I wrote back in March about a climbing trip I had scheduled for June. My main subject was human error and how my partners and I were lining ourselves up for problems in the beginning, but our previous experiences were starting to help us get a grip on reality.

Peru is a land of contrasts. From busy, impoverished big cities to prospering (by South American standards) small towns. From the coastal desert wasteland to the Andes mountain range that tops out at over 22,000 feet.

We were successful as a 4-person team in that we summited 3 peaks. My rope partner was only successful in climbing the first peak at 18,000 + due to an illness he caught on the trip down. I got 2 peaks in with the second one being just short of 20,000 feet. After that I got a throat infection which required a trip to the local emergency room to get antibiotics.

The local business news paper wrote a article about the training services I provide to fire departments. What made it a challenge on my end was how to describe what I do so the general population can understand it. I have always found it difficult to describe to Chiefs and Training Officers exactly what makes my trainings different from others, here is a view from a different angle.

April 29, 2011 –

BOULDER — Throughout his 20 years in structural and wildland firefighting, Quinn MacLeod learned that a lot of hazards that endanger the safety of firefighters don’t come solely from the fires.

Situations do not start out to include Human Error. We don’t wake up in the morning and say “I’m going to have a life threatening event today.” At least most of us don’t say that, there are a few you read about in the Darwin awards… Human error in our professional and personal lives usually starts out very benign and those innocent benign factors combine to create that error chain resulting in a minor or sometimes significant (life threatening) problem.

Myself and three mountain climber friends of mine are heading to the Cordillera Blanca region of Peru this coming May. In our first planning meeting our discussions bounced all over the place, from simple logistics of getting there to the actual climbs themselves. Of course the discussions always came back to the climbing routes and how high we would be climbing. All of us have summited peaks to at least 19,000 feet. The peaks we are looking at top off at around 22,000 feet. Most routes are ice and snow including the world famous snow flutes, unconsolidated steep snow mush.

I was just re-reading a story I saw on the Daily Dispatch, “3 Missouri Firefighters Recovering After ‘Flashover’.” Thankfully it sounds like they are doing well.

Firefighting is a dangerous job with lots of factors that are unpredictable and unforeseeable. Or are they? Whatever the investigation findings are from Kansas City there will be lessons learned and similarities drawn between that fire and many others. The trick is to take that information and internalize it. What can we do to spot those situations which lead to a disastrous outcome BEFORE they become a disaster?

 The study of “human factors” in the fire service originated in the wildland fire community. In 1994 the USFS lost 14 of their best on a mountain side in Colorado. The investigation yielded a number of surprising and not so surprising results (unfortunately fire tragedies seem to repeat themselves). Most of the issues revolved around the decisions, human errors, and the ineffective interpersonal communication made that day.

The most popular human factors encountered in the fire service are decision making, human error, and interpersonal communication. I find it interesting that these subjects for the longest time were presented only to our upper management (Division, Assistant, and Department Chiefs) as if they were the only ones faced with needing this knowledge. Eventually this information was shared with the middle management (Company Officers and Battalion Chiefs) as they really do live this knowledge in our most hazardous environments.