MINIMAL STAFFING
Photo by Ronald Jeffers.
Budget restrictions have made small firefighting teams the rule rather than the exception. Here are some suggestions on how to cope with staffing problems, both from inside and outside the department.
STRATEGY & TACTICS
How To Do More With Less
Photo by A. Peterson
Photo by Tom McCarthy
STAFFING ON ENGINE and truck companies has been diminishing to the point that we now have twomember engine and truck companies. Three-member teams are most common. You’d probably agree that this level of staffing, at least on the surface, is insufficient and unacceptable.
You might not be wrong. Yet, an examination of the big picture points to the need for departments to maintain service levels with three-member engine companies and two-member truck companies, with staffing from mutualaid departments to assist the truck teams. The budget battle is ongoing, relentless; there’s seldom room for increased staffing once you’ve proven that you can survive with bare-bones staffing levels.
How do I continue to do more with less?
What are the strategies and tactics to employ when operating with small firefighting crews?
INTERNAL SOLUTIONS/IDEAS
Prefire Planning, Inspections:
How important do you consider prefire planning to be? Is this activity high in your scheduling of daily, weekly, and monthly activities?
Prefire planning and inspections are two of the most important tools at your disposal to compensate for reduced staffing. I am talking about classroom training on a specific occupancy, then taking your company to that occupancy site and spending as much time as necessary to inspect thoroughly what is in it. The construction, age of the building, fire loading, occupancy type, life hazards, and firefighter hazards must be considered and documented. Do your members have a good understanding of fire behavior in that specific occupancy? Fire behavior can be studied in the classroom, in the firehouse, and on the fireground. Compare the types of occupancies in your district with actual fires that have occurred in other departments. Study accounts of fires in similar occupancies in the many fire service publications. Study video tapes and slides of fires.
MINIMAL STAFFING
While you are performing an occupancy investigation, discuss strategy and tactics. Try out the communications systems in the building. Try your portable radio in various areas of the building. Does it work in stairshafts and elevators? “Ladder” the building and “read” the roof for ventilation operations. If possible, chalk the openings. Check the built-in fire protection and determine how all components are supposed to operate. Perform a really thorough inspection and leave the occupancy with the confidence that if a fire occurs, you and your members will be able to anticipate fire behavior in that building and be ready with appropriate strategy and tactics.
Inspect new buildings under construction. Understand how the building will react during fire conditions. Examine the lightweight construction materials and features. Do this before the features are covered and hidden from view forever. Lightweight wood truss materials severely impact size-up and strategic operations on the fireground. Their record of early collapse demands that preplanning vividly highlight their presence within that structure.
Engine Company Tactics:
Staffing levels on engine companies should not be below four. However, you and I know that there are many fire companies with less than four members. A “zero base” study completed years ago in Los Angeles City Fire Department examined standard engine company tactics for specific evolutions using various levels of staffing (one to six members). It was the consensus that four members per company satisfactorily accomplished the standard evolutions. Staffing levels of less than four members presented delays and safety problems. Staffing levels of four and above reduced problems, time delays, and improved overall safety.
The captain on a three-member company is really involved with the evolutions of the company. He cannot afford to stand to one side and supervise. He must be a working supervisor. Everyone on a company with three members must understand the hazards associated with such a staffing number. This should be a factor in discussion during training sessions.
Hydrant operations and initial attack must be discussed and preplanned. The first officer will be involved in the initial attack, and important information (sizeup) may not be available. Officers must use mobile radios for size-up and direction-portable radios do not normally transmit a strong signal. Critical messages must be received and acknowledged.
The sizes of attack lines are important. The maximum gpm must be available. The use of 1 3/4-inch and 2-inch lines are a necessity. The role of the second-in engine company is also a prefire item. Does the first-in company expect the second-in always to back them up with a supply line? As a result of the prefire planning for a specific occupancy, does the second engine company perform ventilation, search, and rescue, or place another hoseline in the building? Talk up these very important subjects. Don’t forget the multiplealarm response engine company from the neighboring department.
Increase the number of companies (engine and truck) responding to the incident. This may be accomplished internally through the department and through multiple-alarm response or mutual-aid companies. Assess your present mutual-aid plans. Go beyond the second alarm. What is the maximum number of companies that can be available for a structure fire in your community? Include mutual aid from your county and surrounding counties. Take a close look at specific occupancies and hazards. Increase the alarm assignment for those occupancies, using all available resources.
MINIMAL STAFFING
Consider the following tactics:
- Strap attack hoseline in bundles. This will make it easier for one firefighter to get hoselines in place. Use Velcro-type straps for quick release.
