If you’ve ever found yourself in the middle of an emergency, you already know something important. Everything seems to happen at once. People are yelling. Information is incomplete. Time is short. Emotions are running high. Everyone has an opinion about what should happen next.
The problem is that not everything can be done first.
Every emergency, whether it’s a house fire, a hurricane, a financial collapse, or a long-term grid-down event, forces you to answer one simple question:
What should I do first?
Making the wrong decision can make a bad situation even worse. Making the right decision often prevents additional loss and creates opportunities to solve the next problem.
Over the years I learned that successful emergency response isn’t about doing everything. It’s about doing the right things in the right order.
Fortunately, there is a proven system for doing exactly that.
A System That Works
In 2005 I attended the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where I completed instructor training for the Incident Command System (ICS). During that week, members of the national ICS course development team asked our class to peer review new training materials that would eventually be used throughout the country.
One of the subjects we spent considerable time discussing was a priority-setting system known as L.I.P.S.
The objective was simple. Develop a decision-making model that could be applied to virtually every emergency imaginable. It had to work equally well at a house fire, a hazardous materials spill, a major flood, a hurricane, a train derailment, a wildfire, a bridge collapse, or a large-scale disaster.
The result was a remarkably simple system that has guided emergency responders ever since. Although it was developed for emergency services, I believe it applies just as well to families preparing for emergencies.
L.I.P.S. stands for:
- Life Safety
- Incident Stabilization
- Property Conservation
- Societal Restoration
Those four priorities provide a framework for making sound decisions when everything around you seems to be falling apart.
Let’s look at each one individually.
Life Safety
Life Safety is always the first priority. Nothing else comes before protecting people from death, injury, or serious illness. That sounds obvious until you begin asking difficult questions. How much risk should someone accept to save another person?
During my years in the fire service I watched the profession gradually shift between two different philosophies. The traditional view held that rescuers accepted reasonable risk to save another person’s life. We certainly weren’t reckless, but we understood that the job sometimes required courage and calculated risk.
Later, another philosophy began to emerge. Increasingly I heard statements like:
“I’ve got to go home at the end of my shift.”
Or,
“My life is more important than theirs.”
I understood the reasoning. Nobody wants emergency responders to become victims themselves. But I also found myself asking a difficult question. If no one is willing to accept reasonable risk to save another person’s life…who is left to save them?
Fortunately, there is a middle ground. It’s called risk mitigation.
Every emergency involves risk. The objective is not to eliminate all risk—that’s impossible. The objective is to recognize the hazards, reduce unnecessary risks, and make informed decisions about what constitutes an acceptable level of risk.
Every family should have this discussion before an emergency occurs.
- What risks are you willing to accept?
- What risks are you not willing to accept?
Having those conversations in advance makes decision-making much easier when emotions are running high. Regardless of where you draw those lines, the principle remains unchanged.
Life Safety is always Priority Number One.
Incident Stabilization
Once life safety has been addressed, the next priority is to stabilize the incident. In simple terms…
Don’t make a bad situation worse.
That may sound like common sense, but it’s remarkable how often people unintentionally create new problems while trying to solve the original one. Here’s an example from my firefighting days.
When a structure fire was dispatched, we wanted to arrive as quickly as possible. But what would happen if the fire engine driver drove too fast and crashed on the way to the call?
Now instead of one emergency, we have two. There may be injured firefighters. Additional emergency units must respond. Equipment is damaged. The original fire still isn’t being fought. Nothing was accomplished except creating an even larger problem.
The same principle applies outside emergency services.
Suppose a wildfire is burning toward an industrial area. On one side are trees. On the other is a facility containing large propane tanks next to a gas station. Where should resources be concentrated?
The answer is obvious. Prevent the fire from reaching the propane tanks. If that facility becomes involved, a wildfire suddenly becomes a major structural fire and hazardous materials incident. The situation has escalated dramatically.
The goal of Incident Stabilization is always the same:
- Stop the problem from growing.
- Stabilize the situation.
- Then begin solving it.
That principle applies just as well to financial emergencies, medical emergencies, and family crises as it does to firefighting. Before taking action, ask yourself:
“Will this decision improve the situation…or make it worse?”
