Out of the thirty three memory aides used for fire fighter survival that are designed to avoid fire entrapment and make tactical decisions (ten standard fire orders, eighteen watch outs and Look outs Awareness Communications Escape routes & Safety) not one of them emphasis the use of Personnel Protective Equipment -Personnel Protective Clothing. The LCES acronym originated in the USA in the 1970s. AFAC adopted the system and expanded it by adding an “A” for awareness. A review of current American wildfire injuries indicates that even though fire fighters may follow the thirty three memory aides they are falling short in critical events when applying their PPE.
LACES functions sequentially and is self triggering: lookouts continually assess the fire environment and communicate threats to safety. Fire-fighters use escape routes to safety zones. We can see from American experiences such as the Bull Fire and Horseshoe Fire entrapments that this self triggering auto response needs to be expanded to include PPE/PPC, thus making PLACES. The objectives are to:
• Get fire fighters to continually assess the appropriate level of PPE that they are wearing and carrying.
• Expand on the current safety systems fire fighters use in a simple, proactive way.
• Implement proactive safety systems rather than rely on reactive safety reviews.
• Implement a consistent national approach that will facilitate improved levels of safety while enabling fire-fighters to work across borders with a common fire survival system.
LACES is by design, considerably simpler than many other acronyms. It is so simple that it overlooks one of the most important facets of firefighter safety, PPE. The uniform adoption of PLACES as a memory aide for fire survival across all authorities in Australia and New Zealand will broaden the effectiveness of our fire survival memory aid.