Rod Ammon: Welcome to the ResponderSafety.com podcast, brought to you by the Emergency Responder Safety Institute, a committee of the Cumberland Valley Volunteer Firefighters Association. To remain mindful of why we do this work, we start every podcast with an update of emergency responders struck by fatalities. This is our first episode of 2024, so we have the total fatalities from last year. In 2023, 45 emergency responders were struck and killed while serving the public on our nation's roadways. 14 law enforcement officers, eight firefighters and EMS providers, 20 towing and recovery operators, and three safety service patrol or DOT personnel. We have information on the loss of these responders and a memorial tribute available at respondersafety.com/fatalityreports. Our thoughts are with their families and colleagues. Please visit respondersafety.com for more than 150 resources and training that will help you operate more safely at roadway incidents and educate the public about how to safely avoid or pass an emergency scene on the roadway. Today, we're talking about a concept that we seem to be hearing more and more about in emergency response, but may not be well understood. It's Crew Resource Management, and we're going to examine what that means, how it works, and how you can apply it in your organization's responses. Our guest is Chief Anthony Correia, who is a 47-year fire and emergency service professional specializing in extrications as a responder, particularly for complex incidents. He has taught with on-scene Training Associates and Roadway Rescue. He teaches and presents at conferences and symposia including FDIC ISFSI, Firehouse Expo, the NVFC Training Summit, MAFFC, and the Delaware Valley Regional Extrication Symposium. He participated on the IFSTA Principles of Extrication Material Review Committee. Chief Correia retired as director of the Burlington Township, New Jersey Fire Department and was fire chief in Warrensburg, Missouri. He remains an active paramedic firefighter and a member of the Burlington County USAR. He is a member of the Bucks County Highway Incident Management Team and leads the EV Traffic Incident Task Force. Chief Correia is a fire and EMS liaison for respondersafety.com. Chief, it's great to talk to you. You have quite the credentials.

Tony Correia: Good afternoon, Rod. It's experience. It's putting in the time and energy to want to be good at whatever you do and to continually know that there's always areas you can improve in.

Rod Ammon: Well, I think everybody appreciates what you do, and I've always known you as a person who's out there learning. So to get us started, what's Crew Resource Management?

Tony Correia: Crew Resource Management has five tenants of you will. There's teamwork leadership, there's communication, there's decision making, and then there's situational awareness. Now, depending on your organization, that may change a little bit. So the communication is one, you got to have two-way communication, and what that means is closed loop. So closed loop communication is, I say to you, "Rod, I want you to advance a hose line to the second floor." Rod says, "Chief, I'm going to advance a hose line to the second floor." It's making sure that we clearly understand each other, that's the main part of it. But it's also initially as you pull on scene and whether it's a motor vehicle crash or it's a fire or a medical incident, is somebody given a briefing of initially what's going on so everybody understands, and then using a two-way communication to clarify it. Team building leadership, the way I described this, the leader wants to empower his team to be successful and that makes him look good. And the team wants to be good and do a great job for the leader that makes them good. So it's a symbiotic relationship and that's an area that really can make or break the incident. But if everybody's not on the same wavelength, it's like watching a Keystone Cops movie. For your kids that don't know a Keystone Cops 1800 Google Check out Keystone Cops. But it looks like a Laura Hardy Keystone Cops movie, whereas initially, if we make that clear communication, we understand assignments, we can get a lot done. Then we need to make a decision, in our world, we call creating an incident action plan, but we also need to be able to continue to follow up and we'll talk about how situational awareness follows into that in a minute, but following up to make sure that our decision's working and because we're going to have a decision taken action, and if that doesn't work, we're going to go to plan B or C or D. And a key part of this is who's doing what? So sometimes fire or EMS agencies come on scene and they're shorthanded. So you have three serious patients in a motor vehicle crash and you only have two EMS personnel. You need to distribute the workload and you've got to prioritize workload. All right, so who's the most serious patient? Well, let's tend to them first, then who's the next most serious patient? So workload management and prioritizing it is a key part of it. And finally, as part of all this, that's a key situational awareness. In the military, they call it keeping your head on a swivel, but it's understanding what's going on, getting the big picture down to the detail, what's going on. And initially you want to make a decision, but you need to have information. So as you approach a scene, you're starting to look, what do I see? Is there one vehicle? Is it two vehicles? Is it on the roof? Is your gas leaking? All these different types of inputs that are going to give you some understanding of what you're dealing with. Do you have heavy traffic? Is it on a back road or a two lane highway? And then that gives you the ability to make your decision. And as the incident goes on, you got to be vigilant. So in the traffic incident management world, we have a motor vehicle crash on the New Jersey Turnpike. You always got to be vigilant of the upstream traffic flow because we always see, the reason we do the blocking and we put all the stuff in place is because we have people that come in that are distracted. I think Jack Sullivan has it up to like eight or nine different distractions that are normally out there. So with those distractions, we need to always be vigilant of what's going on in our environment, what changes may happen? What can we expect? Which is next to anticipate. For working on the highway is three o'clock in the afternoon and now we're getting to 3:30, 3:45, we can start anticipating increased traffic. If we're doing an extrication and we had planned for this to be 10 minutes and now it's taking you 15 minutes, you need to be anticipating is this going to work? Or do we need to go to plan B? And the final part of this right now is analysis, and that's an ongoing part of your decision making process. And as you notice, these all tie in, it's not a linear process. You get into each one of these areas of skills and knowledge based on where it's needed. And so analysis, is it working? And if it's working, okay, cool, my decision's good. If it's not working, what do we have to adapt? Is everything working or is it just part of it that we need to fix? So that's basically a synopsis of Crew Resource Management that most pilots probably get two, three days of, the forestry service gets at least four hours of to give you kind of a snapshot.

