A successful operation is safe extinguishment, without encouraging or reinforcing unsafe procedures. Safe behavior must be reinforced and it must be a priority of fire service leaders. Von Essen looks at the efforts of the New York City Fire Department to build safe operations into its culture. It also examines what needs to be done to facilitate not only improved performance but also cultural change within a learning organization. One important means of improving firefighter safety that most firefighters continue to overlook is participation in the code and standard development, adoption, and enforcement process.
Building codes have very little to do with firefighting operating safety.
While current Save Our Own training provides an excellent opportunity for firefighters to become more personally effective, it so far has only addressed the task level of operation. To solve the problem of firefighter deaths and injuries at structural fires, the program must be expanded to describe the Save Our Own functions that must also be performed at the tactical level by sector officers and the strategic level managed by the incident commander.