we must remember that the dynamics of the firefighting team evolves as an incident response progresses. The communications system must be able to be customized to deal with these real-time changes in usage patterns.

The ideal way to test this criterion would be to allow firefighting teams to use the communications system in a variety of tasks. Of course, this would unnecessarily endanger lives. In the absence of that alternative, the next best testing mechanism would be to allow multiple firefighting teams evaluate the proposed design in relation to their own specific firefighting needs.

Our most valuable resource for information on this topic has been our extended interview with Lt. Randy Camp and Jeff Pollard of the Atlanta Fire Department. Lt. Camp is a 17-year veteran of the force, decorated for heroism, and a great deal of experience in crisis situations. Mr. Pollard holds a number of degrees related to fire science and safety and has worked in several jobs across the country in these fields. Both men provided a wealth of knowledge on firefighting in general as well as pointers to reference material that we are in the process of acquiring. They are also willing and eager to continue working with us on this project.

In addition to the interviews, we have used the following resources, mostly for the accumulation of data on the firefighter population:

• National Fire Protection Association reports on 1997 Fire Loss in the United States and United States Fire Department Profile obtained from the Federal Emergency Management Agency/United States Fire Administration.
• Statistics on Firefighter mortality collected by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
• Occupation, income, education, gender, ethnicity and age statistics collected by the United States Census, 1990.
• Employment and wage estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics/Occupational Employment Statistics.
• Occupational Outlook Handbook from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• Special Report, Improving Firefighter Communications from the Federal Emergency Management Agency/United States Fire Administration, Technical Report Series.