Rod Ammon: Okay, that's good. It's a lot of framework and at first blush I think about, well, that's a leader's position. And then I think about the fact that sometimes there's only two people showing up at the scene. So it seems like everybody needs to be aware of how to be part of the Crew Resource Management, I guess, right?

Tony Correia: In the airline industry, everybody from the people that clean the planes, to the mechanics, they all have some buy-in to Crew Resource Management and their perspective responsibility. So that's one of the keys. What is my responsibility? It doesn't mean you need to have an overall focus of the whole incident, but what is my responsibility? How does that plug in? Who do I have to report it to? What information should I be providing and what actions should I be taking? And in today's day and age, who's the leader? In volunteer organizations, the leader could be the guy that's been in the fire department for four years and is not an official officer. In EMS, the issue is that we're seeing people leave and we're getting new people all the time. So having something like Crew Resource Management gives you a framework, everybody has a part and everybody should have some level of training on Crew Resource Management. This is actually in the Jones of Bartlett. I'm sure it's in the other training manuals, but in Fire Officer One, there's actually a whole chapter on Crew Resource Management. So it's finally just starting to really get its due. But besides airline industry, the Coast Guard uses it. It's been in healthcare industry for probably about 20 years now because somebody goes in for surgery, they have diabetes, and we're going to amputate the left leg and instead the right leg gets amputated. So the checks and balances that go with crew resource management and the interactive processes has moved to the Coast Guard Healthcare and it's built into EMS. It's now part of the national registry and overall training and general requirements in EMS, whether it's EMT paramedic or whoever to integrate Crew Resource Management. The CPR we do that's very organized these days and they call it pit crew CPR, because it's like the pit crew at a NASCAR race where everybody has a job. Pit crew CPR really is utilizing Crew Resource Management without calling it that.

Rod Ammon: It's funny you say that because one of the things that has a question here was the fact that Crew Resource Management seems like a procedure or a set of actions, but it's about culture change in the fire service. And what do you think about that?

Tony Correia: That's where we start, because it's all about culture change. It's all about the airline industry changed because the culture was, and one of the videos that I show is about airline crashes. It's all about the culture that the pilot is in charge, you don't question him. The guys that sit in the right seat that support him are not allowed to comment. They don't provide any input, and that's all change. The culture has to be interactive and empowering. And part of this culture change is that it's nice to learn Crew Resource Management, but you need to know your job. So if you're a firefighter, you need to know your firefighting job. If you do extrication, you need to know how to do extrication. If in your EMS, you need to know how to do that. So that culture says that we need to make sure one, that we're trained. Two, that we changed the way we looked at our job responsibilities. We call the process the incident command system, and the person in charge is the incident commander. However, the last 20 years we've changed that to incident management system because it's more about the incident commander being an orchestra conductor. Everybody in the orchestra knows their job, they know it well. The Orchestra conductor just kind of makes sure that they're all in sync and they're collaborating and they do the right thing at the right time. So the horns come in when the horns are supposed to come in, the cellos come in when they're supposed to come in, they're really a coordinator and not look at themselves as being an autocrat running the show. They're really creating an environment for collaboration, and the people that are out there have to understand they're part of the team, and it's really about teamwork and making everybody successful and integrating into where your responsibility is. What I still see in emergency services at times is a little bit too much freelancing where people are not given a specific task, so they go and do what they think they should do or do what's right. So yeah, it really requires some cultural change because one of the key things about it is trust. You got to trust the incident manager, the orchestra leader knows what he's doing, giving the right information, and you got to trust that your teams that you're assigning responsibilities and tasks know what they're doing and that they're going to follow the Crew Resource Management process within the incident management structure.

