Evaluating Four Higher Order Causes of U.S. Firefighter Line-of-duty Deaths PDF Download

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Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
Over the past thirty years, firefighting equipment, procedures, and training have improved, and the overall U.S. firefighter death rate has declined. However, in the category of traumatic injury on the fireground, the U.S. firefighter fatality rate is increasing. The problem was that it was not clear why this is so. The purpose of the present research was to test a set of higher-order causes, also known as root causes, which were derived from firefighter fatality case studies, against recent firefighter fatality case studies in order to evaluate the usefulness of the higher-order causes in understanding the U.S. firefighter line-of-duty-death (LODD) problem. Evaluative research was used to answer the questions: Does the set of higher-order causes apply to recent LODD events? And, how could the set of higher-order causes be used to improve firefighter safety? This research first looked at the distribution of Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation Prevention Program (FFFIPP) recommendations for medical incidents and vehicle℗Ư related trauma incidents in order to check some conclusions on which the root cause analysis was based. The applicability of each of the four higher-order causes was then evaluated for all trauma incidents. Although the distribution of vehicle-related FFFIPP recommendations differed from that on which the root cause analysis was based, the set of higher-order causes was found to be applicable to all of the incidents studied. Four recommendations were developed: use the Four Higher-Order Causes as a training tool, strive to replace an ideal of sacrifice with the values of competence and devotion to duty, fireground heat injury prevention, and redefine "vehicle℗Ư related" LODD incidents in future FFFIPP studies.