Thanks for putting Mike Ciampo in Tom Brennan’s old spot on the back cover. For many years, Random Thoughts was the first thing I read. I enjoyed the no-nonsense, street-smart tips and the Irish humor Brennan displayed each month. Now we have another fire service treasure filling some very large shoes. I look forward to many years of no-nonsense articles. It really is the “basics” that allow us to do this job safely, and I know Mike Ciampo is up to the task.
“Smells Like Food” (On Fire, November 2009) reminded me of a job I worked on Thanksgiving day long ago, only my job was featured on live television! We were dispatched on a brisk morning for a trash can fire at the rear of WTVR television station Channel 6 in Richmond, Virginia. We arrived to find a large deep fat fryer on fire in the rear parking lot. While my lineman went for a carbon dioxide extinguisher, I tried to smother the fire with the pot lid. The aluminum had warped from the heat, and the fire wouldn’t go out.
Next, we tried an entire carbon dioxide extinguisher, but the metal remained too hot and the grease reignited. I was starting to feel like a fool as the cameraman was moving around us to get different angles of these “big city” firefighters at work. I called for the trash line to cool the metal. As soon as the lineman hit it, some water went into the pot, causing the grease to boil over onto the asphalt parking lot. Keep in mind it was November, and fallen leaves were everywhere. The leaves ignited from all the hot grease and just then a gust of wind scattered the burning leaves under a row of parked cars. Murphy’s Law was in full effect, and it was being shared live with the entire Richmond metro area! The fire was finally extinguished before any more property was damaged. To add insult to injury, a news reporter stuck a microphone in my face and asked me “if every grease fire was this difficult to extinguish.” I gave her my best Pete Lund-style smirk and told her, “If fires were easy to extinguish, they would let the cops do it!”
Jake Rixner
Firefighter
Kentland, Maryland
Firefighters’ Wives
I wanted to compliment Fire Engineering for printing “What Every Firefighter’s Spouse Should Know” by Anne Gagliano (Fire Commentary, December 2009). I thought it was an excellent article, and she explained many of the unique challenges firefighters face on a daily basis from a wife’s perspective. I have been trying to explain some of these same realities to my wife for years, with very little success. Articles like that can be very helpful for the families and potential spouses of fire and EMS personnel who want to take an honest look at the daily life of people in our profession from those who’ve lived it. I think even firefighters would benefit from reading articles like this one because it helps us understand some of the things we go through without realizing it, and it’s encouraging to see there are spouses and family members who do try to understand what we are about and how our job affects us over time. I hope to see more of these types of articles.
Nick Morgan
Firefighter
St. Louis (MO) Fire Department
I read Anne Gagliano’s article with great interest and excitement. Although I have a distinct advantage in understanding the firefighting profession, I have a husband who has been on the job for 33 years and who has become “hardened” to the experiences. I know many wives never do—at least I haven’t. After reading the article, I went on the Internet to search for a network of firefighter wives and couldn’t find anything—a few blogs, a couple of small community-based Web sites, but nothing more.
I’ve shared the article with wives of other firefighters, and they were absolutely amazed at what they read. Sum and substance, the lights came on. I don’t know how many times I heard, “… so that’s the reason.”
Shawn Longerich
Executive Director
Cyanide Poisoning Treatment Coalition
Indianapolis, Indiana
“Two Out” a Misnomer?
Perhaps a variation on the theme of “two in/two out” is now in order. Although the intent of “two in/two out” is to rescue the initial attack team, it is now well known that it takes more than just two firefighters to make entry, access, extricate, and remove even a single downed firefighter, let alone two. While “two in/two out” in some ways has become synonymous with the rapid intervention company (RIC), the two could not be any more different.
A two-out crew, staffed with two firefighters, is more accurately a “backup” line. From an exterior “out” position, this team of two firefighters is not in a position to provide instant and effective protection of interior operating members by protecting interior corridors and interior escape routes to safety zones, nor is this team of two equipped with search, extrication, and removal equipment well known now to be needed for RIC operations. This two-out team is expected to perform the functions of a “lookout” much like that in wildland firefighting. Yet, from an exterior position, two exterior firefighters cannot protect the interior attack team effectively and realistically. You cannot observe or react to rapidly developing interior positions from an exterior position.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommendations found in report 2007-28 of the line-of-duty deaths of Engineer Desmond and Captain Burton of the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District underscore the discrepancies between 1910.134 and the true function that a two-out team should really be providing.
