Beware! Complacency Will Kill Us

Beware!

Watch out! Look around, this phenomenon is happening all around us all the time! Are we setting ourselves up for failure? How many times do we as officers allow this to happen? Curious as to what I’m talking about?

It’s called “Normalization of Deviance”!

What does this phrase mean?

It means that complacency kills and this marks the beginning of it all.

Photo Courtesy: John Gallagher, Firefightertoolbox.com

Deviance, Complacency,and Human Nature

The textbook term for normalization of deviance can be defined as the human tendency under time and pressure to take a short cut to meet a set standard of performance.

Sound familiar?  I gave you the textbook characterization, now how does it apply to us in the fire service? Allow me to give an example.   The tones go off and we are dispatched to an automatic fire alarm at 2100 hours to an unoccupied commercial warehouse. We have been dispatched to the same address two times in three days, spent thirty-five minutes walking the entire building searching for an activated smoke detector and both activations were unfounded.

Seems routine enough, except for the fact that we are in the middle of a heat wave and its 90 degrees outside.

The first call we were combat ready as usual. The second call we all figured that it was probably an alarm malfunction or maybe just a coincidence. The third call comes in and now the crew looks at each other and starts to become visibly annoyed. While responding to the third activation I look back to the crew and some of my firefighters don’t have their entire turnout gear on. They have let their guard down due to the frequency of the call assuming that this will be another false alarm thus giving in to the normalization of deviance.

The odds are that the alarm will probably amount to nothing and all goes well, but what will happen the next time that address comes in? Will we allow the crew to not wear any gear at all and take a slow ride? What if when we arrive there is smoke showing and now the entire crew is delayed because all of us have to finish gearing up!

Human nature shows us that it’s easy for us to become complacent in the face of tedious repetition, but this is how firefighters are ending up injured and or killed! As fire officer’s it’s our responsibility to combat this observable fact. We need to make every effort not to allow this to occur. We cannot be apprehensive of taking immediate corrective action.

This in my opinion falls under a personal standard that ought to be unwavering, lead by example and set the standard.

“There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction.” – John F. Kennedy