National and International Changes in Fire and Rescue Services in the UK - Case Study Example

Management and Leadership [Name of the Writer] [Name of the Institution] Management and Leadership Introduction The main causes of fires vary by community, city or region. In UK, which experiences its peak fire season from October to March, most fires are intentionally set, according to the Fire Department. Other top causes include electrical problems, combustibles too close to a heating unit, discarded smoking materials and cooking. Nationwide, the top five causes of fatal fires are careless smoking, misuse of space heaters, careless cooking, electrical problems and fireplaces, candles and wood-burning stoves, according to the fire commissioner. In this year's campaign, National Fire Protection officials emphasize three key safety measures: > Install and test smoke alarms. > Devise a home escape plan and practice it. > Inspect homes for potential hazards and eliminate them. Responsibilities of Fire Manager Enter the fire manager or fire marshal together with deputies; they should sweep their designated areas to ensure that everyone has responded to the alarm. Each manager's area should take no more than one minute to check. Managers need more in-depth training than other members of staff. (McCaffrey, 2008; 12-19) All members of staff should be trained in the use of portable extinguishers (see panel entitled `Things you need to know about fire extinguishers, opposite). Where possible, a hands-on demonstration is desirable. Before using any extinguisher, always ensure the alarm has been raised. Never put yourself at risk and always keep a door behind you when attempting to fight a fire. Urban fire services are among the fiercest moralizers of the modern world. Against society's quagmire of compromisers and phone stand the firefighters, skilled in his craft, relentless in his selfless quest to protect the innocent. Against the swirl and shoddiness of modem life, the fire service presents a vision of a world properly designed and of a people well behaved. Urban fire stories are thus profoundly social narratives. People interact with people; the firefighters are a rescuer, the rugged savoir of a helpless victim. If the threatening flames shrivel away, something else can serve the same purpose; bombs, car wrecks, hazardous spills. In novels and personal narratives-Dennis Smith's Report From Engine Co. 82 or Larry Brown's On Fire, for example-the conflict, the moral drama, is an encounter between people, mediated by fire. (McCaffrey, 2008; 12-19) The firefighters are themselves members of a tightly knit brotherhood, almost monkish, bound not only by training and uniforms but also by unions and an intricate internal hierarchy. For firefighters, fire season is a time in their lives, an autumn between adolescence and adulthood, when for a few summers they go into the woods, fight fire, and then leave. It is a rite of passage, not a vocation. Its base narrative is a coming-of-age story, which, for all the camaraderie, resides within the individual. Given the dynamic nature of fire and fuel treatment programs such as prescribed burning, the diagrams used in our community surveys were rather static, two-dimensional representations. One was the growing awareness that to fulfil the Endangered Species Act requirement to recover the spotted owl, there was a need to protect these old-growth forests from fire (Pyne, 2008). Another was the idea that if the agency and society were to forego harvesting of these commercially valuable old-growth trees, it would be wasteful to just let them burn up because of a lack of fire prevention and fire suppression. Furthermore, it was the movement within the agency toward ecosystem management that recognized the forests were more than a collection of multiple uses, and rather were unique natural environments that represented interconnected wildlife habitat and watersheds. Finally, the U.K. Forest Service was recognizing its stakeholders included people who may never have set foot on the national forest, but were vehement in their views of how their public forests should be managed. (Kumagai, 2007; 28-32) This could be addressed by expanding survey sampling from just forest visitors to the general public; essentially, the taxpayers who were paying the bills for the management of the national forests could be given a voice through these surveys. These passive users of the national forests often received benefits from knowing that old growth species existed and their habitat was preserved, whether from logging or forest fires. Fire and Rescue Services in U.K, In principle, people can control everything about urban fire. They can choose their building materials (fuels), they can arrange the buildings in blocks to frustrate fire spread, they can replace open flame with other ignition sources, and they can quickly attack, confine, and extinguish any fiery breakout. When towns were made of wood and thatch-when they were reconstituted they burned like fires. But engineering, building codes and the wholesale replacement of combustibles by pre-fired materials like brick have strangled flame from the urban landscape. Only a fraction of calls that nominal "firefighters" now roll out of the station to answer are, in fact, fires. All this makes for an easily constructed moral universe because it means fire results from breakdowns in the social or ethical order. The context is one of people behaving foolishly, or maliciously, or selfishly. Fires track the fissures in the built landscape, breaking through where corrupt politics, fraudulent insurance firms, serial arson, or riots strew combustible litter and cast their torches. Every part of Britain is covered by a local authority fire service, which is subject to some general oversight by central government. In Great Britain, the cost is shared between local authorities and central government, the latter contributing through the revenue support grant. In Northern Ireland, the fire service is financed wholly from central government funds. (Kumagai, 2007; 28-32) Each of the 64 fire authorities must by law makes provision for fire-fighting, and maintains a brigade of sufficient strength to meet all normal requirements. (In some parts of Scotland combined authorities provide fire cover.) Other authorities also maintain fire brigades, for instance, the Army and Royal Air Force Departments of the Ministry of Defence; the Civil Aviation Authority at airports; and some large industrial and commercial concerns. These work in co-operation with the local authority fire services. Each minister is advised by a Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council, comprising the respective home departments, local authorities, fire service representative organisations and certain specialist