lie: a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
I recently read The Big Lie, an essay by Mark Smith, a man for whom I have a lot of respect. Smith contends that someone tells young firefighters and their families that wildland firefighting is safe, with the implication that agencies deceive their employees into believing that they have engaged in a safe activity, only to later have their families feel betrayed when their young firefighter dies.
While I commend and admire the purpose for which this essay was written — to become a catalyst for leading to a stronger, more self‐aware and more resilient wildland fire culture — the underlying premise rang hollow for me. Implying deliberate intent to deceive strikes me as altogether too conspiratorial. I’ve borne witness to meetings in which the entire brain trust of the U.S. wildland fire community discussed firefighter safety and never did I observe a conspiracy to deceive firefighters about the risks of their job. In fact, unfortunately, too often I could not identify any intentional action let alone a conspiracy to lie.
Plus, to suggest that some people have lied, and others have been lied to, divides firefighters from their employers and I see nothing gained from that. We can see myriad examples, around the country and around the world, of how ineffective humans are at solving problems by dividing people into true believers and unbelievers. Leadership is about unity, alignment, and shared direction — and it is unity of purpose and alignment of people’s effort that will improve the well-being of firefighters and the effectiveness of the agencies that employ them.
In the essay, Smith strives to rhetorically answer the question “Why are families so surprised or feel betrayed when their kids die fighting wildfires?” Well, I ‘d have to say, not because of The Big Lie, but because these are natural and common emotions experienced by survivors on the occasion of a loved one’s death. As a counterpoint, I’d ask why we are so surprised or feel betrayed when families are surprised or feel betrayed? Seriously, do we expect families of firefighters who’ve died to remain stoic and just suck it up? Would that somehow herald the growth as a profession, or show that we had become a stronger, more self‐aware and more resilient wildland fire culture?
We cannot use the reactions of survivors as a measure of our strength, resilience, or self-awareness. We can tell firefighters and their families about the inherent risks of fighting fire until the cows come home, but people will always experience denial and anger as they grapple to understand and overcome their grief when they lose a loved one or co-worker; that’s just part of the human condition.
Has anyone really told anyone firefighting is safe? In my 39th fire season, I cannot recall an instance in which someone intentionally conveyed this message. Do we really need to be told that firefighting is dangerous? I, like many a young firefighter before me and after me, found the danger appealing, just as did many of Smith’s soldier colleagues. To pretend that firefighters remain unaware of, and are not motivated by, the danger of the work represents as big a deception as any.
Are policies that aspire to vector firefighter injury and fatality toward zero, wrong-headed as they may be, really deliberate falsehoods intended to deceive? I think not; rather I regard them as very typical bureaucratic responses to difficult problems. As bureaucracies, our wildland fire agencies are all about policies and it’s hard to write a policy that says we don’t want people to die on the job, but someone probably will.
An honest assessment of firefighting culture requires us to acknowledge that some of the greatest lies told to firefighters may be those we tell ourselves; that our egos don’t get in our way, that we can go without sleep, that measuring success in miles driven and hours worked doesn’t encourage high risk behavior, that 60 year olds are as sharp as they were when they were forty, that our decisions are not influenced by a desire to maximize overtime.
Make no mistake, Mark Smith and I agree on a great many things.
- Are cultural and human factors risks as profound and potentially deadly as physical risks in the wildland fire operating environment? You bet!
- Is our current application of available human factors knowledge ideal? No.
- Are we largely in denial about endemic loss of life in our service? Perhaps.
- Do we need to reform our approaches to managing risk? For sure!
- Are we entrusted with the sacred duty to keep the loss of firefighters as low as humanly possible? Of course.
- Is a zero defect culture the antithesis of transparency and learning? For certain.
However, has there been a “Big Lie,” a deliberate intent to deceive people into believing that firefighting is safe? I think not.
A flaw of The Big Lie is that the essay presents firefighter losses through a binary model; either we find line of duty deaths acceptable or unacceptable. Rather than acceptable or unacceptable, I prefer to think of firefighter losses as tragic, undesirable, and to be avoided at all cost. However, given the nature of the work, the wildland fire operating environment, and the number of people exposed to uncommon risk, some loss seems inevitable. But I will never think “I’m sending 500 people to the Greenhorn incident, and I expect five to not return.” While I disagree with the fundamental premise of The Big Lie, I am encouraging people in my agency to read this essay. I think Smith’s piece is a good conversation starter. I hope to engage firefighters in my agency in a discussion of The Big Lie, and I hope you will as well. Ask people to read it, throw it out on the table, and discuss. Have your folks read this article and consider my critique. A good, rowdy crew debate about The Big Lie could be the most valuable leadership training you put on this year.
BIO
Mike DeGrosky is Chief of the Fire and Aviation Management Bureau for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, Division of Forestry, and an adjunct instructor in leadership studies for Fort Hays State University. Follow Mike on Twitter @guidegroup or via LinkedIn.