Rod Ammon: Yeah, it sounds like a delicate balance for somebody who's a leader to be able to be clear and concise and at the same time be listening and balancing that communication as you mentioned. When I first heard about Crew Resource Management in the fire service, it was more about responding to fires. Now we're dealing with the roadway. Talk a little bit about the benefits and advantages of the emergency response on the roadway.

Tony Correia: As you know, what are we? 20, 25 years into doing traffic incident management. Setting up blocking, putting vehicles, understanding upstream, downstream, where to put cones, all that stuff, and no offense to anybody. And as you know, I'm a member of Responder Safety Cumberland Valley, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission Traffic Incident Management Task Force. So I drink the Kool-Aid regularly, and I believe in it wholeheartedly. But the part that I've noticed that I really missed it is the interactive process. So we teach a static process. You put your truck here, you put your ambulance here, you put the police car here, you put your cones there and all that I talked about earlier, so let's break it down. So I now go on a motor vehicle crash on the blue route. So the vehicles come and they set up, manpower is working, who is being vigilant for the upstream traffic? And that's the traffic coming towards you. Who's paying attention to make sure that the people that are maybe working on a patient in the car are not out in the roadway and that we took a lane plus one? Who's paying attention to and starting to anticipate that we're going to have increased traffic and how is that going to impact us? And so it takes the whole team to do that. It can make the difference between life and death having a dynamic process instead of a static process. So I could tell you that with the Traffic Incident Management Task Force, we regularly deal with the New Jersey Traffic Incident Management Training program as well as Pennsylvania, and they've bought into the idea that we need to start building Crew Resource Management and we just need to have a more formal process. Now, we don't believe that the Federal Highway is going to address this, which I believe they really should, but if we can do it on a state by state basis, get it down to the counties, get it down to the local, and as you said, you heard that Crew Resource Management is in a fire service. So it's an all hazards type of process to use that we can use for fires for any type of traffic incident. The three incidents that I use as examples is a hazmat incident on a roadway, a truck fire on a roadway, and an extrication. So it could be used for fires, I already said EMS uses it for CPR and for on a roadway, you can use it for any type of roadway incident to have a dynamic process and to make sure that everybody is collaborating and coordinating.

Rod Ammon: All right. So for the national, international audience, the Blue Route is Route 4 76 and it runs north mostly of Philadelphia and it's a, well, I guess four lane to six lane sometimes I'm not sure roadway that is heavily traveled and the traffic builds up, as you say, very much so during the prime times. So let's go on to some examples of how Crew Resource Management can be applied to roadway incident response.

Tony Correia: Let's start with a real simple one. Before I get to that, one of the reasons that Crew Resource Management and the reasons that we actually have errors is stress. So if I'm driving down the road, nothing's happening, no big deal. If I go to a motor vehicle crash and there's no injury, that's not a lot of stress on me. I pull up to a motor vehicle crash and there's four people in the car, they're all serious. I pull up to that motor vehicle crash, God forbid it's one of my children or somebody I know. Stress impacts your ability to make decisions. So one of the things that Crew Resource Management does for you, the benefit of Crew Resource Management is that you have a process in place that, I'm not going to say it overtakes your brain, but you have checklists that you follow to make sure that you're going down, you're going through the system, you're making things happen in a systematic manner. Once we get stressed, sometimes we freeze and we don't even realize that we froze. Crew Resource Management helps you train and integrate and synchronize with others to reduce the chance that that stress is going to negatively impact whatever incident you're working on.

Rod Ammon: Yeah, well, I think you can say it messes with your mind and we all need structure in all kinds of situations in our lives. So it sounds like Crew Resource Management's a good thing to follow. I think you had another scenario or two. One had to do with acetone.

