In 2004, the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation developed the 16 Life-Safety Initiatives that are at the core of the Everyone Goes Home program. The program's goal was to reduce firefighter fatalities by 25% in five years and 50% in 10 years. Still there were 114 firefighter line-of-duty deaths in 2008. This is four less than in 2007 but more than the 107 in 2004, when the program was formed.

As part of the 2009 Fire/EMS Safety, Health and Survival Week, Region 9 advocate Ron Dennis has been tasked with educating fire-service leaders on the Courage to be Safe Program, which discusses how family members must live with the consequences of a firefighter death and provides a focus on the need for firefighters and officers to change fundamental attitudes and behaviors.

You were tasked with reaching the leaders of the fire and emergency services. Why?

My focus is on leadership because — regardless of rank — we need all the leaders of the American fire service to seriously commit themselves to leading by example, to demonstrate personal accountability and to demand accountability from others. I emphasize the ABCs: attitude, behavior and commitment. If you have a positive attitude about safety and you demonstrate a commitment to safety, then that will bleed down to the rest of the organization.

Manufacturers are working hard to incorporate safety features into their products. Consequently, many manufacturers are saying it's now the responsibility of the fire chiefs to enforce the SOPs.

I think you're right. The manufacturers have increased safety aspects in apparatus and equipment, and that's one of the 16 initiatives. Still, it's the fire chief's responsibility to become aware of those safety components that are associated with new standards.

As far as SOPs, I don't think we have a lot of new procedures out there that tell us how we should act. We either put it in writing and enforce it or don't put it in writing for whatever reason. Even though the recommendations are out there, we don't practice our craft every single day at the procedural level. I think a lot of focus and attention by fire chiefs needs to be on what we already know.

Has it been a challenge to find a new way to deliver this message?

I've recently realized how effective the use of facilitation skills can be with trained firefighters who are seasoned when you're trying to preach a safety message. It's not very effective to teach firefighters everything they probably already have learned about a topic from a didactic point of view. Most of the time, the answers are already in the room.

Chief Billy Hayes and I have taught several train-the-trainer programs where we've used techniques to get through the Courage to Be Safe program. The students end up teaching themselves or reemphasizing what they already know — they know what the problems are, they already know what the solutions are and they already know what the roadblocks are to achieving safety success.

We've had discussions on how many firefighters die in vehicle accidents or privately owned vehicles. How many are ejected? If you don't have a seatbelt, you get ejected. I've never heard of anyone being ejected while wearing their seatbelt. It's a pretty simple answer.

How would you sum up the Courage to Be Safe program?

I think it's a new approach to safety solutions that started at the safety summit. It's the repackaged safety summit that we have known formally since NFPA 1500 came out, and I think it's starting to get some traction. We revised the program last year, and folks are moving forward with the message. When we go to seminars and conferences, you're starting to see the rooms filled with people.

I think Courage to Be Safe is a good program. People need to put action steps to it so organizations have a blueprint to follow. I think we will see success if we keep moving forward.

A captain in one if my classes offered a new approach to safety with his crew. He included a sentence at the bottom of his e-mail every time he sent one: "There is no higher duty placed on us than to see that our personnel return home safely at the end of every shift." We've all heard it before and said something like that, but not only did he adopt that as his e-mail credo, but several times after that class he made decisions that confirmed that commitment. I thought, if there was a way to incorporate a similar sentence in our oath, it would be a big step forward to promoting saving our own.

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