Nursing leaders, drop your tools

Karl E. Weick, distinguished professor of organizational behavior and psychology at the University of Michigan Business School, has described the failure of a total of 27 wildland firefighters to follow orders to drop their heavy tools so they could move faster and outrun exploding fires, which led to their deaths within sight of safe land.1 The first such failure occurred in 1949 in Mann Gulch, Montana, where 13 firefighters lost their lives, and the second occurred in 1994 under similar circumstances in Colorado, resulting in 14 deaths. After the fires, the deceased firefighters were found with their tools (chain saws and axes) and packs still on them. Why would anyone slow their retreat from danger, even death, by hanging on to heavy tools that were no longer useful to them? The U.S. Forest Service analysis of the more recent incident revealed that the firefighters would have reached the top of a ridge before the fire did if they had perceived the threat from the start, dropped their tools, and made a run for it.