Tony Correia: So that incident, and obviously we didn't use Crew Resource Management exactly that time. So that came in at six o'clock in the morning for overturn, acetone, tanker on route 295 southbound. The dispatcher that morning and I was working my medic job and as a medic where I worked in Hamilton, we also did hazmat and firefighting. Happened to be part of the hazmat team. He pulled out the little orange book, The Emergency Response Guide Book and start giving me information on acetone and what was going on. So if you think about it, he was gaining information, he was communicating information, he was providing me situational awareness so we could start thinking about what resources we were going to use and how we were going to use them. So we already started putting in place, let's close the highway at the two intersections that we had the ability to do that. So the overturned acetone tanker was rollover, was leaking down the hill. And what I do for all these that I haven't seen in Crew Resource Management training and maybe, and look, it's not about me, but the goal for any of us that learn something is to figure out how we can expand and make it easier for others to understand. So first thing I do is I draw out what the incident management org chart, incident command org chart is, and then what I do is put the priorities, and this is going to be key for your utilizing your Crew Resource Management. So the priorities are always if you have people, is there a patient or patients? Number two, believe it or not, is emergency personnel over civilians, because if emergency personnel get hurt or killed, they can't help manage the scene. Then civilians, then stabilize the scene, then traffic management. However, in reality, all of those, a lot of times you're going on simultaneously again in synchronization. So then what I do, so let's break this down, communication. It's a two-way communication. So the incident commander and I call him the fire chief in this one does a face-to-face for all other responders that are coming in and gets acknowledgement. "All right, engine two, I want you to set up blocking." Engine two captain goes, "Command, we're setting up blocking upstream." Rescue one, "I want you to get ready to go into service to perform extrication." Rescue one, officer to chief, "Going to go get in process to do extrication." So everybody that comes in is given their roles and responsibilities and they're communicating that. The first person is getting that windshield snapshot of what they see, whether they're pulling up to a motor vehicle crash, they're going to a fire, or they have somebody collapsed on the ground that they're responding to that call and they're briefing the incident commander. So the incident commander is doing his initial size up to develop his incident action plan by utilizing situational awareness. So what hazards do we have to control? Specifically for the highway what traffic control do we need? On any of these incidents? We want to do what's called the inner and outer circle survey. So we want somebody to go all the way around the vehicles on the outside, maybe 20, 30 feet out, depending what type of hazard. Now the acetone, we're not going to approach right away, but as soon as we can get a 360 of what the whole incident looks like that we're working with gives us more information, and then you want a second team that goes closer in, where's the leak actually at? Is there anything else damaged on the tanker? Anything else that we should have to worry about? Is there patient care? If it is, do we have a team assigned? Are they going to need help to move the patient? Are they going to need extrication? The hazmat team comes in and gets a briefing of we got acetone leaking. So their first thing is going to be health hazards. What kind of hazards does acetone have? And what properties is it heavier than air or lighter than air? So it happens to be heavier than air. And this acetone tanker was on the shoulder and the shoulder had a downward incline going towards houses. So the hazmat team's going to look at how can we stop the leak? B, do we have to evacuate anybody? What kind of hazard is it to both the civilian population as well as the responders that are working? And then we're going to assert clearly initial action to be taken. So here's our hazards, we're going to put a team in to do recon to see what exactly we have, to see if we have anybody trapped. If we have trapped, we're going to send a second team in to actually take care and get the patient out and move them to a safe area. We're going to assign teams to make sure that the traffic is closed off, that we know where our hazard zone in the hazmat world, it's called the hot zone. Where's our hot zone that nobody goes in except those that are well-trained and have the proper personal protective equipment? Decision making. So do we have patients? What's the severity of the patient? Are they critical? And do we have to move them right away or do we have time? And that depends on the type of incident. If it's a hazmat incident and there's a chemical that's leaking, there might be fumes that gets to them, obviously we want to move them quickly. If the vehicle's rolled over but it's not leaking and we got time and they're not really injured that much, we might want to take a little bit more time treating them and get them out appropriately. Again, severity of the leak, is it fast? Is it slow? What direction? When it off gases, does the fumes go down or do they go up? What other hazards are there? The highway, how many lanes do we close? So our normal status is, we take a lane plus one. Well, if I got an overturn acetone tanker that is leaking and we know that the fumes are flammable, but probably want to close off a lot more like we did, we closed off from exit to exit mitigation process. So how do we stop this leak? Can we stop this leak? Or do we just have to deal with it? And how are we going to ultimately mitigate it? Which we actually brought in a cleanup company that offloaded all of the rest of acetone. Are we doing proper blocking? Do we have proper vehicles? And in this instance, we didn't need it, but if we were keeping traffic flowing, do we have proper blocking? We got to coordinate with the police that are going to do an investigation. If it's not leaking, but we need to get them off the roadway, we got to coordinate with the tow truck driver and did the towers bring the right truck? How long to clear the road? And then some of it is the decision making is, sometimes you have a little bit of a debate of what's best to do. We think we should offload first. No, we think we should seal the leak first. Having some conversation to figure out what to do when you have issues. But that's again worked out in planning and training. How do we make decisions when we don't agree? And it can't be a fight, a fist fight hollering and screaming at each other that's not going to fix the solution. So team building, there's one leader, there's an incident commander. He provides clear direction to all the unit supervisors who provide guidance to their people. And the incident manager, incident commander is empowering their crews with their knowledge and skills to perform their specific responsibilities or task without micromanaging. The climate, we want a culture of safe operations all the time. So if we're not safe and we hurt or kill one of the responders, we now need a whole nother crew to take care of them and whole nother crew to do the job that they now can't do. So a culture of safe operations, having a safety officer all the time, that's part of the culture change that we talked about earlier, Rod. If your culture doesn't value safety, it just talks the talk and doesn't walk the walk, then the potential for somebody getting hurt or killed raises every time they go on the highway. Do we offload the product on scene or do we try to write the trailer with all the product in it? So all those things are part of training, running table tops, so when you come up with them, it's easier to make those decisions. In this incident, once the hazmat people came in, we had to do medical monitoring of them.