That’s a surprisingly powerful question.
Property Conservation
The third priority is Property Conservation. Not long after the original ICS materials were developed, this principle was expanded to include environmental conservation as well. Personally, I have always thought Resource Conservation would have been a better description because the principle extends far beyond buildings and land.
The concept is simple: don’t destroy resources you don’t have to.
Everything has value. Whether it’s food, fuel, equipment, money, vehicles, buildings, or natural resources, once something is lost it may be difficult or impossible to replace. One of the goals during any emergency is to accomplish your mission while causing the least amount of additional damage possible.
A good example takes me back to my structure firefighting days.
Years ago, one common tactic was to enter a burning structure with water flowing continuously from the nozzle while searching for the seat of the fire. The idea was to push the heat and smoke away from the firefighters. While that accomplished its objective, it also poured thousands of gallons of water into homes, often causing more damage than the fire itself.
Eventually, smarter minds prevailed.
The tactic changed. Firefighters normally advanced to the fire without flowing water until they actually located the seat of the fire. Then they applied only enough water to extinguish it. The fire still went out, but tens of thousands of dollars in unnecessary water damage were avoided.
I remember one particular kitchen fire that illustrates the point perfectly.
My crew arrived to find a relatively small fire confined to the kitchen. My nozzleman and another firefighter stretched a 1¾-inch attack line to the front door. Before they could open the nozzle and flood the kitchen, I stopped them and had another firefighter bring me a five-gallon pressurized water extinguisher. Using about two gallons of water and foam mixture, we completely extinguished the fire.
Had we used the attack hose, we probably would have pumped five hundred to seven hundred fifty gallons of water into that same kitchen.
The homeowners were already having a bad day. There was no reason for us to make it worse.
That same principle applies to preparedness. Don’t waste food, fuel, batteries, medical supplies, tools, or money simply because it seems easier at the moment. Every resource you conserve today may become critically important tomorrow.
Societal Restoration
The final priority is Societal Restoration, and in many ways it is the least understood principle of L.I.P.S.
Emergency responders are trained to arrive quickly, stop the immediate threat, and move on to the next call. From the responder’s perspective, the incident is over. From the victim’s perspective, however, it may have only entered a new phase.
Consider a family whose home has just caught fire.
Firefighters arrive, rescue anyone in danger, extinguish the flames, remove the smoke, and overhaul the structure to ensure the fire is completely out. Eventually the last fire truck leaves the scene.
Has the family’s problem been solved? Hardly.
Now they must find a place to stay, contact their insurance company, meet with an adjuster, secure their home, locate contractors, replace damaged possessions, and somehow begin putting their lives back together. The fire may have taken only a few hours to extinguish, but the recovery may take months.
When the immediate emergency has ended…the real recovery has just begun.
The same principle applies to disasters that affect entire communities. Whether it’s a hurricane, flood, wildfire, tornado, or prolonged power outage, the goal isn’t simply to survive the event. The long-term objective is to restore families, businesses, and communities to the condition they enjoyed before the disaster occurred.
As individuals, we should think the same way.
Preparedness isn’t just about getting through an emergency. It’s about recovering from it. Every decision you make before, during, and after an emergency should move your family one step closer to returning to a normal, stable life.
Summarizing L.I.P.S.
The L.I.P.S. system provides a simple framework for making decisions when everything around you seems to be happening at once.
Whenever you find yourself wondering what to do first, remember these priorities:
- Life Safety – Protect people from death, injury, and illness.
- Incident Stabilization – Prevent the situation from becoming worse.
- Property Conservation – Protect resources and avoid unnecessary damage.
- Societal Restoration – Restore individuals, families, and communities to as normal a condition as possible.
I’ve used this system throughout my emergency services career because it works. It works at structure fires, hazardous materials incidents, floods, wildfires, and medical emergencies. More importantly, I believe it works just as well for families making difficult decisions during emergencies and disasters.
The next time you find yourself facing multiple problems at once, don’t try to solve everything immediately. Start with L.I.P.S. Work through each priority in order and you’ll find that many difficult decisions become much easier to make.