- Use small-diameter rope lines to pull attack hoselines to upper floors for rapid line placement. The firefighter quickly goes to the floor below the fire or the fire floor, safety permitting, throws the rope down to the engineer, and pulls the hoseline up the outside of the structure. The Los Angeles City Fire Department has been using this system for a number of years. It’s a useful tactic in low-rise structure fires.
- Flaking out hoselines before charging will save time and effort. This is especially important when putting lines in place in multistory buildings from the stairways. In this case, the lines should be flaked UP the stairway so that the pull of the hose will be reduced when entering the floor.
- Rotation of two-member crews on a nozzle using three teams will assist in improving extinguishment and firefighter safety. Of course, this means that you will have to commit more resources. (Back to the prefire plan for that occupancy.)
There are, obviously, many more tactical procedures that will assist the engine company in overcoming reduced staffing. Get your company together and brainstorm different ideas. Put firefighter safety on the top of the list of objectives. Don’t adopt a procedure that compromises this objective.
Truck Company Tactics:
When fire companies are affected by reduced staffing, the normal functional duties may have to be changed and the separation between engine and truck duties may disappear. Historically, truck companies have been responsible for the utilities, ventilation, access/forcible entry, search and rescue, evacuation and salvage (just to name a few respon„ sibilities). However, now ALL company personnel must be trained in these functions.
Ventilation procedures, both vertical and horizontal, can be accomplished with smaller crews (a minimum of two members). A specific occupancy may require an immediate commitment to ventilation with two companies working together and one officer in charge. (A decision is made following the prefire inspection.) Remember, ventilation is now part of the initial attack strategy and tactics, not an afterthought. Ventilation crews MUST commit to the tactic, execute using safe practices, and be reassigned to another, next-in-priority tactical assignment. When working on a roof, ventilate and then get off!
Search and rescue procedures can be accomplished safely with reduced crews if certain SOPs are followed. Two-member teams with specific floor/ area assignments must use the “primary” and “secondary” search concepts. Understand that this tactic will take more time than you thought. Plan out the search before you actually get to the location. An officer should be placed in charge of all search teams. Use a marking system —“X-ing” the doors to rooms, for instance. A piece of large chalk is one way to place the X. Another method is marking a door with smoke residue, using your glove.
Use the “all-clear” method to indicate the search conditions for a specific floor or area or for the entire building. This message should be repeated on the radio for all concerned. The incident commander and subordinate officers must know this information so that they can continue with their priority assignment of tactical duties. This is very important when working with reduced crews.
Evacuation of occupants can become a real problem unless you control it. Establish “safe refuge areas” in the building early in the incident. In a highrise structure, three floors below or three floors above is a good place to start. Consider smoke conditions when selecting these locations. Select the possible safe refuge areas in your prefire plan. If total evacuation is necessary, preselect other buildings or locations. Total evacuation will use 50% of your available resources, so try the “safe refuge” concept.
MINIMAL STAFFING
The use of aerial ladders will require additional members. The operation of the aerial ladder for access is totally dependent on the early placement of the truck apparatus. Anticipate the use of the aerial in your prefire plan. Anticipate the change in strategy (offensive to defensive) early in the firefight. Trying to move aerial ladders into ladderpipe positions after the initial lines are in place is a loser. Watch exposures during the change from offensive to defensive. It is during this time that the radiant heat will increase and higher fire activity in the structure will occur.
Consider responding the truck first so that the position of the aerial ladder can be secured. Or, depending on your analysis of the fire behavior and construction features during your prefire plan, respond the truck ahead of the engine for quick ventilation and/or rescue efforts. If the aerial ladder is not required initially for purposes of immediate rescue, consider placing it to the roof of the multistory apartment house or hotel immediately upon arrival for vertical ventilation. Opening the penthouse (bulkhead) door will do wonders for vertical ventilation. Placing personnel quickly on the roof via the aerial for ventilation operations is critical to the safety of occupants and firefighters. Once ventilation is accomplished and the firefighters are off the roof, the aerial ladder can be placed in other positions as the need dictates.
Combine companies for specific truck-type assignments. Two engine companies (six members) may be assigned to the roof for ventilation of a top-floor fire or a one-story building. Truck and squad/rescue members might be ordered to form a fouror fivemember team at the scene. Form these teams in the prefire plan. Using a second-due truck from the mutual-aid department is another option. If this is needed, then agree upon automatic aid for that area or specific occupancy. If you are using multiplealarm response or mutual aid to increase your resources, then train together before the incident occurs. Use common terminology and equipment. , Experience has shown that this area needs improvement. SCBA cylinders should be compatible, but chances are that you will find a mix of brands and pressures between adjacent departments. This may require a long-term solution, and may impact budgets.
