Fire and Rescue Service Management Practice - Term Paper Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Tutor :xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Title : Fire and Rescue Service Management practice Institution : Date :xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx @ 2010 Introduction Accidents and emergencies occur every other day, and when they occur, there will be need to respond accordingly. The first place that a person in distress will look for help is from the Fire and Rescue services. In respect of this, the fire and rescue crew need to be well trained in all aspects of service management. For example if a fire erupts somewhere, the firefighters will be required to attend to it accordingly (Richard 1997).They may also be required to save people trapped in car wreckages in the event of road traffic accidents. For other emergencies that may take place and cause large scale devastation, affecting a large number of the population, external help may be required to sort the issue. For instance the case of the Haiti scenario, most of the civilians were affected and among them the firefighters of that country. International help was therefore needed and requested. The Fire and Rescue Act has provisions to allow international aid from other countries to assist in the event of a disaster or calamity, for instance natural disasters like earthquakes and floods. The Fire and Rescue Act The Fire and Rescue Services Act promotes four main core functions namely Fire safety, fire fighting, road traffic accidents and emergencies. Basically, these core functions re the guidelines and the underlying guideline to the fire and rescue authorities in a given area or region. In promoting fire safety, the fire and rescue authority should work towards the dissemination of information, publicity and encouragement to the residents towards the prevention f fire deaths and injuries. This includes advising on how to prevent the fires and restricting their spread in buildings and their personal properties and also advising on the escape routes from premises in the event of fires. On fire fighting, the fire and rescue authority should be in a position to extinguish fires in its area of jurisdiction and also protecting life and property form damage in the event of a fire. For this purpose, the fire and rescue authority should have the necessary personnel and equipment to tackle these challenges efficiently. Trained personnel are a pre-requisite for this. Response to calls of emergencies and the consequent summoning of personnel should be looked at. In dealing with the road traffic accidents, the fire authority deals with the rescuing of people I the event of road accidents in its area. For this, they require trained personnel, services and materials to deploy their roles efficiently. They should also be in a position to respond to calls for help in cases of emergencies (Richard 1997).Emergencies besides that of road traffic accidents my also pose a threat and risk to human, plant and animal life alike. In this case, the area affected may not be within the jurisdiction of a certain fire authority, and in this case, an order by the Secretary of State may require that the given fire authority to discharge its functions outside its area under sections 7 or 8. Some examples of these emergencies include natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, drought, hurricanes and tsunamis, disease epidemics and landslides among others. These may occur over a localized area and in this case the fire authority involved will be called upon to deal with the emergency (Richard 1997). However, if the emergency occurs on a large scale and consequently overwhelms the fire authority concerned, help may be sought from other fire authorities in the region. In some cases, the emergency turns out to be a national disaster that warrants the involvement of aid from other countries and states. Such a case warrants that the fire authorities be given a special go ahead by the responsible leadership authorities like the President or prime Minister. A good example of the international application of the Fire and Rescue Act legislation around the world is the involvement of the British fire rescue teams from Gatwick and other international teams from the USA among others in the rescue operations following the devastating earthquakes in Haiti. The witness of large a mount of casualties together with the injuries and the adverse effects following the aftermath of the earthquake, the situation was identified as the fight against time to identify and save the survivors (Richard 1997).Rescue work began with able bodied survivors of the quake struggling to extricate bodies of both the living and the dead from the rubble. The only other available source of help was the Argentine military field hospital that had been serving MINUSTAH. Fig 1.0: Figure 1.0 indicates remains of a destroyed presidential palace. Which used to be a three stories in height (port-au-Prince).HAITI (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz 2010). Fig 2.0: A quake-destroyed building in the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti on January 12th, 2010. (Tequila Minsky for The New York Times. There was need to get search and rescue teams on the ground as every hour was significant, need of humanitarian needs such as food and sanitation was required. The co-ordination of the international effort was important as they were different teams from different countries and nationalities but working towards the same goal, to save as many people as possible from the earthquake’s effects (Richard 1997). In order to make this operation possible, the involvement of other agencies and organizations was a pre-requisite. Some of these groups and organizations include the UN Agencies such as UNEP, UN Peace building Commission, the World Bank, The Red Cross and the European Commission among others. Fig 3.0: (Fig 3.0 shows the British Rescue teams preparing to leave Gatwick airport, West Sussex to offer support to relief and rescue teams in Haiti ).(CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images 2010). Fig 4.0: Los Angeles County Fire Department urban search and rescue team load equipment in the Pacoima area of Los Angeles January 12, 2010. The team will travel to Haiti to help with rescue efforts after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the capital Port-au-Prince. (REUTERS/Gus Ruelas) Fig 5.0: Figure 5.0 shows-The Taiwan rescue team in preparing to live for Haiti 3, as they prepare to head to-Haiti to help with the rescue effort following-an earthquake(SAM YEH/AFP/Getty Images 2010). Globalization and its role in the fire and save service Globalization is a term used to define the increase of flows of goods, services, capital, people, and information across borders. It has been the source of many worries in Europe over the past decade, many years before the global financial meltdown of 2008. Globalization is more often perceived as a threat in many countries rather than as an opportunity. This threat may be perceived by people to affect their work force and social welfare at large. On the other hand, globalization does promise opportunities to other European actors, especially to those who can serve new or existing market areas with cheaper inputs. This combination of threat and opportunity coupled with a sense that globalization may simply be too powerful to be resisted altogether, has led many European policymakers speak of ‘globalization with adjectives.’ Essentially, the adjective is a description of the globalization outcome and it therefore brings out a note of caution, consequently suggesting that the embrace of globalization is a conditional one, for example whether globalization is to be humanized, tamed, harnessed, or managed. From the beginning of the new millennium, there have been over 35 major conflicts and some 2,500 disasters that have occurred in the world (Richard 1997). These have consequently affected over two billion people, with millions having lost their lives. In addition to destroying roads and other forms of infrastructural facilities, the disaster also resulted into displacement of people who forced to be relocated, this led to the movement of people from the place of the disaster to safer places leading to undermine of human or people’s security, Another issue that was witness relates to the increase in the poverty level this was as a result of the tearing apart of the fabric sustainable improvement. In addition, not less than 18 violent disasters have been enhanced due to the exploitation of natural materials and resources from the years of 1990s. As the globalization rate has continued to raise, hence demand of materials and resources will continue to grow significantly, there is important probable for conflicts to arise over competition for natural materials and resources to build up in the coming years or decades. In response to increased global awareness of the environmental dimensions of crises, and to growing demand for services that address them, UNEP has identified ‘disasters and conflicts’ as one of six priority areas of work. Through several bodies and organizations such as Disasters & Conflicts programme and UNEP has helped in the process of enhancing and providing the most important services to its members and the share holders countries or states. Furthermore this organization has help in the process of post-crisis and environmental assessments, post-crisis environmental improvement environmental cooperation meant for peace building, disaster and conflict or risk reduction. This can therefore be taken as an example of managed globalization. Ethical considerations in the fire and rescue services The fire inspection personnel are charged with the responsibility of ensuring safety to the citizens from various forms of accidents and emergencies. Due to the rapid the increasing levels of globalization. They have been since witnessed and faced with continues or recurring and drastic changes within the scope together with complexity in regards to service delivered to the people or the entire citizens, traders, contractors- architects- engineers, and guests alike. Professionalism is demanded from fire loss management personnel, and because of this they are being scrutinized and assessed more closely than ever before (Scott, T. September 1993). Fire inspectors who may be civilian or certified need to be able to make sound judgment on and off the inspection field, and therefore they are more significant than ever in pointing out or achieving the targeted goals together with the objectives of the flames authorities. In lieu of this, the Fire Official or engineers has seen the need to launch the best employment, recruitment and promotional system probable, so that workforce can perform more professionally in today’s prevailing environmental conditions. At the beginning, the fire division has used conservative written and oral testing practices in hiring and promoting of its staff. In the years to come, the department started incorporating a variety of ‘assessment center’ exercises to their process to simulate actual conditions (Richard 1997). Further to this, the customary printed test and follow-up oral dialogue has been the model in the fire anticipation bureau. In most cases, the written test was administered first and candidates who passed that level then went on to complete the oral interview. An external vendor was usually approached to conduct the written test with the fire loss management division managers acting as the oral board evaluators. (Scott, T. September 1993). However in the recruitment and promotional