Firefighter vaccine refusal as a reorganization opportunity

In the past I've written about how fire departments these days mostly respond to medical calls, but most departments haven't reorganized to reflect this fact, in part a result of labor contracts which mandate stasis.

-- "Rationalizing fire and emergency services," 2011
-- "Fire department issues in municipalities," 2014
-- "DC's fire department is in the same situation as WMATA in terms of the necessity of a redesign of culture and behavior through a human factors approach," 2015

A column in the Los Angeles Times, "To anti-vax firefighters, bye-bye. Now let's build back better at the LAFD," suggests that the Los Angeles Fire Department has an opportunity to do some reorganization in view of the likelihood that 300-400 firefighters will be put on permanent leave for refusal to get vaccinated.  From the article:

That’s why Andrew Glazier, a former member of the Board of Fire Commissioners, sees a potential mass departure as an opportunity rather than a problem. 

“If you lose several hundred people, and you refuse to change your operating model, then, yeah, you’ll have a big problem,” said Glazier. “But … if they were willing to add single-function paramedics to the department, you can hire them up and have them in the field in six weeks or less, and you can continuously hire them as needed.”

About 85% of the calls for the fire department are medical.  The Firefighters Union represents firefighters not paramedics, and firefighters get paid more.  So the union continues to advocate for firefighters being cross-trained as paramedics, rather than hiring paramedics specifically and reorganizing services to focus on paramedics.  

Although cross-training makes sense too, the reality is that fewer firefighters and related equipment are required to serve the average city today than in the past.

And as it is, comparable to crime analysis approaches in police departments, if fire departments put some resources into "fire suppression" by providing assistance to communities and households where buildings have characteristics indicating the potential for catastrophe, house fires especially would be less of a problem.

As I wrote in 2017, in "I get tired of all the talk about rewarding "failure" because it shows people are trying, and won't be penalized for it":

... [the] article ("Cities Are Having a Data and Analytics-Driven Moment, and It's Likely to Stay") in Government Technology [describes] an initiative in  New Orleans, where the firefighters decided to be proactive in distributing smoke alarms in neighborhoods with a higher rate/risk of fires. From the article:

In New Orleans, the city has been saving lives by using data to predict which of the city’s buildings need to be equipped with fire alarms. Using data collected by the Census and New Orleans Fire Department, the city identified building age, building inhabitant income, and building inhabitant occupation length as strong predictors for determining if a structure may not have a smoke alarm installed. It then mapped this information along with fire risk calculated from resident age data and fire data over the previous five years. The program’s results now inform NOFD’s door-to-door program to install free smoke alarms.

To me the issue isn't big data, but first, the decision (1) to be proactive in distributing smoke alarms, (2) not willy-nilly, but in those neighborhoods with a higher risk for fires.

I find it hard to believe that the Fire Department doesn't analyze runs and fires already to know what types of properties and situations are high risk.

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I do note that DC Fire Department has recently undertaken such an initiative ("Neighbors offer support for family of 7-year-old who died in D.C. rowhouse fire," Washington Post).  But likely such efforts could be more systematic.  From the article:

As the investigation continued into what caused the blaze, D.C. fire officials and firefighters returned to the neighborhood Wednesday morning in hopes of preventing future fires. They arrived with free smoke alarms in hand and printed sheets of fire safety tips, and were welcomed by neighbors, who said they are making efforts to help the family moving forward. 

 “Any time something happens to any of the neighbors, it affects all of us,” said Geoffrey Tate Sr., 65, who has lived in the community for nearly 50 years.... 

Visiting nearly 200 homes Wednesday, groups of fire officials talked to residents on Quebec Place, Rock Creek Church Road, Princeton Place and Warder Street NW. Fire Inspector Celina C. Primus went door-to-door on a block of homes, making sure residents checked for working smoke detectors and had a fire escape plan. 

“When a tragedy like this happens, they want to know someone outside of immediate family cares for them,” Primus said. “We care.”

Taller buildings constructed with wood

For fire code reasons, wood construction has been capped at about 5 floors-stories, although when constructed on top of a one or two story concrete podium, the total height can be 6-7 floors.

