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1) Nope, I was not aware they added "and Prevention" to the CDC's name...why do I always get caught when I don't do a thorough fact check? 
The name was changed, for the record, in October of 1992...
2) No one organization is the "right" organization to conduct an investigation since they will all tend to have their own political biases.
IAFF will determine it was a labor shortage and the city's inadequate funding.
NFPA will decide it was a failure in engineering standards.
FEMA will decide it was because FEMA knows all the local fire chief is a boob.
NIOSH will be having spasms because they're used to primarily dealing with predictable industrial and construction processes that can be well planned and prepared for in advance.
The City will be told by it's weenie attorney that come hell or highwater, it has to be their opinion the Firefighters screwed up.
NVFC will be, well, as usual missing in action.
Many LODDs do not need very extensive "fire service" investigation. When a 14 year old riding a bicycle gets hit, or a 75 year old drops dead right there of a cardiac arrest it's not a good use of resources to spend any more time on the matter than noting it in the database.
A pretty big segment of the LODDs are (or should) already be getting a fairly technical and outside agency review -- most State Police agencies are pretty good at investigating commercial truck accidents and Fire Trucks ain't that much different. They either are already or should be producing reports that include accident reconstruction of the speed of the apparatus, mechanical failures, roadway failures, actions of other drivers, department training, department maintenance, etc. Same goes for Firefighters struck in traffic.
Most cardiac and similiar sudden death aren't really candidates for individual investigations -- gather lots of details, autopsies, etc. I'm not worried about the 55+ deaths. The 18-45 sudden death and hospitalization / disability / etc from medical reasons is worth gathering extensive, long term data on to try and analyze patterns. Those can be approached epidimeologically (did I just butcher the spelling of that?)
That leaves about 1/3rd of the LODDs that could reasonably use either a dedicated, persistent investigator who pieces together the parts from each specialist's areas...or a Board of Inquiry type deal with multiple groups represented.
We have very few LODDs directly attributable to (fire service) engineering failures today -- thank you, NFPA & ISO even if they're a bit over the top sometimes. We can trust our pumps to pump, our ladders to not fold, our hose to not burst, our airpacks to provide air. We can gather epidemiological data on whether the bunker gear is too encapsulating or not. If some device fails though it is still a legitimate question of if the maintenance was inadequate (most likely) or is the engineering standard itself inadequate.
There is a number of failures that can be traced back to failures in basic strategy & tactics. Those can lack of experience, or lack of training, or lack of discipline, or a combination of those. Personally, those are the ones most interesting to me since we can work to eliminate that. Even if nothing can be done about experience in slow departments, there's no excuses on training and discipline. S&T failures is something fair, seasoned firefighters are in the best position to judge.
And then there are times that deaths will happen. The choices made were reasonable, the Strategies & Tactics were reasonable. Some of these can be learning experiences that cause modifications to existing procedures and new Strategy & Tactics to be developed as we realize what used to be typical is no longer reasonable -- Hackensack and Bow-String Trusses springs to mind. And sometimes, there just isn't anything we can do from a FD operational perspective -- Boston and the Hotel Vendome is an example of that. Even mitigating controls like more aggressive building inspections and computer systems that flag buildings with known dangers won't be 100% effective in identifying buildings with unknown structural flaws. These fires are perhaps the most complex, trying to figure out if we need to develop new "standard practices" in response to changing conditions or previously unrecognized problems...or if it was truly just plain bad luck.
Matt
The name was changed, for the record, in October of 1992...2) No one organization is the "right" organization to conduct an investigation since they will all tend to have their own political biases.
IAFF will determine it was a labor shortage and the city's inadequate funding.
NFPA will decide it was a failure in engineering standards.
FEMA will decide it was because FEMA knows all the local fire chief is a boob.
NIOSH will be having spasms because they're used to primarily dealing with predictable industrial and construction processes that can be well planned and prepared for in advance.
The City will be told by it's weenie attorney that come hell or highwater, it has to be their opinion the Firefighters screwed up.
NVFC will be, well, as usual missing in action.
Many LODDs do not need very extensive "fire service" investigation. When a 14 year old riding a bicycle gets hit, or a 75 year old drops dead right there of a cardiac arrest it's not a good use of resources to spend any more time on the matter than noting it in the database.
A pretty big segment of the LODDs are (or should) already be getting a fairly technical and outside agency review -- most State Police agencies are pretty good at investigating commercial truck accidents and Fire Trucks ain't that much different. They either are already or should be producing reports that include accident reconstruction of the speed of the apparatus, mechanical failures, roadway failures, actions of other drivers, department training, department maintenance, etc. Same goes for Firefighters struck in traffic.
Most cardiac and similiar sudden death aren't really candidates for individual investigations -- gather lots of details, autopsies, etc. I'm not worried about the 55+ deaths. The 18-45 sudden death and hospitalization / disability / etc from medical reasons is worth gathering extensive, long term data on to try and analyze patterns. Those can be approached epidimeologically (did I just butcher the spelling of that?)
That leaves about 1/3rd of the LODDs that could reasonably use either a dedicated, persistent investigator who pieces together the parts from each specialist's areas...or a Board of Inquiry type deal with multiple groups represented.
We have very few LODDs directly attributable to (fire service) engineering failures today -- thank you, NFPA & ISO even if they're a bit over the top sometimes. We can trust our pumps to pump, our ladders to not fold, our hose to not burst, our airpacks to provide air. We can gather epidemiological data on whether the bunker gear is too encapsulating or not. If some device fails though it is still a legitimate question of if the maintenance was inadequate (most likely) or is the engineering standard itself inadequate.
There is a number of failures that can be traced back to failures in basic strategy & tactics. Those can lack of experience, or lack of training, or lack of discipline, or a combination of those. Personally, those are the ones most interesting to me since we can work to eliminate that. Even if nothing can be done about experience in slow departments, there's no excuses on training and discipline. S&T failures is something fair, seasoned firefighters are in the best position to judge.
And then there are times that deaths will happen. The choices made were reasonable, the Strategies & Tactics were reasonable. Some of these can be learning experiences that cause modifications to existing procedures and new Strategy & Tactics to be developed as we realize what used to be typical is no longer reasonable -- Hackensack and Bow-String Trusses springs to mind. And sometimes, there just isn't anything we can do from a FD operational perspective -- Boston and the Hotel Vendome is an example of that. Even mitigating controls like more aggressive building inspections and computer systems that flag buildings with known dangers won't be 100% effective in identifying buildings with unknown structural flaws. These fires are perhaps the most complex, trying to figure out if we need to develop new "standard practices" in response to changing conditions or previously unrecognized problems...or if it was truly just plain bad luck.
Matt
, We currently use Surviveair and these were specificly mentioned?????
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