Editor’s note: Fire Engineering is changing the face of Roundtable. We will post all of the responses on our Web site at www.FireEngineering.com. The new one-page format published in the magazine will summarize the responses. We encourage you to read all the responses. They are there to provide you with insight into how different departments address fire-related concerns.
This month’s Roundtable concerns operating on straight-stick aerials. Please do not believe that what you see in the cover photos, on magazine pages, and in videos are always safe and generally accepted practices. Don’t think that we blindly publish photos of unsafe practices simply to provide exceptional action shots of firefighters being firefighters. Quite the contrary is true! For the most part, the photos presented have been chosen so that they will stimulate conversation at the stationhouse kitchen table. Most of the best informal drills I have participated in while visiting stations were those in which cover photos of Fire Engineering were discussed.
One instance comes to mind. Most of us have seen photos of firefighters operating ladder pipes atop the tip of a straight-stick aerial at fires. I can think of only one reason (other than the obvious, that it looks cool and macho) for a firefighter to be at the tip of an aerial flowing waterto direct the stream. The old-timers in Toledo had a saying: “When the stick goes up, the building usually comes down!” How true.
In light of the fact that ladder pipes generally represent last-ditch efforts, how much difference would a perfectly directed stream make? In contrast to the one advantage of allowing a firefighter to direct a stream from a ladder pipe, I can think of five or 10 bad things that can happen by allowing a firefighter to be up there. Aerials can tip, whip, fracture, and fail. Firefighters can slip, trip (on rungs), and get appendages caught between rungs. Explosions from below and flames and wind shifts can also put the firefighter in jeopardy. None of these situations is worth the risk when chances are great that the building will be a total loss.
Question: Does your department allow firefighters to be at the tip of a straight-stick aerial when water is flowing?
RESPONSE ANALYSIS
We received 27 responses to this month’s question, and I was surprised at the results. If you read each response (and I hope you do), you will find that many of the responders put “caveats” in their answers. Thomas Dunne, deputy chief, Fire Department of New York, stated: “If the pipe requires adjusting, we permit a firefighter to climb the ladder with water flowing, provided the ladder angle is maintained between 70° and 80°.”
Mike Bucy, assistant chief, Portage (IN) Fire Department, related: “Our department doesn’t have a specific policy, but the practice is discouraged. However, we are aware that there may be a time when someone may be needed at the tip.”
One answer I never expected was from Mark Cummins, firefighter, Steele Creek Acres (TX) Volunteer Fire Department: “The only exception is if a straight tip is flowing CAFS foam. The foam is more like a giant cream pie than a hydraulic mining machine. No one, including the citizens, will be hurt with the stream flow of CAFS foam, and the foam is 20 times more effective than the straight stream of water.” Huh! CAFS is a tool I never had the opportunity to use in Toledo. It is cost-prohibitive to use CAFS on a vacant house, which, sadly, is Toledo’s bread-and-butter fire.
Another interesting aspect noted in the responses was that, if you are like me, you think of the big departments in the country as the trendsetters for us little guys. Interesting enough, this month we had responses from firefighters from the Fire Department of New York and the Chicago (IL) Fire Department. Both emphatically stated that they prohibited firefighters from standing at the tip of an aerial with water flowing. They undoubtedly have a greater number of large multiple-alarm defensive fires and, therefore, more experience. Both cite the firefighter’s safety and well-being and the risk/reward ratio as the major reasons for their policy.
If we break down the 27 responses, we would get the following results:
- “Only on rare occasions” (1).
- “Only to adjust the stream” (1).
- “We don’t have aerials (but we do let our guys do it on neighboring departments’ aerials”) (1).
- “Probably not” (2).
- “Only with CAFS” (1).
- “Yes” or “no” (the remainder).
If we were to interpret the two who said “Probably” as “Yes,” l7 respondents would allow a firefighter to operate at the top of an aerial with water flowing, and 10 would not allow it.
So, where does that leave us? Well, 11 of the 17 respondents who said they would, in some circumstances, allow a firefighter at the tip of an aerial with water flowing also addressed safety and the need to take additional steps to protect the firefighter at the tip. This is encouraging to me.
John “Skip” Coleman retired as assistant chief from the Toledo (OH) Department of Fire and Rescue. He is a technical editor of Fire Engineering; a member of the FDIC Educational Advisory Board; and author of Incident Management for the Street-Smart Fire Officer (Fire Engineering, 1997), Managing Major Fires (Fire Engineering, 2000), and Incident Management for the Street-Smart Fire Officer, Second Edition (Fire Engineering, 2008).