processes, certain ethical considerations have to be made. Some of these include ethnicity, age factor, sexual considerations, religion, belief and also gender sensitivity. These factors may impact greatly on the output of the fire authority personnel. If they have to operate and discharge their duties effectively and efficiently, then they have to be comfortable at their place of work (Scott, T. September 1993). A wrong approach to this matter and lack of factoring them in the recruitment and promotional processes may lead to mistrust or lack of loyalty and morale issues which tend to poses significance in the process of effective and perfect work job and work performance suffers. If these problems occur, it may also enhance negative influence in the process of service delivery together with the issues in regards to clients satisfaction ( both internal and external),and the corporation of the issues of retention together with productivity of essential or valuable employees. According to Bittle (1987).some of the attributes that are required of a fire fighter include creativity, stress tolerance, leadership, sensitivity, initiative, independence, problem solving skills, decisiveness, flexibility, tenacity, management and control, risk taker and good judgment skills among others. These qualities cannot be seen in a person by just looking at them, but by thorough screening and eventual training. In order to take care of the ethical issues, most fire authorities prefer to use the assessment centers as part of their hiring and promotional processes. As noted by Coulton & Field (1995), assessment centers are not a place but a method that utilizes multiple dimensions in an evaluation of prescribed behaviors. In most case situational tests and measurements are very important feature in regards to the assessment center , In that exercises are invented and developed for the purposes of weighing and measuring certain behaviors’ and characters. The peoples behaviors and characters are then is then put in comparison with the dimensions that is set aside for evacuation and the persons average and overall strength to do certain task that has already been described is determined (Haas 1999). Role of the firefighter in the changing world environment The firefighter plays a key role in the changing word environment. Due to the increasing rate of globalization which in turn translates to an increasing rate of population growth, there are therefore increased growth of risks and probabilities that an accident might occur. In the event that an accident occurs, be it fire accidents, road traffic accidents and other types of emergencies that may in turn affect a large section of the population, the expertise, skills and presence of the trained firefighters will come in handy in alleviating the effects of the disaster. In conjunction with other organizations that work in partnership with the fire authorities, the firefighters act as a link between the suppliers of the services and provisions like the UNEP, World Food Programme and the people who need the help, those that have been affected by the disasters on the ground. The firefighters are the ones who access the ground that has been affected by the accident or disaster. With their equipment, training and expertise, they endeavor to reach and save as many affected people as possible in order for them to be attended to accordingly, say for example by doctors for treatment among other services(Haas 1999). A good example is the case where floods have occurred in a given area and renders that particular area inaccessible by ground, the firefighters will have to access and airlift the displaced and affected so that they can be attended to. In the case of the Haitian earthquake, the firefighters had to use their equipment to access the debris and rubble using their mechanical equipment as the normal civilians could not access these areas due to incapacity and lack of expertise (Haas 1999). In the case of international disasters that involve firefighters from more than one country and of different nationalities, there is need to co-ordinate their activities and the rescue operations from a central position. It is therefore advantageous to have the fire authorities train their personnel in a similar manner and in the same fields; so that when instructions are issued on a particular action point, there will be harmonious response, rather than discord and confusion as the interpretations from the different firefighting personal differ. Hence the need to recognize importance of the firefighters and their roles in the firefighting and disaster management events. Recommendations Due to the uncertainty of the rapidly changing world, there is need for preparedness. The availability of well trained firefighters is a good place to start as no one knows or can predict the type of accident that will occur in the coming future, but as long as one is prepared, there are high chances that the problem will be tackled adequately. (Haas 1999).For our organization, there is need to partner with other organizations and fire authorities, especially in training and sharing of ideas so that we are well prepared for any eventualities in the event of a disaster. Contact____________________. References Bittle, L. R. (1987) Supervisory training and development. New York: Addison-Wesley. Coulton, Gary f. and Feild, Hubert S. Summer (1995) Selecting entry level for law enforcers :Public Personnel Management, 24, 2, 223 – 254. Hass, Christopher P. (1999) Promotional assessment centers? Executive Fire Officer Applied Research Project. National Fire Academy: Emmitsburg, MD Richard S. (1997) Preparing for fire service assessment centers. Bellflower, CA: Fire Publications, Inc. Scott, T. September, (1993), Pick the right person using the assessment center process. JEMS, 59 – 64. Read More