It Starts with SA

Situational awareness affects every fireground decision you make

What do you know about situational awareness (SA)? In this column, we’ll develop a working definition of SA, including the “human performance cycle,” how we lose SA and dangers associated with doing so.

Situational Awareness Defined
SA has been studied for many years by various high-risk professions, including NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the U.S. Air Force (USAF). As a result, several definitions exist for SA. Most are very technical and difficult to understand.

The USAF’s Crew Resource Management Training (AFI-11-290) defines SA as, “a continuous perception of yourself and aircraft to the dynamic environment of flight, threats, and mission, and the ability to forecast, and then execute tasks based on that perception.”

By definition, SA is simply knowing everything that’s happening in the environment around you. It’s the combination of your perception of what has happened in the past and what’s happening in the present, and anticipating what will happen in the future. Not understanding any of these areas, or working with limited information or an inaccurate perception, can cause the breakdown of SA.

As much as we like to think how good we are as firefighters, none of us can claim that we’re aware of everything going on. Many things in our working environment, such as task saturation, poor communication, bad or limited information and misunderstood information can cause a loss of SA. Why is this important? Because SA loss is present in almost every firefighting mishap. We must recognize the signs and know what to do to adjust.

Case in point: The following excerpts from a firefighter Near-Miss Report (07-0000860) highlight the importance of practicing good SA during emergency operations:

“As the two on the hose team backed up to inform us of the situation, the floor began sagging and cavernously opening up where the floor met the wall adjacent to the burning unit. This revealed a large volume of fire in the downstairs unit directly below us. The officer of our hose team pulled the nozzleman back from the opening in the floor and our interior crew immediately backed out of the apartment.

“Approximately 2 minutes after the evacuation was ordered, the building we were working in collapsed.”

The author of the report reminds us that “situational awareness was incomplete, as is often the case at any fire.” Note: The entire report can be reviewed at http://www.firefighternearmiss.com.

Human Performance Cycle
How well you perform is a result of how well you understand the situation you’re in. SA is a result of your ability to process lots of information and to develop some kind of an idea of where you are, what is happening around you, what will soon happen around you, and what the most important tasks are that you must perform. The hose team in the above report knew where they were, recognized what was happening (large volume of fire below them), what would soon happen (floor collapse), and what the most important task was to do next (evacuate).

This “human performance cycle” begins with a quick check of your sensory inputs, such as touch, smell, taste, sound, sight, combined with a sixth sense—common sense. Remember: Your perceptions, or what you believe you know, may or may not be correct.

Figure 1 shows that the first part of the cycle, perception, involves seeing the relevant information in your environment. Sometimes you may miss the most important information because you’re working in chaotic surroundings.

Once you’ve perceived what’s going on, you quickly compare it to what is stored in your memory. If the initial perception matches with one of your memories, such as previous training or an actual event, you move to the next stage of the cycle, where you predict the immediate future. But if your perception is wrong, your prediction of what may happen next will probably be wrong too.

Now that you realize what’s likely to happen, you review potential responses to the perceived situation. Your prediction of what may happen next, whether right or wrong, will help you establish your list of priorities of what to do. If your prediction of what happens next is incorrect, then you may have the wrong response at the top of your priority list.

Finally, you begin to perform actions based on your priority list. The problem, as I discussed in a previous column, is that human factors exist at every stage in the cycle, which can reduce performance and lead to a loss of SA. Many recent accidents and near-misses in the fire service cite a lack of SA as the highest contributing factor.

Figure 1. The Human Performance Cycle
Drawing by Billy Schmidt

How We Lose SA
There are many causes for the loss of SA. Some of the more obvious ones include:

• Poor or no communication. There are numerous opportunities for a breakdown in the communication process, such as poor understanding, a lack of appropriate acknowledgements, extraneous talk, a lack of confidence causing firefighters not to speak up when situations arise, confusing terminology, and overconfidence or complacency.
• Concentrating on what is happening now and not thinking about what may be happening next. Firefighters should always be thinking, “What if?” “What if one hoseline cannot confine the fire?” “What if we need to escape; where’s our way out?”
• Fixation, or tunnel vision, causing firefighters to focus on one task to the exclusion of others. This is commonly known as “the moth to the light” syndrome.

SA Dangers
The scene of any emergency can be, and usually is, a chaotic and dangerous situation. These are the times you’re most likely to lose SA.

Some factors that can contribute to a loss of SA include the effects from weather (temperature, rain, snow, wind, fog, etc.) or the time of day, (nighttime operations can limit visibility). Unexpected events, or interruptions, during procedures or routines, such as shift change, can degrade your perception of the environment around you. Obviously, the conditions surrounding, and caused by, the event (fire, smoke, gas leak, etc.) or a lack of knowledge of the building design and construction can lead to disorientation and confusion. 

False perceptions are another area that can quickly cause an SA breakdown. Assuming, or expecting, a particular result from someone or a crew may actually lead to differing expectations. Bad or missing information from an improper radio communication or verbal comment can degrade your SA and create confusion.

Why We Lose SA
Why do we lose SA? Every emergency operation provides us with an opportunity to review what happened. Holding debriefings, or critiques, which I’ll cover in more depth in future columns, provides an opportunity to review the human performance issues during an operation, asking what we did well, and what we could do better. Identifying the root cause of any errors will help improve individual and crew SA for the future.

SA errors usually fall under one of three types: access to information, choices made based on information received, and the actual execution of a task. Figure 2 shows the three types of SA errors and some possible root causes.

Figure 2. Three types of SA Errors and some root causes.

A Final Word
SA is the ability to build and maintain the big picture, which supports our ability to make sound decisions. It helps you anticipate what may happen next. It is not something that you are born with; it must be learned and practiced for different circumstances. There are several things we can do to attain and maintain SA. The next Firefighting 360 column will discuss techniques on how to recover SA to execute safely and effectively at the emergency scene.

Billy Schmidt is a district chief assigned to the 3rd battalion with Palm Beach (Fla.) County Fire Rescue. An adjunct instructor for the department’s Training and Safety Division, he has a bachelor’s degree in Human Resource Management and an associate’s degree in Fire Science. He’s a member of FireRescue magazine’s editorial board.