Analysis of Fireground Standard Operating Guidelines/Procedures Compliance for Austin Fire Department

Abstract

There is general belief that the rate of firefighter injury can be lowered by creating fire service cultures where firefighters more closely follow their training and standard operating guidelines (SOGs). That is, there is a desire to minimize cases where firefighters operate outside of the SOGs. Interestingly, there is scant data on the rate of adherence to SOGs in the fire service. In an attempt to better understand the compliance to fireground standard operating guidelines, an analysis of firefighter compliance to Austin Fire Department’s guidelines was performed. We analyze over 1000 survey responses taken from Austin firefighters on fireground operations over a 1.5 year time frame. This paper does not critique the department’s procedures or the officers’ actions, but simply reports the compliance data and discusses some implications of the data. Austin Fire Department (AFD) in the process of creating their current version of standard operating guidelines developed an initial tactical function assignment rule called the “90/10” rule. This rule states that in 90% of situations, personnel are expected to comply with their SOG specified initial tactical functions. Although this rule was proposed several years ago there had not been testing to indicate if the rule was being upheld. By analyzing the initial tactical functions, we first discuss the rate of adherence to the 90/10 rule. We then conducted a more in-depth study to test if other SOG directives (e.g., tactics) are complied to with the same frequency. There were three specific tactics studied – a size-up tactic, a primary firefighter safety tactic, and a fire attack tactic - which had varying ranges of compliance compared to the “90/10” rule. After examining the compliance data, computer simulations were conducted on the fire attack tactic to better understand how a change in the tactic could affect firefighter working conditions.