The instructor at Fire Department Instructor’s Conference was energetic, engaging and interactive. He opened the next part of his presentation with “… what did we learn from the XYZ City event” — silence (crickets).
He persisted, “… you know the incident where the second search team found a bigger safety hazard.” More silence. “How many have heard about (the full formal name of the incident)?” A few hands went up.
Wow. This multiple-firefighter fatality incident occurred three-and-a-half years earlier and made national news for a couple of days. Departments made operational changes based on the lessons learned from this tragedy. Most of the attendees at the FDIC presentation did not remember the incident.
Memory
Memory is our ability to encode, store, retain and subsequently recall information and past experiences in the human brain. It is the sum total of what we remember. Memory gives us the capability to learn and adapt from previous experiences as well as to build relationships.
It is how Recognized Prime Decision Making works when making emergency scene decision-making, using the ability to remember past experiences, and the power or process of recalling to mind previously learned facts, experiences, impressions, skills, and habits.
History
Every society has its collective and individual memories, history is a more self-selective and conscious enterprise. Historian Pierre Nora defines history as a means with which modern societies organize their past that they will otherwise forget because they are driven by change.
For that FDIC instructor, the XYZ City event remains a vivid memory. For the attendees, it represents a historic LODD incident. The key to preserving those hard-earned emergency service lessons is to provide context, connection, and emotion.
Context
Provide the “why” this lesson learned is important. For example, the six greater alarm structure fires at multifamily Type IV buildings under construction in 2017 featured explosive fire development that overwhelmed the first alarm crews. Significant resources were needed, the equivalent of a big-city 5th alarm assignment. Each incident generated a loss of $20 million or more.
Another “why” is found in the NIOSH line-of-duty investigations where they note that a thermal imaging camera was present but not used, on-scene but broken or the firefighter was not competent using the tool.
Connection
Link the lesson learned to your department’s environment. California departments in the wildland/urban interface have been reviewing best practices for air tanker operations after Battalion Chief Matthew Burchett was killed August 13, 2018, under a retardant drop at the Mendocino Complex fire north of San Francisco.
The footage shows what happens when a CAL FIRE Grumman S2-T air tanker carrying 9,000 pounds or 4.5 tons of flame retardant releases its load on an SUV during a low-drop flyover. The vehicle buckles, teeters and rocks back and forth on its wheels from the force of the retardant crashing to the ground during the flyby. An accompanying message poses a question: What would the SUV look like if the plane needed to drop 85 tons of flame retardant on a wildfire?
Emotion
Link the lesson learned to an emotional hook with the student. This varies by individual, but Steve Crothers finds value in telling What, How and When stories.
Stories are intended to educate, entertain, engage, and inspire your students into action. The power of a story is profound and can dramatically change your ability to share your message. Students are much more likely to remember a certain idea if they can relate to it by understanding how it played out in a story.
American poet Maya Angelou best summed it up by saying, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
A new book provides an oral history of 9/11 as these events “… are shifting from memory to history.”
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Nora Pierre. 1989 Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations (26) 7-24.
Fox, Justin (2019 February 13) Why America’s New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same: Cheap stick framing has led to a proliferation of blocky, forgettable mid-rises—and more than a few construction fires. Bloomburg Businessweek
Picture of Avalon at Edgewater NJ apartment fire.
Starnes, Andrew (2018 April 3) Thermal Imaging Cameras in the Fire Service: Asset or Detriment? You Decide. Fire Apparatus Journal (3) 21
Thompson, Don (2018 September 14) Utah firefighter’s death caused by retardant drop from 747. The Salt Lake Tribune.
Crothers, Steve (2019 February 02) The Power of Using Stories When Instructing. FireRescue Magazine (2)15.
Political cartoon by Dave Granlund.com (2018 September 10)
The World staff (2019 September 11) Remembering how America experienced 9/11. Public Radio International.
Graff, Garrett (2019) The Only Plane In the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Featured Image from 2014 FDIC