Strategic and Tactical Priorities:
Train the company officers to make decisions based on the priorities set forth in the preplan, not just crisis management, “wet-on-the-red-and-holein-the-roof” mentality. Fire behavior, fire loading, construction, age of the building, and type of occupancy (life safety) are the factors needed for this type of prioritization. How can the firstin officer remember all of these factors?
MINIMAL STAFFING
Through an aggressive prefire inspection and planning effort.
There are three rules that can be used when dealing with occupancies in which life safety of occupants is a priority. They are:
- Aggressively attack the fire.
- Control the building environment (ventilation).
- Control the movement of the occupants.
Satisfying these three rules with reduced staffing is possible, providing that the incident commander and other officers assign teams to priority tasks incrementally and reassign the same teams to other tasks. This will require the incident commander to use a tactical work form for each incident. The form varies throughout the United States, but it should record companies being used, those in staging or base, ICS assignments and other special assignments, and a checklist of items not to be forgotten. The importance of USING these forms ALL THE TIME cannot be understated when you have reduced staffing. These will help you prioritize the tactics of the incident.
Training:
Training is probably the most important function of the department with reduced staffing. Spending dollars on training will have the greatest impact on this problem. Justifying the time and money should not be a problem. Compare the cost of training and seminars to a single worker’s compensation claim over an injury or illness caused by a jobrelated deficiency, or a claim by a citizen that the department was not performing in an expected manner and allowed increased property damage or occupants to be injured or killed. Training plans need to be made and carried out. Talk is cheap, but actions speak for themselves.
EXTERNAL SOLUTIONS/IDEAS
Marketing Your Fire Department:
There are three targets that need to be hit when you’re fighting the limited staffing problem: the public, the politician, and the department members.
Keeping these people informed is a busy job. Encourage participation by your firefighters association. A greater share of fire prevention duties is now being devoted to public education. The public needs to be informed that we are providing firefighting services with reduced staffing. Work with the media and establish a strong credibility. Develop specific plans for the next year and use every incident possible to point out the good things you are doing.
It’s about time that we stopped saying, “We’ll make it work.” More work with less is not the answer.
Your local political bodies must be educated about day-to-day fire department operations. They must see, firsthand, the use of apparatus and equipment at a variety of emergencies. Notifications, ride-alongs, and postincident inspections are a part of this program.
The fire chief should be more aggressive at budget time. Look at the typical police budget compared to the fire budget. Use your statistical resources to an advantage. Cite NFPA data regarding firefighter injuries and deaths. When a significant incident happens involving firefighters, make sure your politicians know about it. It’s about time that we stop saying, “We’ll make it work.” More work with less is not the answer.
Marketing is also internal. The communications network that the fire chief establishes is important. It is really easy to get involved with outside activities and lose sight of what is going on in your own backyard. Some fire chiefs feel that they don’t have to go to fires. Being a good manager is good enough, but I say that the chiefs visibility is important. The visibility is one more way to communicate.
Reduced staffing has a negative effect on firefighter morale. The firefighters need to know what management is doing to correct or cope with the shortage. What is the plan? Communicating both internal and external plans to all members—volunteer and uniformed alike—is very important.
Standards and regulations are having their impact on the staffing problem. The newest standard is NFPA 1300. Many articles and seminars have been produced that describe ways to cope with this consensus standard. The idea of preplanning for implementation of NFPA 1500 matches the preplanning proposed in this article. Other regulations, federal and state, are also impacting our operations.
Sometime in the future we will have to stand up and say “ENOUGH!” until we get some form of fiscal reimbursement to pay for the additional services we are providing. The EMS-first responder service is a good example. If you have paramedics as a part of your service, then your demands are greater. The impact of hazardous-materials responses are another additional load on an already stressed service. We need more firefighter involvement in legislation. We need more “white hats” at hearings. We can no longer sit back and let someone else speak for us. The National Fire Caucus is a step in the right direction and we should all write letters to Congressman Weldon and state what we believe to be important to our operations, and make suggestions for improvements.
The “do-more-with-less” problems can be resolved by some of the ideas in this article. The most important part is the ability of the department to perform GREAT prefire planning and inspections. The knowledge gained in these inspections will help the IC make those priority decisions. The solutions suggested may fit your department’s operations. Keep firefighter safety at the top of your priorities.
Reduced staffing is a growing problem. The fire service needs to attack this problem internally and externally. Be more aggressive and demanding when it comes to your operational needs. Reevaluate your SOPs. Think bigger. SURVIVE!