At 18 stories, Mjøstårnet in Brumunddal, Norway was for a time the tallest timber building in the world.  It's now second tallest.

For the past few years, there's been a great deal of research and change in standards allowing for the frame construction of taller buildings ("Rethinking Code Requirements for "Tall Wood" Buildings," Architect Magazine; "Could Tall Wood Construction Be the Future of High-Rise Buildings?," ArchDaily).

Asian and Nordic countries have been leaders in pushing the changes forward ("Voll Arkitekter's Mjøstårne in Norway becomes world's tallest timber tower," Dezeen).

Constructing buildings in wood instead of concrete and metal creates fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and as a cost advantage requires less labor and can be done in part using modular construction techniques in off site facilities.



Rendering: Imagefiction.

The Wall Street Journal reports ("Country’s Tallest Wooden Building Rising in Cleveland") that a building is being constructed in Cleveland.

-- Presentation
-- "Harbor Bay's Intro project: Here comes the neighborhood," Crain's Cleveland Business

At 9 stories, it's not so much "tall" as it is wide. From the article:

The nine-story development, dubbed Intro, will include 298 apartments, retail space and an event venue. It is being built primarily with mass timber, a type of pressed wood that is gaining popularity as a climate-friendly alternative to steel and concrete.

The developer, Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, hopes that the new Cleveland building will become a blueprint for others to follow. It is also betting that the pandemic won’t cool demand for transit-oriented apartments in big cities. ...

The nine-story development, dubbed Intro, will include 298 apartments, retail space and an event venue. It is being built primarily with mass timber, a type of pressed wood that is gaining popularity as a climate-friendly alternative to steel and concrete.

The developer, Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors LLC, hopes that the new Cleveland building will become a blueprint for others to follow. It is also betting that the pandemic won’t cool demand for transit-oriented apartments in big cities. ...

If done right, making beams and floors from wood emits about half as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the production of steel and concrete, said Galina Churkina, a senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Trees also remove carbon from the atmosphere, turning wooden buildings into carbon vaults. That could help slow down global warming.

But there is also a risk that a boom in timber construction could accelerate global deforestation if the wood isn’t harvested in a sustainable way, she said.

A couple months ago I wrote about the sameness and architectural homogeneity of podium-based buildings ("Why new apartment buildings all look the same"). Wood construction might foster more attractive design.

As importantly, it can allow for taller buildings and greater density compared to current techniques, and over the long term, lessen housing appreciation.

Risk management planning is necessary for "old" historic buildings

When I first got involved in Main Street commercial district revitalization work c. 2002, I remember a couple of communities that experienced catastrophic fires, others tornadoes, etc.

Smoke and flames rise during a fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris on April 15, 2019. (Hubert Hitier/AFP)

Sadly, as most everyone knows by now the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris experienced a catastrophic fire on Monday, losing most of its roof and spire, with severe interior damage.

But it could have been worse.  Most of the historic artifacts could have been destroyed by the fire, which is what happened when Brazil's National Museum in Rio de Janeiro Museum burnt to the ground in 2018.

-- "The Brazil Museum Fire: What Was Lost," New York Times
-- "What Is Lost When a Museum Vanishes? In Brazil, a Nation's Story," New York Times

(Which should have been a wake up call throughout the museum and cultural heritage community.)

Washington Post graphic.

But Notre Dame Cathedral had an evacuation plan for its artifacts ("Evacuation plan saved most of Notre-Dame's treasures: insurance adjuster," Reuters), and it practiced, and so when the fire occurred, they were able to move most of the artifacts out of the building, even as the fire raged. From the article:

Some 90 percent of the priceless relics and art works housed within the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral were saved from Monday’s devastating fire as contingency plans to evacuate the treasures worked, a leading insurance adjuster said on Wednesday.

The contingency evacuation plan included putting priorities on objects for removal, Honore told Reuters, adding “the plan itself worked perfectly and was adhered to the letter and that is why the contents lost is not as severe as might have been feared”. ...

Notre-Dame’s treasures are made up of 1,000 to 1,200 items including precious metals, traditional church dresses and paintings. More modern items also include a gift to the cathedral from Pope John Paul II.

