Change is Coming

("Swiss Cheese" by thenoodleator is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

We live in a period of such uncertainty. Worldwide pandemic. Wildfires raging across all western states. Double hurricanes forming. Meteoroid headed to earth. Political and social unrest. Worldwide hunger and water shortages.

Who knows what will come next.

But one thing we can count on is change.

Change is coming. The winds are changing. The skies are darkening. And what we are quickly learning is that what has worked in the past is no longer working. We are caught unprepared in our complacency and mediocrity.

It’s not really anyone’s fault, it happens. But I do want to tell you, like in the fire world, start watching for holes in the cheese.

Holes in the cheese? Yes, holes in the cheese.

If you take a wedge of Swiss cheese, notice the holes. Random and unique with differing depths and damage, but all affecting its appearance. But it is not the appearance we are concerned about. It is the holes lining up leading to disaster.

Have you ever had a day where literally nothing goes right? Please tell me it’s not just me! That first thing wrong may be that you didn’t sleep well, Hole 1. The next may be that you spilled your coffee and veered into the next lane nearly hitting the car in that lane, Hole 2. And while you mopped the coffee up from your lap with whatever napkins you could find in the back seat, you narrowly stopped short of hitting the car in front of you that stopped unexpectedly, Hole 3. So you drive faster and keep driving from lane to lane trying to make up time because you are mowing running late for work, Hole 4.

You finally make it to work late and feel rushed and ignore the normal attention to detail and instead opt for “just get it done”, Hole 5. You somehow manage to make it through GFR rest of the work day and head towards home.

Sleep deprived, stressed, and a general feeling of being “off”, you decide to decrease your commute time and hit the surface streets, with your day on your mind, stress, frustration, distraction, and inattention finally cumulate when you lean down to grab your cell phone that’s ringing, just as a child runs out to chase a ball in the road, catastrophic Hole 6.

In a series of seemingly unrelated human errors, conditions and environment all of the holes aligned to tragedy.

But what if things had gone differently? What if even one of those things didn’t occur that way? What if rather than speed and drive erratically to work, you slowed your mind, body, and vehicle down, and called in and said you would be late.

Just think of that series of events and think how many times the holes have started to line up in your life? Bit by bit driving toward the rumble strips just to jerk the car back into line. How many times have you driven when you had to have the windows down, or slapped yourself to stay awake while driving? Or narrowly avoided disaster not by your own actions, but because of someone else’s preventative actions on your behalf?

Of course not everything that starts poorly will also end in catastrophe, but so many things can happen that even though you try to be vigilante and pay appropriate attention, still bad things can happen.

In fire, the holes can line up within minutes. The winds shift, a escape route or safety zone is compromised, an employee is injured, aircraft cannot fly, equipment breaks down, an accident occurs, radio communications are not understood, or a communication goes unreceived.

Worst case scenarios should always be on your mind, not as a mental exercise with a terminal viewpoint, but with a constantly changing and purposeful and vigilant attention to changing circumstances and events.

Keep your head up, notice your surroundings, slow down and focus, say something if you see something going wrong, look out for one another as well as yourself, never forget that you are more important than any death benefit issued to your family, and don’t forget that the goal of each day is to come home to those that love you.

Times are changing. Now is a great time to look at the situation differently than we ever have before.

Wildland Fire Leadership Challenge - Digging a Little Deeper

• Research James Reason's Swiss cheese model of of accident causation is a model used in risk analysis and risk management. 

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The expressions, used with permission, are those of the author, Summer Osmond, BLM employee and former wildland firefighter.