Cataloging Information
Human Factors of Firefighter Safety
Leadership
Atwood notes that while managers must adopt a passion for safety, the true test is on the fire line. Supervisors are in charge of making decisions that ultimately put safety first, or not. Atwood argues that improvement will not come from the top down, or the outside in, and that firefighting experience is the most critical factor in safe and effective decision making. The more experience that individuals have fighting fires, the more capable they will be at making faster and safer decisions. Fire fighting experience and commitment to safety will help create a culture in the fire fighting organization that will lead to intuitively safe decision making strategies (from Larson et al. 2007, Using social science to understand and improve wildland fire organizations, p. 7).