Rod Ammon: It shows how much is going on. I mean, my favorite part of that scenario is, I think was just the dispatcher. Right from the beginning, somebody bringing up their knowledge and sharing it with leadership and really adding value in the ways that you said. So it's an impressive scenario. Can you talk about the need to implement CRM, what you're going to need to get it done in your department?

Tony Correia: Yeah. Number one is buy-in, buy-in from the leadership, that it's useful, it's beneficial. Number two is putting together plans of how to implement it. Three is to educate all of your personnel of what it is, how it's used. And next is after implementation. Actually doing it on incident is doing after action reviews where you're analyzing what went well, what didn't go well with the whole incident as well as far as the Crew Resource Management process, because you're going to have somebody for sure say, "Oh, this stunk. We didn't need this. The way we did it in 1960 is just fine. Why do we have to go to all these newfangled ideas?" So you need to do it in an objective manner to review what didn't work, why it didn't work, what was the root cause of that, and fix it and to continue to monitor. And after action review, the part to me that really doesn't get paid attention to enough is action. When you've done a review of an incident and there are improvements to be made, somebody has to take action to make sure those improvements are put in and the next incident, you go out and do the same thing, after action reviews as part of the education program of how to continually improve. It's part of a continual improvement process of how we can continually improve operating. And the more times that you do it's going to get better. I think you say how to get into the companies, but on a larger scale, we need to get major organizations, whether it's a Responder Safety or the International Association of Fire Chiefs, who by the way put out a Crews Resource Management book. I think 20 years ago, National Fallen Firefighters, whom I'm involved with, we're doing some stuff on Crew Resource Management. So it's to get major national and statewide organizations to buy into it and promote it, and then to engage the local fire police and EMS agencies both individually and collectively. So if we get a fire department to learn how to use it, but EMS and the police doesn't use it, it's going to be harder to implement and use effectively.

Rod Ammon: I keep thinking about leadership and some of the folks that have been around a while and they see this as a new idea and like you said, new idea. Some people have been learning about this in the fire service for close to 20 years. Can you give me a brief example of a conversation or a way that you saw a leader getting better at active listening and getting input from the team?

