#25 - Dynamic vs. Stable
Fire
The fundamental thing about fire is: It’s dynamic.
It is always actively changing.
If a fire ever stopped changing, it wouldn’t be fire.
Us
Yet, our natural assumption seems to be that things basically stay steady, stable, static. Things are changing all the time, yet catches us off guard.
There’s a phenomenon called Change Blindness, which essentially says that we are surprisingly unable to recognize changes in our environment. Even if those changes seem like they should be obvious.
The challenge before us is this: The operational environment is fundamentally dynamic, yet we often assume (and act) as if it’s stable.
The cause of all accidents
Every accident boils down to change—if no change, then no accident.
Don’t gloss over that last sentence. It’s simple. But it shows a profound truth we often miss.
If we want to understand accidents, then the fundamental thing is the changing nature of the operational environment. We need to pay attention to that.
We don’t always do that very well—not in the field, not in investigations.
Mismatch
We commonly hear about people missing warning signs, having incomplete situational awareness, or making the wrong decisions.
But it’s usually more useful to say that something changed and their situational awareness and actions were based on earlier information.
Much of the time, what really gets us into trouble is the mismatch between our minds expecting stability, and our environment being dynamic.
Dive deep into just about any accident, and you will often find this mismatch.1
The unexpected wind shift
Most southern CA burnovers involve a wind shift.
The pattern is: Firefighters engage, then the wind changes, then they get trapped. If the wind had kept going like it was when they started, everything would have been fine. (I was on the Cedar Fire (Div-C) when this happened to Steve Rucker from Novato Fire Department.) Almost all of our historical tragedies involved an “unanticipated wind shift.”
It is easy to criticize firefighters for not expecting wind shifts. The criticism is that they should have been ready for the the wind shift, based on:
Predictable local patterns,
The nature of wind,
(Like fire, wind is constantly changing. If it’s not actively changing, it’s not wind. In contrast, water and earth can be still. Wind and fire fundamentally must move and change or they stop existing).
The history of wind shifts causing firefighter fatalities.
From the outside, this all seems straightforward.
Why then, do wind shifts keep catching firefighters off guard?
Could it be that deep down, we don’t think wind is dynamic?
That is, maybe we understand at a conceptual level that wind is always changing. But, when we get into action, we tend to revert to what is most natural.
And here is what’s most natural for us: We assume things will keep doing what they are already doing—keep going how they are already going.
Spanish Ranch (1979)
The 1979 Spanish Ranch Fire is a good example. We used to visit the accident site as a crew because it was close to our station near Santa Barbara. You stand up on the ridge looking down and your first reaction is you wonder why anybody would put themselves upslope of the fire, with nothing but dry fuel between you and the fire. But if you try to imagine yourself in the moment, step by step hiking up there: You know the fire was running away from them when they engaged. You see how this could have lulled them into a spot where they didn’t have a good way out when the wind shifted. You tell yourself you’d never make the same mistake. Then you remember all the times a windshift caught you a little off-guard.
Default setting
A hotshot superintendent once told me if I wanted to sharpen my skills as a firefighter, I should sit in a field and watch how the wind moves across the grass, and see how often it changes, eddies and surprises you.
I tried it.
Like I said, I knew in my head that the wind changes. Yet, experientially, I was surprised at just how much it changed. I was expecting change and looking for it—but it still kept catching me off guard. When I was looking for change, I noticed it more quickly.
And yet, somehow my mind kept slipping back to the assumption that wind is basically unchanging. This doesn’t make sense, but it seems to be our default setting.
So what?
Acknowledging the dynamic aspect of your operational environment changes how you approach it.
It changes how you train, how you think about rules and policy, how you learn from failure, how you do investigations.
You focus more on
recognizing changing conditions early,
communicating about them effectively,
adapting constantly.
This is a totally different mindset than being trapped by the unspoken belief that things are basically stable.
See this footnote for an example: 2
Simple but essential
This is why it’s so important to keep emphasizing how fire is dynamic (you can replace “fire” with whatever your operational environment is).
We tend to assume: Fire is basically stable. Our default assumption is absurd, yet naturally we keep reverting to it. This very natural, very human mistake is a costly one. It takes a toll in how we operate, communicate, learn and train.
But the flip side to this is also true: If you use the DARC lens (see previous post), you can clarify problems and solutions you didn’t see before.
I explored this idea in the 2&7 Tool article, you can find it here: https://www.firelinefactors.com/resources
For example: As a young firefighter I was taught that I needed Lookouts, Communication, Escape Routes and a Safety Zone (LCES). I was taught to make sure LCES was in place, and to check it and recheck it regularly while working.
When we studied accidents, we often talked like the people involved failed to put their LCES in place.
But as I studied accidents, talked to survivors, and looked at my own experience, I saw something different.
I saw that people put their LCES safety measures in place, then the fire changed, and their mitigations were no longer adequate. But they kept thinking your LCES was in place. So the problem was not so much that people skip their safety measures. No, instead, the problem I saw was that we fail to recognize and adapt to change. That is a very different kind of problem.
So, when I was fighting fire, whenever I checked my LCES, I would also force myself to ask what was changing, and whether my safety measures were still appropriate.
(For specifics, check out the article, The Intent of LCES, available at https://www.firelinefactors.com/resources).
In other words, I recognized my natural inclination to underestimate change. And I mitigated that by creating a new habit, by training myself to routinely look for change in my operational environment.
This was a lot more powerful than the standard advice to “make sure my LCES was in place.”
Of course, there’s no guarantee I’d get it right. But you don’t get any guarantees in a DARC environment. The point is to give yourself the best chance to succeed in an environment that is fundamentally dynamic and risky.
This example also shows that you can open up new avenues of training and development, just by looking through the DARC lens.