Safety Week is June 19-25

Fire/EMS Safety, Health, and Survival Week will take place from June 19-25, and this year’s theme is “Surviving the Fire Ground – Firefighter, Fire Officer, and Command Preparedness.” The National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) has partnered with the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) and the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) to promote the 2011 event. First responders are encouraged to use this week to focus on the safety of their department members.

With budget cuts, reduced training, and other challenges facing so many departments, firefighters must make time to focus on their own survival on the fireground. Firefighter fatality data compiled by the U.S. Fire Administration has shown that firefighters “becoming trapped and disoriented represent the largest portion of structural fireground fatalities.” The incidents in which firefighters have lost their lives or lived to tell about it have a consistent theme - inadequate situational awareness put them at risk.

Firefighters don’t plan to be lost, disoriented, injured, or trapped during a structure fire or emergency incident, but even a well-trained firefighter might face unexpected risks and become overwhelmed after entering a structure. To help first responders prepare for the unexpected, this year’s Safety Week will focus on delivering the IAFF's online Fire Ground Survival Program (FGS) awareness training course to all fire departments. The FGS is a comprehensive survival-skills and mayday-prevention program available to all members of the fire service. Find out more about FGS at www.iaff.org/hs/fgs/fgsindex.htm.   

Find more tools and resources as well as general information about Safety Week at www.iafc.org/SafetyWeek. Additional information can also be found on the IAFF’s Health, Safety and Medicine’s web site. Find health and safety resources from the NVFC at www.nvfc.org/Health_Safety.