Tony Correia: I guess I'll give you my own example, is that, when I start paying attention more that most of us when we're communicating listen to respond, and when I start really paying attention and understanding when people say you want to listen to understand, not judge, to understand how much more I really knew about the situation or to process or what people's opinions and thoughts were so we can figure out how to collaborate with them and understand their interests or their concerns. One of the things I did when I was a fire chief out in Missouri, occasionally a firefighter will call out last minute, they didn't have a replacement, and the battalion chief would come and get me a chief, knowing I'm a firefighter paramedic, "Can you fill in for a short while?" "Sure, sure. I'm going to fill in for four hours." When I went out to the fire truck, I didn't get into the officer seat. I filled the seat of that firefighter that wasn't working so I can listen and understand what's going on. And part of this program when I teach it is having that actual discussion about listening to understand, pay attention to understand and not... I got to catch myself almost every time I'm having a conversation. Our conversation now, a couple of times I wanted to answer, I said, "Well, just slow down, let Rod get his point across, understand where he is completely coming from." And you have to work at it. It's not something that you just talk about and it happens. It doesn't happen by osmosis, you actually have to work at practicing paying attention. And the time that we usually listen to respond is when we're stressed or when we're upset. We just want to get our point across. Or me with my ADHD, if I don't make a comment right now, I might forget it. Well, get a pad, write it down, type it on your iPhone or your Android phone, type down what it is that you want it to say, work at it. Everybody has a little bit different nuance to figure out how they have to slow themselves down, take a breath or two and listen to understand, where are people coming from? And not just judge your impression of them. And I had a conversation at an incident the other night, and this gentleman was just making judgment after judgment or judgment. And I said, "You don't know that. You can't say that for sure. That's your opinion. And those types of judgements impede your ability to effectively communicate with people and collaborate." And that's why I like the Traffic Incident Management task force because in a non-stressful situation, you get to learn about one another and build those relationships. And more likely when you build relationships, when somebody talks, you're going to listen to understand instead of listening to respond, but also know those triggers. What are the things that make you want to respond that you need to control? It really takes, that goes on into the world of emotional intelligence. We should have that conversation another time, but understanding yourself of what triggers you. And then two, how do you have to learn to control yourself?

Rod Ammon: Well, I love the nugget that you dropped there, and I think I might've heard it before, I'm not sure. But this listen to understand I think is an important thing. And I have the same issue wanting to jump in there before actually having heard somebody. And I think that helps in any relationship and certainly in a team situation. Just wanted to make a note. You had mentioned about the National Fallen Firefighters and you had talked about AAR. There is a module on the Fire Hero Learning Network at FHLN.net that's all about after action and that's free, like the things that are up on Responder Safety Learning Network and all of this funded by the Fire Prevention and Safety Grants. So before we wrap up, what's something everyone listening to the podcast can do now to get started or to get themselves better informed with the career source management in their department?

Tony Correia: What I would say is I like 1800 Google, Google Crew Resource Management, what it is, and then Google how Crew Resource Management positively impacted incident. Do some research first on airline crashes because they're well documented and look at, once you've learned a little bit about Crew Resource Management of how that can fit in, then get some fire department NIOSH reports of firefighters that died of fires or incidents or motor vehicle crashes, we're talking about. The second leading cause of line of duty deaths for how many years are firefighters dying in motor vehicle crashes, whether it's at the scene of an incident or responding to an incident. And look at how you can match that up and where that might've impacted the incident. And then try it out. Be brave, learn about if you want, give me a holler. Go read what Chief Rubin's always doing. And there's others. There's a few books out there on Crew Resource Management, both in fire and EMS. Paying more attention to it. And we all do Crew Resource Management in some form or another in everything we do. When you do this podcast, you collaborate with multiple other people using all components of Crew Resource Management. When we go to a traffic incident, whether it be a small one or a major crash, we all use components. Just start thinking of how you already utilize that and how you can improve that by actually using a better framework to manage it. And again, I think if people need, I put together, so when I read off just now, when you went through the hazmat incident, I actually have a, I guess you call it algorithm of how to utilize that in general. So you can actually take that general algorithm concept and actually then apply it to every incident. And then do some tabletops and work with it on tabletops and then introduce it at calls.

Rod Ammon: When you say algorithm, do you mean sort of like I know in law enforcement they call it a go by or is this some kind of checklist that you have available online somewhere?

Tony Correia: Yeah, it's a checklist. And that's another thing. One of the keys to Crew Resource Management is checklist. And I hear fire department, so we can't do checklist. Sully Sullenberger landed that plane in the Hudson because there was a guy on the right-hand side of him going down checklist, and they knew the system. They knew Crew Resource Management and they knew how to use the checklist. And everybody walked out off of that plane, everybody. It didn't happen by osmosis.

Rod Ammon: Well, so first of all, I still want to know, do you have this, do you have your checklist or what you've done somewhere up online? If you do, we could put a link to that.

