Establishing a Legally Defensible Physical Employment Standard for Canadian Wildland Fire Fighters

Wildland fire fighting is a physically demanding public safety occupation in which unsafe, ineffective or inefficient job execution could result in loss of life or property. To meet the demands associated with front-line duty, wildland fire fighters (WFF) are expected to demonstrate a fitness level which results in safe, effective and efficient work performance under emergency circumstances. Duties often include tasks such as hiking, hand tool work, carrying heavy equipment and fire suppression implements over large distances and possibly arduous terrain. To identify candidates who are able to perform the critical physically demanding tasks encountered in a public safety occupation, a valid and reliable physical ability test for the exchange of IA WFF across Canada is required.
For WFF to be eligible for exchange to fight wildland fires in all Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) member fire jurisdictions, they must demonstrate annually that they are able to achieve the Canadian Wildland Fire Fighter Exchange Fitness Test for IA WFF (WFX-FIT). The protocol was designed so that it would be legally defensible from a Human Rights perspective and conform to the Supreme Court of Canadas Meiron Decision. The results of this project indicated that back-carrying and hand-carrying a 28.5 kg pump, back-carrying a 25 kg hose pack and advancing charged hose, were the most demanding emergency WFF tasks. As well, performing the same emergency WFF tasks was significantly more demanding in British Columbia than in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan (p 0.05). Owing to these regional terrain differences and the resultant differences in physical demands, a range of cut-scores was derived to account for these jurisdictional differences. Content and construct validation measurements indicated that the physical demands involved in performing the WFX-FIT are the same as the physical demands involved in wildland fire fighting thereby providing convincing evidence for the validity of the WFX-FIT protocol. Test-retest reliability measurements demonstrated that repeat performances on the WFX-FIT are highly reliable. Lastly, with familiarization and training, non-WFF general population females were able to overcome the possible adverse impact of the WFX-FIT standard.