Guest MINDSETTER™ Tom Kenney: The PFD Post Incident Report

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Sunday, June 12, 2016

Guest MINDSETTER ™ Tom Kenney

Last week I wrote a piece here that warned of absolute power absolutely corrupting Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steven Pare. Well, speak of the devil, he showed his true colors and proved me right this week.

On Thursday an internal post incident report was delivered to him (and shared with the media) examining the injuries resulting from the two multiple alarm fires on the same day in late March where 14 Firefighters were injured and treated at the hospital, including 4 who were treated for cyanide poisoning. One of them, Captain Joe Fontaine, was in critical condition and hospitalized in the ICU for a week.

Post incident reports are a standard for fire departments all around the world after an incident in which a firefighter(s) is seriously injured or killed in the line of duty. The purpose of such a report is to identify the response of the entire fire department and those things that contributed to the eventual injury or death. Things that went right…as well as those things that went wrong.

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A fire or rescue scene is always unpredictable and often very chaotic. We have standard operating procedures for as many types of incidents we can imagine. It’s impossible to predict every type of incident we may be called to and also impossible to come up with a comprehensive procedure to deal with any type of emergency that would always be the best method to attack an incident. Each incident is a dynamic set of circumstances that can (and will) take surprising twists and turns. We constantly examine our methods and tactics to attempt not repeating tragic results. That is why these types of investigations and reports are so vital to improving fireground effectiveness and safety.

The 46-page report is very comprehensive. It deals with fireground conditions, tactics, equipment and as many other factors that may have had even the slightest influence on the entire chain of events up to and beyond the injuries that occurred. It was authored by a Fire Chief with 37 years of experience and two Fire Captains, both with over 25 years experience, who are Acting Battalion Chiefs. That’s around 90 years of firefighting experience!

Among the multitude of contributing factors listed were the lack of a Command Staff in the PFD and the exhaustion factor of firefighters working the new shift which calls for them to work 56 hours a week with only one full day off between shifts. For many of these firefighters, their work week consists of 70-80 hours due to forced overtime, still with only one full day to recuperate before starting all over again.

Myself and many others who know what it’s like to work in a busy fire department had predicted from day one of this new schedule that fatigue would cause many more injuries on the fireground and possibly end up causing the Line of Duty Death of one of our own.

Well, surprise, surprise but little Mr. Absolute Power, with his zero experience or knowledge of what contributes to injuries on a fireground (because he’s never been working at one), has sent the report back to the Chiefs and told them to rewrite the report because he claims that exhaustion and fatigue played no part in the injuries and that the report was laden with political rhetoric.

I guess that settles it then. I know I always take the word of no experience over a combined 90 years experience…it just makes sense!