Physical employment standard for Canadian wildland fire fighters; identifying and characterising critical initial attack response tasks

摘要

Physical employment standards evaluate whether a worker possesses the physical abilities to safely and efficiently perform all critical on-the-job tasks. Initial Attack (IA) wildland fire fighters (WFF) must perform such critical tasks in all terrains. Following a physical demands analysis, IA WFF (n=946 out of a possible 965) from all fire jurisdictions ranked the most demanding tasks and identified mountains, muskeg and rolling hills as the most challenging terrains. Experimental trials found the oxygen cost (meanSD O(2)mL kg( -1) min( -1)) while performing the hose pack back carry to be 40 +/- 7 in steep mountains, 34 +/- 5 in muskeg and 34 +/- 2 in rolling hills (n=168). Back-carrying and hand-carrying a 28.5kg pump, back-carrying a 25kg hose pack and advancing charged hose were the most demanding tasks. Performing the same emergency IA WFF tasks was significantly more demanding in mountains (p0.05), and these higher demands must be taken into account when developing a physical employment standard for Canadian wildland fire fighters.Practitioner Summary: Physical employment standards evaluate whether an applicant or incumbent possesses the physical and physiological abilities to safely and efficiently perform the critical on-the-job tasks. This paper details the process used to undertake a physical demands analysis and characterise tasks for the development of a circuit test andfitness employmentstandard for IA WFF.