Gordon Graham here again, and thanks for taking the time to visit this little “Risky Ramblings” corner of this great website and spend a couple of minutes taking a look at this column. I am fortunate to get the opportunity to give you some thoughts – things to ponder – regarding your noble profession and perhaps give you some ideas to assist you in your goal of getting better at what you do and possibly preventing problems before they occur. That is what real risk management is all about!

The title of this piece should be a dead giveaway for the direction I am going. My original title: “What the (Heck) Are They Thinking About” (and you will have to play substitute for the third word in that sentence) would not have gotten past the editor of this site, so I toned it down to “Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest.”

So let me start with “dumb” with the summary of a recent story out of the Orange County Register.

A charter boat crew member choked to death after swallowing a bait fish as a joke in front of elementary schoolchildren during a field trip to the Port of Long Beach, authorities said Wednesday.

"[This crew member] was trying to be lighthearted when he put this thing in his mouth," said a fire department representative. "But it became an airway obstruction, and he lost consciousness and went into full cardiac arrest."

He was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy determined that "this was an accident," he said.

"The cause of death was listed as aspiration of fish."

And while I am not the brightest person you will ever meet, somehow I have this idea in my head that “aspirating a fish” is not a really smart thing to do. And, of course, some firefighter had to come to the scene and look at the aftermath of this guy being “dumb.”  And for you and me as first responders, we have witnessed “dumb” behaviors like this before. 

My “favorite” (and that is probably the wrong word) was the idiot who wanted to prove to a CHP officer (not me) that he was not under the influence and that he had great balance, and (without warning) he jumped on the guardrail — on a freeway over- crossing — and you can imagine how that one ended. But you can expect that from members of our public; some of them are just “dumb.”

So let me switch gears to a story out of my former profession. And over the years some of the stuff I participated in (when I was younger) fell into this category. And I will entitle this one “dumber” — slightly elevated above the “dumb” level.

A prisoner escaped from a constable and drove off in the constable's car.

The prisoner was starting to resist in the back seat of the car and the constable got out of the car for some reason, said a local chief of police.

The prisoner then jumped into the driver's seat and drove off, the chief said.

The vehicle was near a judge's office where the prisoner was scheduled for an arraignment on a robbery charge.

He was last seen wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. He was shackled and cuffed.

And this story may be of some value to all of you who have to leave your department vehicle unattended — even for a moment.  People will see that your vehicle is unattended, and you might get seriously embarrassed. So, don’t be “dumber.” If you have to leave a department vehicle unattended, make sure that people will not be able to drive it off or steal drugs (yes, it’s happened), chainsaws (yes, this has happened also), turnouts (yes, this has happened as well) or other department equipment off the vehicle. The theft of your vehicle will have some consequences — mostly embarrassment — to you for quite a while.

And “dumbest” (at least for this week) comes out of your profession, although law enforcement wins this award often. I have once or twice myself — and this will probably get some of you a bit angry — but please think it through before you send me your hate mail. 

Here is a scenario for you. When you are “responding” in a 60,000 lb. piece of apparatus at forty to fifty miles an hour there is a tremendous amount of “energy” involved. So the goal should be to do this “responding” as little as possible — reducing exposure time.

So take the time to read this piece from way back East, where apparently they do things just a bit differently.

Trying to build up data on response times, fire trucks were sent out last week on mock calls throughout town with their lights and sirens activated to see how far they could get in four minutes, a nationally recognized standard for firefighting.

But the move caught police brass off guard, prompting them to call for the practice to stop because of safety and liability concerns.

"We would never support going lights and sirens in an emergency vehicle without a bona fide emergency," the police chief said. "We expressed our concern to them and they stopped."

So let me see if I get this right. Let’s use public roadways with cross-traffic, drivers with headphones on, drivers with loud radios, motorcyclists with helmets that restrict side vision, pedestrians, kids, and animals running about to do a planning exercise that is high risk in nature. Maybe I am way off base here, but this seems pretty dumb to me.

Vehicle operations (including high- speed vehicle operations) are the No. 2 cause of death in your profession — so why would you want that huge “exposure” to see how long it takes to get to a call that is non existent? It seems to me that this “time to scene” could be accessed from dispatch records — past, current and future; and that is manifestly safer than running across city streets with lights and sirens blazing.

And speaking of traffic collisions, as I read the stories involving some of your collisions, I have just a couple of thoughts for you.

I am winding down now, but here are a couple of closing thoughts.

1. You can’t help people on scene if you don’t get there.

2. When you are involved in such a collision, you tie up other first responders who now must roll to your event.

3. You have a policy on how to clear an intersection when the traffic light is red. Know the policy and follow it — not some of the time, not most of the time, but all of the time. Stop!

4. If you are the “right front seat” supervisor, remember that every time you ignore inappropriate behavior you have ratified that inappropriate behavior. And if you ignore bad behavior often enough, that deviation will become the norm and it is just a matter of time before you have a tragedy.

5. You are part of a noble profession. Please take the time to work safely.

Sadly, “memory markers” will be learned after things go bad, but these “markers” deteriorate over time; so please talk about “proper” response techniques on a regular basis. Again, the stakes ( read: consequences to all involved) are too high to allow “dumbest” behaviors like this to occur in any organization in your profession.

So do your profession a favor, and learn from this as we try to learn from any tragedy and make the goal: " Never Forget and Never Again."

That is all for now. Until I see you again, please take the time to work safely; and thank you for all you do.

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