Physical employment standard for Canadian wildland fire fighters; developing and validating the test protocol

Abstract

Developing the Canadian initial attack (IA) wildland fire fighter (WFF) physical employment standard (WFX-FIT) began in a previous investigation with a physical demands analysis in which hand and back carrying a 28.5 kg pump, back carrying a 25 kg hose pack and advancing charged hose were identified as the critical IA emergency tasks. In the present study, a circuit was created incorporating simulations of the critical tasks with faster completion times required for provinces with more arduous terrains. The oxygen cost (mean ± SD VO₂ mL∙kg⁻¹∙min⁻¹) of performing IA WFF tasks sequentially on the job was 37 ± 6 compared to 37 ± 4 when performing the WFX-FIT, indicating strong construct validity. Content validation ratings comparing the likeness of on-the-job tasks to simulated tasks in the WFX-FIT provided strong agreement. These validations confirm that the physical demands involved in performing the WFX-FIT are the same as IA wildland fire fighting.

Practitioner Summary: This paper details the process used to develop and validate the physical employment standard for jurisdictional employment and national exchange of IA WFF. The range of cut-scores reflects the differences in jurisdictional physical demands due to terrain difficulty, fire management policy on fire risk and forest value index.

Keywords:

• BFOR
• fitness screening
• job readiness
• public safety