AMU Emergency Management Opinion Public Safety

Do We Set Ourselves Up For Failure

EDM & training

Training is one of the largest components of the emergency and disaster management (EDM) professional’s preparation for success. Today’s expectations of the public are that the government responders will fix everything, thus we must become at least partial experts in nearly every imaginable disaster. This requires that we take a large number of classes that have at least some form of exercise to ensure a level of proficiency.

When we take the instructors class, we are taught to [link url=”https://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=is-340″ title=”facilitate the exercises”] in a method that ensures success.  This is a great idea for learning a new subject, because failure at the beginning will ensure we do not want to dedicate any more time to an unpleasant activity.

However, does the “win all of the time” mentality carry over to every drill and exercise that we conduct?  What are the dangers of always having a positive outcome?

Experience vs. training exercises

When I conducted my doctoral dissertation on collaboration during disasters, I discovered that nearly every interviewee in the fire and emergency management agency had not been in place long enough to experience a state-declared disaster, as the frequency of declarations was less than the average tenure. Much less the geographic feasibility of actually being involved when a state-declared disaster occurred. 

This began my realization that the only experience each of these EDM leaders entered a disaster with was the training and subsequent exercises they conducted prior to the event, which always premise on success.

The bearer of bad tidings

A while back, I spoke with a friend that is a deputy fire chief and he explained how he utilizes Sundays to drill his battalion chiefs on command and control. We embarked on the idea of this false success and he relayed how he had recently pushed his last exercise to the point of failure and stopped the exercise because of the failure. 

He stated the student left a little upset, but returned in three days to thank him for pushing him to failure, as he could discover what he needed to complete to improve and felt that he would enter subsequent events with the desire to never have “that feeling” again.

While I am not a fan of just seeing a person fail, have we, though, watered down our feedback to only focus on the positives and robbed the students of key learning experiences related to subpar performance?

Should we be the bearer of bad tidings and point out more failure in our hot-washes and after-actions?  Would this increased feeling of subpar performance push our EDM leaders to invest more time to perfect their skills to ensure a better performance at the next large event or disaster? 

“Don’t train until we get it right, train until we can’t do it wrong” — author unknown.

Dr. Randall Hanifen serves as a shift commander at a medium-sized suburban fire department in the northern part of the Cincinnati area. Randall is the CEO/principal consultant of an emergency services consulting firm, providing analysis and solutions related to organizational structuring of fire and EMS organizations. He is the chairperson and operations manager for a county technical rescue team. From a state and national perspective, he serves as a taskforce leader for one of FEMA's urban search and rescue teams, which responds to presidential declared disasters. From an academic standpoint, Randall has a bachelor’s degree in fire administration, a master’s degree in executive fire service leadership, and a doctoral degree in business administration with a specialization in homeland security. He is the associate author of “Disaster Planning and Control” (Penwell, 2009), which provides first responders with guidance through all types of disasters.

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