What caused the fire: probably improper use of construction equipment.  I am betting, based on how both in new construction situations ("Fire Destroys More Than a Mixed-Use Project," New York Times, 2002; "Fires at VCU Close Part of Richmond," Washington Post, 2004; "Luxury New Jersey Apartment Complex Destroyed in Massive Fire," NBC New York, 2015) and in renovation situations such as with the fire at the Georgetown branch library in 2007 ("Liability for Georgetown Branch Fire Contested," American Libraries), unsafe use of powerful equipment--in Georgetown it was a heat gun used for stripping paint--led to the fire.

"Strange": internal investigation of inadequate response to fire will result in changes, disciplinary actions in Orange County, California

Because it is so rare that there are consequences meted out for failure to act wrt avoidable failures, I was surprised to see this article in the Orange County Register ("Orange County probe finds Canyon 2 Fire response rife with human error and complacency, calls for disciplinary action"). From the article:

Concluding that the fire agency’s response during the early minutes of the Canyon 2 Fire was rife with “human error and potential complacency,” an 80-page report from the county obtained by the Register — slated to be presented publicly later this month — says the findings present “an important case study in how miscalculations and missteps in small but critical areas can result in significant damages… to a community.”

The investigations by the county and the OCFA both say fire personnel essentially ignored early reports of flames on Oct. 9, 2017, the day the fire started. Both also say fire officials were too slow to send equipment and personnel to contain a blaze that burned for eight days, charred 9,200 acres, destroyed 15 houses and 10 other structures, and displaced thousands of residents of Anaheim Hills and North Tustin.

Specifically, the two reports say OCFA officials downplayed a 911 caller’s reports of flames in a canyon at 8:32 a.m. Instead of following protocol, which would require sending personnel and equipment to the scene, they directed firefighters at a station more than a mile away to look outside and report on what they saw.

Those firefighters dismissed the reported flames as wind-blown ashes, an error that prompted an OCFA dispatcher to tell CHP officials that fire reports were “unfounded.” Firefighting equipment wasn’t deployed for another 71 minutes.

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Separately, in going through mounds of old stuff I haven't read, I came across this article, "Pittsburgh Uses Data to Predict Fire Risk," in Government Technology Magazine, discussing the use of data analysis in fire agency organizations, better matching resources and fire inspection processes to ward off the potential of problems like the Ghost Ship building fire in Oakland, California or the disaster of Grenfell Tower in London.

Among other cities, fire departments in New York City ("New York City Fights Fire with Data," GT) and Austin ("Austin Fire Department Extracts Value From Data," GT) aim to use data analytics and programs to improve performance.

Some time ago, Philadelphia created a "Fire Vulnerability Index" for buildings, to be able to be proactive in reducing risks and the likelihood of fire by "scor[ing] every household in Philadelphia on its propensity for a fire" ("Philadelphia Fire Department uses data to stop fires before they start," Urgent Communications). From the article:

From this index, the PFD now knows which households to focus fire-prevention efforts on and can pinpoint fire vulnerability households in the city that are more likely to have a future fire event. Fackel said it also can use the data for several efforts, such as to provide those households with fire alarms or to send them direct-mail flyers about fire safety.

Seattle Times article on the need for changes to 911 services and emergency response

Spurred by problems within DC and the metropolitan area, I've written quite a bit over the years about emergency responses to crime, fires, and medical emergencies, and mental health incidents -- partly because of deaths at the hands of EMS, killings by police officers of people with mental health issues, how EMS resources are used, etc.

-- "DC EMS Medical Director/Assistant Fire Chief resigns with blistering resignation letter," 2016
-- "Police response to mental health matters," 2016
-- "Who identifies problems and addresses them at the metropolitan scale? No one, at least when it comes to mental health-related police shootings," 2016

-- "DC's fire department is in the same situation as WMATA in terms of the necessity of a redesign of culture and behavior through a human factors approach," 2015
-- "The "recent" failures of the DC Fire Department are indicative of much deeper systems failures than people realize," 2006
-- "Rationalizing fire and emergency services," 2011
-- "Fire and emergency services (in DC)," 2013
-- "DC "fire" department continued," 2013
-- "Fire department issues in municipalities," 2014

The Seattle Times has an enterprise reporting initiative, called "Project Homeless," about issues surrounding the homeless problem in Seattle, which has one of the largest urban homeless populations.

