They try dousing it again, and get the same results. The lieutenant leads his hose crew into the building, to the back, to spray water on the fire, but the fire just roars back at them. The fire is in the back, in the kitchen area.

There is a simple house fire in a one-story house in a residential neighborhood. Here is an example of a fire lieutenant making a lifesaving decision, as recounted in Klein’s book Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions: Some were unable even to explain how they happened upon the course of action they actually took. They were contemplating the situation for a few moments and then just deciding, without considering the alternatives. The curious thing was not that top decision makers - medical professionals, firefighters, military commanders, and so on - were making choices based on unexpected factors it was that they did not seem to be making choices at all. Klein’s problem was that the longer the study went on, the less the theory bore any relation to the way decisions are made in practice. He was looking to test the theory that expert decision makers wield logical methods, examining the various alternatives before selecting the optimal choice. military to examine decision making in the real world. In the 1990s Gary Klein, a New York psychologist, embarked on a major study funded by the U.S.

Gary klein study fire commander