Open Letter to Bill Carey
This is the slightly modified version of a letter written to Bill Carey. The original letter was in fact a facebook post.
Dear Bill Carey,
One last thing…I find it interesting that you, Bill, would latch on to the word unethical as would Dave LeBlanc. What makes it interesting is that the definition of unethical is slightly more nuanced than simple immorality or disreputable behavior, right? But you and your supporters quickly got the sense that I was somehow vilifying you for your ideas, even though I never came out and called you a villain.
My point with regards to the basic premise of your work is that while you don’t ever come out and say it is okay to search without thinking and while you DO say that one must take every situation as this sort of novel experience requiring a unique analysis, the main action of the counterfactuals you supply is the vilification of the converse of your approach e.g., the tacit assumption that a vacant is vacant.
The truth I think is that for the vast majority of fires this is never an issue; it is either obvious that you need to search or it is obvious that you should not. If we are to have a rational disagreement on this matter you will have to allow me at least that much: there are some fires where it is obvious that we must search the structures and others where it is obvious that we should not.
It is important to set the range of possibilities; to create some boundaries for us to work inside of. So, our real question is how to behave when we face a small minority of our fires, e.g, occupant status is unclear, fire conditions are difficult, AND there is no hoseline immediately available. If the lone occupant of a structure meets you outside and tells you he was home alone, should you search without a line? That one is easy, of course not. If you have a small fire in bathroom vent fan and the smoke is confined to the attic space and occupant status is unclear should you, close the bathroom door and search the sleeping areas without a charged hoseline? Of course you should. If you have a hose and are putting cooling streams on burning surfaces should you search behind the line, ALWAYS. So we only have something to talk about if there is unclear occupant status, difficult fire conditions, AND no handline available.
The first problem as I see it is that fires burn hot, they consume oxygen, and they produce carbon monoxide; simple inescapable facts. The second problem is that people exposed to high enough amounts of heat, low enough levels of oxygen and/or high enough levels of carbon monoxide die; also simple inescapable fact.
I think that I can find popular agreement to the notion that it is wrong to trade a life for a life that is already lost. We should not ask firefighters to die in an attempt to recover a body from a burning building. Interestingly I think agreement begins to break down quickly after this point. While we can all agree that we should not trade the living for the dead, this is where people begin to argue what it means to be dead. This is where they say that I have no right to decide when someone it dead inside a burning house. This is where we bump up against the boundaries of the rational.
I need to digress for a moment, please bear with me. I find it interesting that firefighters will risk their lives in a burning house to save someone, because “you never know…” but tend not to apply that same logic to the 80-year working code in the nursing home. I agree that a patient who has been pulseless and not breathing for 20 minutes is not likely to have another birthday. But I never had anyone argue with me about “calling a code” prematurely like they do about me pulling them out of a house fire before they were done searching. Really, what’s the difference? Death does not come in degrees, is dead sometimes not dead?
So, now I am standing in front of a boarded up house on a vacant overgrown lot. I am faced with a significant fire (again, if it was not a significant fire we would not have anything to talk about) and an unknown occupant status. In my mind there are three basic ways to approach this situation. The Cowboy way, “Search until your gear catches on fire.” The Carey (I picked a name for ease of conversation) way, which I characterize as, make no assumptions about occupant status, analyze/size-up and then search as conditions allow. Or the Bailey (I picked a name for ease of conversation) way, which I characterize as assuming that it is impossible for people to survive some situations but it is possible to make rational judgments about what those situations look like. The difference between our approaches I think is subtle. Both approaches assume that people are rational actors e.g, that the search team does not have a death wish. Both approaches are bounded by rationality in general, e.g., there are situations that are not survivable for people or firemen.
The Carey approach leans heavily on the ability of on-scene analysis to overcome an ethos of aggressive searching. In other words you are asking firefighter to stop and think in the split second about whether the search is rational thing to do. However, the split second decision tends to draw on something other than rationality. Rational thought requires time. Search or not search decisions come without the benefit of time. The Bailey approach says that if you are faced with a situation for which you have to stop and analyze you have completed your analysis. If a rational actor is given pause it is unlikely that a person trapped in the house would be alive. If that person is alive it is because that they are in a compartment isolated from the fire. If they are alive it is because they are in a safe place. Put the fire out fast and then go look.
At the end of the day there is always going to be this one time where a 90-year man walks out of a fully involved house wearing a speedo and flip-flops but I am not risking my life on the off chance he’ll need my help to open the door.
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