(c. 2002-2004, I was very much influenced by an article in the ST about single sales of alcoholic beverages and the city's aim to restrict sales in certain areas because they discovered that a select number of homeless people "consumed" disproportionate amounts of emergency services, to the tune of $1 million or more per year. That led me to take up "single sales" as an issue for awhile, I was even featured in a 2003 Washington Post story on the subject.)

The latest article, "Puget Sound's homeless crisis pushes 911 beyond its design," is about the 911 emergency response program, and how it is set up to do three things well:

- get police to respond to crimes and incidents
- send fire departments to respond to fires and other emergencies
- send EMS to respond to medical emergencies

But it doesn't work so well in dealing with the homeless (or incidents with a mental health dimension).

The article raises issues that are more fundamental, about the nature of emergency response and how it can be better crafted to be more successful and less problematic.

The article discusses the difference between 911, for immediate emergencies, and other services (311 or 211) for nonemergencies.  Part of the problem is that most people don't use the non-911 service, even though it has plenty of access to resources.  The need for shelter isn't considered a 911 matter.

From the article:

Even as the homeless crisis has reshaped politics of the city and region, 911 — the front door for emergency medical services — has not evolved to cope with the scale of the problem, city leaders say. That leaves callers like Murphy confused about where to turn when they see someone in need of help, especially if it involves a mental-health or substance-abuse crisis.

“You see people all the time — especially working in downtown Seattle — in behavioral-health crisis and nobody knows what to do,” said Jim Vollendroff, who oversees King County’s substance-abuse treatment and mental-health services. “So they just walk right on by them, typically.”

The consequences of inaction can be bleak, especially in the winter. People without homes are eight times more likely to die of hypothermia than those with homes in King County, according to Dr. Richard Harruff, the medical examiner.

In Seattle, City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw is pushing the 911 system to "evolve," and to integrate the ability to respond to calls about homelessness and the need for shelter. According to Councilmember Bagshaw, more than one dozen city and county agencies address homelessness issues, and they aren't well coordinated.

For example, Seattle also offers a "sober van" service (King County Emergency Services Patrol) to deal with drunkenness and "sleeping it off," and the Fire Department has created the capacity for differentiated responses. From the article:

If an ambulance isn’t required, but the person does need medical help, the Fire Department will send a truck or an “aid car” staffed with firefighter EMTs to the scene. If the person is intoxicated but doesn’t require emergency medical assistance, medics can call yet another agency: King County’s Emergency Services Patrol, also called the “sober van.>

While 911 services are wary of expanding what they deal with, it is expensive for "nonemergency" services to set up and staff call center operations. From the article:

One answer could be hiring a 911 dispatcher with medical credentials who would be responsible for coordinating the sober vans and other services for homeless people in crisis. Another idea is to spread that knowledge across all 911 dispatchers.

It’s possible, Vollendroff says, that the answer is not 911 but creating a new dispatch line specific to behavioral-health issues. Scoggins agrees but thinks it could be hard to “wean people off that 911 number.”

The Fire Department has experimented with one alternative: A nurse line that shelter workers can call for advice before calling 911. That line has only been tested at a few shelters, but Scoggins says it has reduced emergency responses to those shelters.

The answer might be more of everything, said Jeff Lilley, president of Union Gospel Mission, whose “Search and Rescue” vans offer wool blankets, food, water and rides to shelter.

A few cities have special mental health response units, that are dispatched via 911, but usually such as in San Antonio, these are still small units, and the demand for service isn't able to met.

The Seattle initiative to rethink 911 spurred by Councilmember Bagshaw seems like a good idea, and the effort to rethink emergency response, not just "911 services" needs to be deeper, and taken up by more jurisdictions, especially as it relates to response to emergencies involving homelessness and mental health matters.