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Episode 185 | St. Charles Fire Department Near Miss – Part 3

This episode is part 3 of a 3-part interview with two members of the St. Charles Fire Department (Missouri) discussing a near-miss where four firefighters were overrun by rapidly changing conditions at a residential dwelling fire. Length: 48 minutes Click the YouTube icon to listen   _____________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of […]

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Situational Awareness Matters!

Complex Communications

We have many traits that make us uniquely human. Among them is our ability to engage in complex communications. We can look at black ink squiggled on a piece of bleached paper and derive meaning from those symbols.  We call that skill reading comprehension. And we can listen to and comprehend the meaning of more

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Episode 184 | St. Charles Fire Department Near Miss – Part 2

This episode is part 2 of a 3-part interview with two members of the St. Charles Fire Department (Missouri) discussing a near-miss where four firefighters were overrun by rapidly changing conditions at a residential dwelling fire. Length: 45 minutes click the YouTube icon to listen

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Situational Awareness Matters!

Teaching Situational Awareness and Decision Making

Situational awareness is the foundation for good decision making. Situational awareness is formed by observing… and understanding what is happening in your environment, in the context of how time is passing. That “understanding” is then used to make predictions of future events. For those who have attended my full-day situational awareness classes you know this

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Episode 183 | St. Charles Fire Department Near Miss – Part 1

This episode is part 1 of a 3-part interview with two members of the St. Charles Fire Department (Missouri) discussing a near-miss where four firefighters were overrun by rapidly changing conditions at a residential dwelling fire. Length: 56 minutes Click the YouTube icon to listen     _____________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding

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Complacency: A Killer of First Responders

Curiosity killed the cat. But it’s not curiosity that is killing first responders. It’s complacency contributing to flawed situational awareness. What does it mean to be complacent? I could offer you the Webster’s dictionary definition. Instead, I’d like to offer you a definition based on my observations of those who suffer from the affliction. Complacent:

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Episode 182 | Colorado Springs FD Interview – Part 2

This episode is part 2 of an interview with three members of the Colorado Springs Fire Department discussing recruit training, using science to teach firefighting and more. Length: 50 minutes Click the YouTube icon to listen       _____________________________________________________ If you are interested in taking your understanding of situational awareness and high-risk decision making to

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Competing Goals Can Impact Situational Awareness

  Arguably,to accomplish a mission, it would be very beneficial to have a shared set of goals that everyone understands and everyone is working on together in a unified way to accomplish. Shared goals can contribute to shared situational awareness – a common understanding of what is happening and what the plan of action entails

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Episode 181 | Colorado Springs FD Interview – Part 1

This episode is part 1 of an interview with three members of the Colorado Springs Fire Department discussing recruit training, using science to teach firefighting and more. Length: 55 minutes click the YouTube icon to listen  

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Communications Overload Impacts Situational Awareness

In reading casualty reports you will often see issues related to communications as a contributing factor. Miscommunications, lack of communications or too much radio traffic (to include overloaded radio channels) are often cited. It is the last of these issues I want to address. There is an inherent cognitive consequence from too much communications that

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