Responder safety

Firefighters face numerous risks, including exposure to high temperatures, smoke inhalation, structural collapses, and hazardous materials. Ensuring your safety minimizes the risk of injury or death.

How to stay safe at highway incidents

• Use this checklist to document your safety measures during roadway response incidents.
• Fire Rescue 1 offers these five steps to extricate patients from modern vehicles.
• Responder Safety helps protect emergency responders on the roadway. 

Chemical safety: Tips for firefighters

• These safety tips from Lexipol help firefighters stay safe from “forever” chemicals. 

How to safely operate emergency vehicles

• Learn more about law enforcement emergency vehicle operations from the League of Minnesota Cities. 
• Ever wonder what constitutes an emergency vehicle? Here is what Minnesota law has to say.

How to report safety incidents

• Firefighterclosecalls.com will help the fire service track the close calls — incidents that did not lead to serious injury or death — and learn from these human errors to increase its overall ability to protect firefighters and the communities they serve.  
  Firefighters who experience a near-miss event fill out a quick, user-friendly report that is de-identified and posted so firefighters in other departments can learn from the experiences. All reports are voluntary, non-punitive and confidential. 
• This site contains information about the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety's Firefighter Fatality Prevention Program.

Other helpful safety resources

• Everyone Goes Home strives to prevent firefighter line‑of‑duty deaths and injuries.
• Fire Hero Learning Network delivers critical safety, operations, and community relations fire service training.
• The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation supports families, colleagues, and organizations of fallen firefighters and works to reduce preventable firefighter death and injury.