advisers. In the home departments inspectorates of fire services advise on operational and technical matters. Most fire brigades include part-time personnel who provide fire cover in less densely populated areas in return for a retaining fee and call-out and attendance fees. Fire authorities also employ people for duties in controls, communications, and mobilising and staff duties. There are about 37,000 full-time and 14,000 part-time operational members of fire brigades in Britain (Flint, 2008). The standardisation of some equipment is encouraged to assist compatibility when a fire is attended by more than one brigade. The principal types of fire-fighting appliances bought by fire authorities are based upon specifications approved by the Secretaries of State and issued in the form of advice by the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Councils. The specifications aim to describe the minimum standards required while allowing some freedom of design. Each fire authority must appoint a Chief Fire Officer (Firemaster in Scotland) who exercises day-to-day control from brigade headquarters. Divisional officers in charge of the geographical areas into which most brigade regions are divided are responsible for mobilising forces. Constant communication is maintained between divisional and brigade headquarters. If additional resources are required to deal with an incident, neighbouring divisions, or a neighbouring fire brigade, are asked to provide assistance. The direct cost of damage to buildings and goods destroyed by fires in Britain in 1989 amounted to an estimated 792.4 million Pounds. (McCaffrey, 2008; 12-19) (Consequential losses from the interruption of business are not included in this total.) Most fires involving heavy losses occur when the premises are unattended, and fires are more likely to start in storage areas than in production departments. Industries which suffer most severely include engineering and electrical firms; textiles; food, drink and tobacco warehousing; chemical and allied industries; paper, printing and publishing firms; and retailing. Fire prevention must be the central objective, so an awareness of how and where fires could start is a basic necessity. When considering workplace fire prevention many people will inform you that they have extinguishers, alarms systems, smoke detectors and so on. On closer examination we see that all these items are only useful after the fire has started. We need to be more positive and look at procedures and systems that are, or should be, in place to prevent the fire starting. National and International Changes in Fire and Rescue Services Various social groups and farming-related entities have seen their financial situations deteriorate because of changes in the political system. Volunteer firefighters, members of the Voluntary Fire Brigades, set wasteland on fire because they are paid for the specific time when they respond to emergencies. Arsonists also include the unemployed and seasonal forest workers employed after outbreaks of fire. Another group of individuals and entities responsible for the growing number of fires includes employees of die former State Agricultural Farms. The farms' bankruptcy and the European Union grants (after 2004) have increased the acreage of wasteland and uncultivated land along with the unemployment rate. As a result, the number of fires in these areas grew from approximately 5,000 in 1994 to about 53,000 in 2003. (Lawrence, 2008; 191-218) The worst situation was in 1996 when fire extending from nonforest areas was the cause behind 28% of wildfires in the State Forests all over the country (Pyne, 2008). An analysis of previous social campaigns aimed at eradicating harmful practices indicated that communicating adverse health-related consequences and displaying negative impacts on the environment had failed to reduce the number of arson-caused fires. Adults' attitudes toward grass burning, including those of farmers and allotment owners, have been entrenched for decades. High unemployment, compounded by uncertainties associated with economic and political change, heightened the tendency among some segments of society to set wastelands ablaze. The Regional State Forest Management expected tangible results in year 1 of the project even though changing people's attitudes and conduct via education and information takes a long time. (Lawrence, 2008; 191-218) It was necessary to employ solutions taking advantage of a series of simple but effective psychological mechanisms shown to yield prompt results. Had the projects not been continued in subsequent years, however, the results would have been short-lived. The projects used the rule of commitment and consistency, considered by social psychologists as some of the most effective elements of persuasion. (Cialdini 2007). Owing to the resultant synergy, the efforts proved extremely effective. The intention was to put an immediate stop to arson using a direct mail strategy described later and by pressure from family and peers. It was planned to ensure a permanent change in attitudes by educating children and adolescents. Conclusion No one can predict when a critical incident might happen or how people will respond to it. A crisis amplifies your role as manager and trains all eyes on you. The expectations are that you will lead. Will you be prepared to do so? The answer to this question, in large part, may be determined by actions you take now, before a crisis hits. If your office does not have a critical incident response policy in place, make it happen. Identify resources in your area willing to assist you and your staff. Talk with other managers who have formulated policies and who have weathered critical incidents like Buncefield. Learn from their experiences. Gets a pre-incident education program going. Involve staff members at all levels. And, finally, do a personal inventory of your coping skills and how well they have served you. Identify other resources you think might help you personally in the event of a crisis. References Caldini, R. 2007. Influence: The psychology of persuasion. HarperCollins, New York. 320 p Flint, C.G. and A.E Luloff. 2008. "Natural Resource-Based Communities, Risk and Disaster: An Intersection of Theories." Society and Natural Resources 18: 399-412. Kumagai, Y, M.S. Carroll, and PJ. Cohn. 2007. "Coping with Interface Wildfire as a Human Event: Lessons from the Disaster/Hazards Literature." Journal of Forestry 102(6):28-32. Lawrence, C. 2008. Fire Company staffing requirements: An analytic approach. Fire Tech. 37 191–218. McCaffrey, S. 2008. "Fighting Fire with Education: What Is the Best Way to Reach Out to Homeowners." Journal of Forestry 102(5):12-19. Pyne, S.J. 2008. Year of the fires: The story of the great fires of 1910. New York, NY: Viking. Read More