Tony Correia: I will give it to you in presentation. Let me just give you quickly. So I'm going under communication. The general concept is you want to give a briefing two-way communication, clear and concise assertion. Then you go over, I have another column. So aligning to briefing, it goes, IC provides initial plan. Under two-way communication, IC and team leaders provide updates. Assertion roles assigned and clearly understood. So if you see, I kind of created that process that you can matrix or algorithm whatever you want to use, that you can take this general process and build it specifically to your organization and to any incident. And if you train on that in drills and tabletops and stuff at your fire department or whether other departments, you'll be able to integrate that at scenes

Rod Ammon: Well, it's good. And I think I love checklists. They save my day sometimes. It sounds like I'm pitching the NFFF, but they're on the Fire Hero Learning Network similar to Responder Safety Learning Network at FHLN.net, they have a customizable system to build checklists for your fire department. So they actually look like a personalized checklist that came from your fire department you created online, and then you can print it, put it on the rig or whatever you want to do. Anything else you want to tell me?

Tony Correia: Yeah, you mean the one that says Vehicle Fires and Rescue, I put it in the presentation, so I utilize, that's another thing. It's not all about me or we all steal from each other or borrow from each other. So yeah, there's tons of resources. Go out there and research and find out what all those different resources are that you can utilize. And being an NFF advocate, Rod, I have to go along with you and promote what we do in the NFF and it closely aligns with this whole Crew Resource Management process.

Rod Ammon: Yeah, listen, I don't think anybody talking about what you're talking about. Nobody's stealing anything. The whole goal, all this is for us to share information. It's almost like association crew management, but that's at fireherolearningnetwork.com/checklists, and you can click on that thing, register up and make your own stuff. So what else? You want to close it out for us?

Tony Correia: Yeah, so your goal is to make an incident not get any worse and possibly making it better. And Crew Resource Management has all the capability to do that. If you're willing to build the culture in your organization to be able to do so. It'll benefit everybody if you build this in, you'll start seeing improvement in all of your incidents once you build it in.

Rod Ammon: Chief, thanks. It's a big issue and sometimes when we get into some of these larger events, you start going, wow, there is a whole lot to this. So thank you. We appreciate your time.

Tony Correia: Thanks. And I value that Responder Safety found this important enough to bring up, so I thank Responder Safety.

Rod Ammon: We'll pass that on. Thanks again, Tony.

Tony Correia: Rod, thank you.

Rod Ammon: Now for the news from Respondersafety.com. Under contract from the US Fire Administration, Cumberland Valley Volunteer Firefighters Association's Emergency Responder Safety Institute, or ERSI subcontracted with the Light and Health Research Center in the Icahn School of Medicine and Mount Sinai. And with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to design and perform a field experiment to investigate the impacts of emergency vehicle marking color, retro reflectivity level, and spatial patterns on driver's ability to see emergency responders working near their vehicles was carried out, as well as examine the impacts of wearable flashing LED lights. The results of this study are now available in Impacts of Emergency Vehicle Marking, Color Patterns, and Retro Reflectivity on Safety Related Driver Responses Study Report. The authors of the study are John D Below, PhD with the Light and Health Research Center in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Scott A. Parr PhD PE with Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. A link to this report is on the podcast page at Respondersafety.com. If you know of an incident where a person or an emergency vehicle is struck while operating at a roadway incident, please report it at reportstruckby.com. We are continuing to collect these reports to better understand how struck by incidents occur so we can determine what training, public education and safety messaging is needed to reduce struck by incidents. Anyone can file a report and reports from all response groups are accepted. The site is mobile device responsive for easy reporting from the field or the station. Make reportstruckby.com part of your organization's debrief or incident report procedure for roadway responses. This podcast, Respondersafety.com and the Responder Safety Learning Network are made possible by funding from a Fire Prevention and Safety Grant from the Assistance to Firefighters grant program administered by FEMA and the US Department of Homeland Security. We appreciate your support and remember to share these podcasts with your colleagues to spread the word about safety practices at roadway incident scenes. Thanks for joining us today on the podcast. Stay safe everybody. We'll see you next time. For Respondersafety.com, I'm Rod Ammon.

ResponderSafety.com

Impacts of Emergency Vehicle Marking Color, Patterns and Retroreflectivity on Safety-Related Driver Responses: Study Report. ResponderSafety.com.

ReportStruckBy.com

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