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Examining the Implications of National Doctrine for the Fire Service
Tom LaTourretteIAFC Leadership Summit
11-4-05
This briefing represents RAND research but has not undergone RAND quality assurance review
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Emergency Responder Research at RAND • New York City-RAND Fire Project
• Emergency responder safety and health (NIOSH)
– Terrorism lessons learned
– Responder community views
– Safety management
– Injury and fatality analysis
– R&D roadmap
• Emergency response performance requirements for terrorist attacks
• Gilmore Commission work assessing domestic response to WMD
• Crime fighting technology
• Approaches to reducing homicide/gun crimes
• Readiness of local emergency response agencies
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IAFC Approached RAND to Examine the Issue of National Guidance for the Fire Service
• Concern that the fire service faces a growing need for proactive, long term direction
• Federal government increasingly involved in creating fire service policy and expectations
• Desire for fire service to take charge of its own direction and develop new ideas for policy, procedures, and service unity
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The Role of the Fire Service Has Continually Evolved
• Originally "put the wet stuff on the red stuff"
• Role evolved as new responsibilities emerged– Fire prevention– Emergency medical service– Hazmat– General community safety
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The Fire Service Has Increasing Importance at the National Level
• Fire service generally leads disaster response– Range of operational capabilities– Incident command and coordination ability
• Need for disaster response growing– Increasing impact of natural disasters– Emerging significance of terrorist threat
• Fire service has heightened national responsibilities– Does this warrant further change?
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The Fire Service Has a Tradition of Local Response
• Fire service grew and evolved from local origins
• Operational and management policies and procedures largely developed locally
• Allows fire service to remain responsive to local needs and constraints
• Results in heterogeneous procedures and expectations, difficulty in defining resource requirements, and unnecessary duplication of effort
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Is There a Need For National Doctrine in the Fire Service?
• What is doctrine?– High-level principles and concepts (not rules)
that guide operational planning and decisionmaking
– Authoritative but not prescriptive
– Definitive enough to guide specific operation, but general enough to apply to diverse circumstances
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National Doctrine Could Influence Operations
• National doctrine could address command, operations, equipment, and safety & health
• Benefits could include improved interoperability (fire-fire, fire-other local, local-state-federal), better mutual aid planning, improved guidance for resource requirements
• Must remain flexible enough to accommodate local needs
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Example: Doctrine Could Address ICS
• Facilitate the development and implementation of mutual assistance agreements among collaborating emergency response agencies
• Help prepare local commanders to manage multi-service, multi-jurisdiction, multi-tier (local-state-federal) response efforts
• Emphasize span of control and scalability
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Example: Doctrine Could Address Risk Management
• Designate appropriate decisionmaking level (e.g., individual, company, department, national) for– Operational procedures– Deployment/dispatch practices– Communications protocols– Personal protection and safety
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Diversity of Fire Service Complicates Development of Doctrine
• Because it is locally based, fire service varies along several dimensions– Career vs. volunteer– Large vs. small departments– Urban vs. rural– Inclusion of EMS
• Fire service-wide doctrine must be appropriate for all
• Military does not have the same degree of diversity
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Assessing the Consequences of National Doctrine
• Link operational manifestation of potential doctrine options to fire service performance– Characterize fire service operations– Develop metrics– Develop simulation tools– Calibrate analysis with available data, e.g.,
• Existing department-level doctrine• Call statistics• Injury data
– Assess anticipated impact of doctrine options on local and national performance
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Impediments to Implementation
• Nominally attractive options may face impediments– Transition complexity or cost– Sustained costs– Governance/legal issues
• Look for ways to overcome impediments– Phased implementation– Research and development of new technologies
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Government Relations
• National fire service doctrine will require increased coordination and cooperation among fire agencies and between fire and other emergency services
• Not new to fire service, but may require more formal inter-agency relationships– Examine possible structural changes in fire
service/emergency response organization