Jun 27, 2014
On this episode we walk with Captain John Wright from the Flower Mound (Texas) Fire Department. Captain Wright survived an extremely close call while operating as an interior search crew at a residential dwelling fire.
On June 17, 2011 the Flower Mound Fire Department along with several mutual aid companies responded to a residential structure fire. During the incident, Captain Wright and Firefighter Trujillo became overrun by fire on the second floor. The rapidly increasing fire disorientated them and they became lost in the fire room. After the Mayday was called, Firefighter Trujillo located two small windows on the wall opposite of where the fire had broken through the wall. Both men made a narrow escape seconds before the room flashed.
As you listen you’ll hear him share some very strong lessons related to numerous situational awareness barriers. You’ll hear him share how he was:
· Afflicted by a sense of urgency
· How muscle memory from past training impacted his performance
· How unconscious competency benefited him
· How he suffered from tunnel vision and why tunnel vision isn’t anything like what he’d thought it would be
· How he suffered from time distortion
· How his hearing was impacted from auditory exclusion
· How he knew what to do, intuitively, but ignored the warning signs.
· How complacency crept into his mindset
· How his rational judgment became impairment under stress
· How he experienced self-talk and how it almost killed him.
· How he resigned himself to the fact that he was going to die and how he simply laid down on the floor to give up. And while he was laying there on the floor, in that super heated environment, how he took time to say goodbye to his 3 year-old son.
· How, while laying there, he said to himself: All I have to do is wait for this to burn through my spinal cord and as soon as it gets through that, it will be over and the pain will stop.
· What caused him to get up and get moving again.
If you have experienced or witnessed a near miss and would like to be interviewed on this show, visit my companion site:
www.CloseCallSurvivor.com and click on the Contact Us link. Thank you, in advance, for sharing your lessons learned so others may live.
Flower Mound Fire Department Mayday Website
(Contains video, audio and photographs)
www.TexasMayday.com
Situational Awareness Matters! website
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http://www.samatters.com/situational-awareness-matters-academy/
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http://www.samatters.com/store/
Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
http://www.firefighternearmiss.com/
Close Call Survivor Website
Contact Rich Gasaway
612-548-4424