## 3 Communication Problems and Issues
### Robustness of Communication  
A firefighting mission always comprises various teams of firefighters engaging in a certain area. Each team plays an important part of the overall intervention even though they do not necessarily have access to all available information. Communication becomes important to exchange information between teams. The communication channel is an element that firefighters take for granted but can also fail. In the following discussion, an experienced firefighter and IC describes problems with current communication technology in daily routine.  
**IC:** \"This is something that we openly admit. Wireless communication problems happen to firefighters, and they happen a lot. It does not matter who you ask, professional firefighters, volunteer firefighters, if the crew is well organized or badly organized, the communication equipment dies and leaves us high and dry, or partially gives out. Sometimes it breaks down, or there is interference, or the battery dies, someone keeps on squawking with the talk button, there are countless things which can go wrong.\"  
Communication failures can greatly impact the sequence of events in an intervention. In the following discussion an experienced team leader (FF), an incident commander (IC) and a firefighter instructor (FFI) describe the impact. The discussion is guided by a researcher (R).  
**FF:** \"One thing that has to be improved is the communication, or what you said, that happens a lot (sic), a lot of the time the success of the mission can't be guaranteed, because the communication system stops working. (The success of the mission) lives and dies with the communication.\"  
**IC:** \"You can have a totally basic room fire, if the communication system dies everything outside goes crazy. If (the incident commander) can't talk to (the fireman) anymore, he'll send in a rapid intervention team. As soon as he sends in a rapid intervention team, he has to get a second one to have ready. So now he has to restructure everything outside so that he has a second rapid intervention team ready.\"  
**FFI:** \"(Radio failure) starts a huge chain of events. If I am the incident commander standing outside and I have an attacking team inside that's actually using the pressurized breathing apparatus in a fire, and I send in a rapid intervention team, then I make the call to tell the control center, and the control center sends out whatever was already on location. For example, if there are two fire trucks already there, then two more fire trucks are dispatched from some other fire station. A giant juggernaut is put in gear, which might not even be necessary. In Cologne even more [than what is already at the scene] is dispatched.\"  
**IC:** \"If I escalate the situation from a status 1 fire to a status 2 fire [which have different requirements in terms of personnel and vehicle resources which should be on location] then the commissioner has to be told.\"  
**R:** \"Just because communication breaks down?!\"  
**IC:** \"Yes! Just because one walkie-talkie from one team gives out, which is completely not in a dangerous situation, but doesn't have a radio connection. Now, 6 or 7 fire trucks go racing through the city with their lights and sirens on, and a trip like that is dangerous. Accidents can always happen. When the trucks are moving through the city with their emergency lights on, you can't just stop them. Once the juggernauts get rolling, they keep on rolling.\"