ACCIDENT/INJURY EVALUATION SYSTEM
All accidents and injuries sustained by Kemah Fire Department members in performance of their duties shall be reported immediately to officer in charge. Line officers shall be responsible for conducting preliminary fact finding regarding injuries including exposures of their personnel and to ensure the proper reports are filed.
Emergency responders shall be responsible for fact finding and completion of all vehicular accident reports, all injury reports related to vehicular accidents and any injury reports related to emergency scene activities.
Incident Commanders shall be responsible for all injury reports other than vehicular accidents and emergency scene activities occurring during business hours to personnel assigned to their district.
The Fire Chief shall be responsible for completion and review of vehicular accident and/ or injury reports to their assigned personnel.
Contact the Safety Officer or designee on all accidents and/or injuries by pager or telephone as soon as possible. The Safety Officer shall report to the chief any irregularities and propose proactive action to prevent repeat incidents.
Upon initiation by department Chief, cases involving extensive equipment and/or property damage or serious injury shall be reviewed extensively by the Safety Officer or the line officers. The purpose of reviewing is to determine why the accident/injury occurred and the actions necessary to eliminate future occurrences. When conducting fact-finding the officers shall:
Provide a brief description of the accident.
Identify the specific act or action that caused the accident/injury (using axe without gloves, driving too fast for conditions, etc.).
Inspect equipment, accident site, or other items related to the cause of accident/injury.
Identify unsafe condition(s) that caused the accident/injury (vehicle brake failure, water on streets, etc.).
Identify other contributing factors (time of day, fatigue, etc.).
Identify procedures that apply.
Identify new procedures or equipment that could eliminate or reduce the severity of future incidents.
Specify actions that will be taken to eliminate the occurrence of similar future accidents or injuries.
Provide a simple diagram of vehicular accidents indicating streets, intersections, direction of travel and vehicle locations.
Take direct action to eliminate hazards and affect safety attitudes.
Safety Review Process
This process is intended to provide the necessary communications and feedback to improve the safety behavior of firefighters in the Kemah Fire Department. Such a process will utilize fact-finding, peer review, safety analysis, and policy change in order to provide quality control for departmental safety. The intent is to reduce accidents, injuries, and exposures. The process will establish a review cycle that will provide information to improve standard operating procedures, safety program applications, training methods, and fireground practices.
When an on-duty accident, injury or exposure happens, any on-duty line Officer will insure that a fact-finding effort is made to collect pertinent information concerning the mishap. This information along with required documentation for the file and will be forwarded to the Safety officer and the Fire Chief for review. Based on that review, appropriate cases will be sent to the line officers for evaluation.
The Safety Review Subcommittee (line officers, directed by the Safety Officer) will evaluate all available facts and information. Then they will determine appropriate action (if any) whether to meet with the individual(s) or the crew(s) involved in the accident, injury, or exposure prior to further recommendations being made. Such a meeting is intended to acquire a better understanding of the event and to find out from those involved what is needed to correct or prevent a recurrence of the mishap. This additional information will be returned to the Safety Review Subcommittee to make a final determination. From that determination will come recommendations to improve SOGs or training methods. These recommendations will also address the need to provide additional training for those involved in the incident. An alternate method for gathering additional information, when a face-to-face meeting is not feasible, is to send a fact-finding packet to those involved in the accident, injury or exposure. This information will be returned to the Safety Review Subcommittee and processed in order to provide recommendations in the manner described above.
1/13/2005