Recommendation #5 states: “Fire departments should ensure that staffed backup hoselines are used to protect the means of egress for the primary attack and search crews. Backup lines are not used to attack fire in another area or for exposure control. They are deployed, charged, and on standby in the same general area to back up an attack line. In this incident, a backup line was not pulled by the second-in crew, and there was no hoseline protection beyond three to five feet inside the front door. Once the fire conditions intensified, there was no way to control the fire spread and allow firefighters a safe egress path. If a backup line had been in place, it is possible that the fire buildup could have been controlled and egress for the firefighters maintained even though the initial attack handline was not in operation.”
From an interior position, a “backup” team can protect the initial attack team should fire conditions deteriorate, fire advance behind them in the overhead, a line burst, or a stairway become involved in fire with a crew above the fire floor. A “backup” team provides the complementing initial shelter-in-place function to protect the initial attack team from the fire condition until the RIC can deploy, make entry, and then remove the members in harm’s way. A backup line protects; a RIC removes.
Recent Underwriters Laboratories, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and NIOSH studies have shown that rapid fire progression and flashover incidents can occur with little to no warning. Chaotic fireground radio communications often hinder deployment of exterior (“out”) rescue crews to rescue interior firefighters. Interior crews that have fire behind them or that are caught in a flashover or rapid fire progression have only seconds to spare. An exterior two-out crew is in all actuality an exterior backup line. Modern heat release rates and times to flashover don’t allow for the reflex time for a two-out line to be called on the radio, be deployed, advance a line, locate interior crews in poor visibility or heat conditions, and apply water quickly enough to save crews that are actively being burned over in an interior position. Incidents nationwide have shown that an exterior (“out”) crew will unlikely be able to deploy fast enough to save these firefighters in jeopardy from the effects of fire. As referenced in NIOSH 2007-28 above, with no interior backup line in place to directly protect interior firefighters “beyond three to five feet inside the front door … there was no way to control the fire spread and allow firefighters a safe egress path.”
Two out and RIC do not provide the same function and are not interchangeable terms. They are as different as an engine and a truck. National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1710 5.2.4.3.2 states that when significant risk is present, a full RIC of four fully equipped and (RIC) trained firefighters should be established. While every engine company is equipped and trained to perform a “backup” function, not every engine company is equipped and not every engine company member is trained or has the proper mindset to perform RIC effectively and safely. Nor should the value, purpose, or mission of RIC be marginalized; RIC serves an invaluable function to remove trapped, injured, and lost firefighters. We must have the courage to acknowledge and realize that RIC operations are a specialty akin to technical rescue and hazardous materials operations; members selected for and assigned to such positions must be specifically trained and equipped accordingly. To randomly assign such an invaluable function to those who may not be prepared physically and mentally is a travesty.
We must emphatically encourage the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to redefine and rename the two-out position as “backup team.” A new definition should follow the findings and recommendation of NIOSH 2007-28, with a mission paralleling LACES as it is used in wildland firefighting. While the backup team does not have a primary mission of directly attacking the fire, it must serve as an interior Lookout, Aware of rapidly changing conditions that can only be seen and felt from an interior position, maintaining direct verbal and visual Communications with the initial attack line, thereby providing instantaneous protection of interior Escape routes (such as hallways and stairways) to Safety zones (the “out”).
Jason N. Vestal
Captain
Sac Metro (CA) Fire Department
Survivability
I read Stephen Marsar’s article “Survivability Profiling: Are the Victims Savable?” (December 2009) and agreed with many of the points made. I have used the decision of Chief Mike McNamee of the Worcester (MA) Fire Department to refuse to allow additional rescue efforts to save members of his department at the cold storage warehouse fire of December 3, 1999, as a teaching point in courageous, difficult leadership. There were several other good points made in the article.
However, I disagree with his use of the December 22, 1999, Keokuk, Iowa, duplex fire as an example of an attempted rescue that should not have been made because there was no chance the victims were survivable. The mother of the children had already left the safety found behind the closed door of the front bedroom (where the body of one of the firefighters was later found) and successfully rescued one of her children from the smoke-filled upstairs hallway. Even though heavy smoke was pouring from the duplex, the firefighters had no way of knowing if there were other victims in safe havens protected by closed doors. As it was, firefighters quickly recovered two of the child victims and gave them at least a chance, even though unsuccessful, to be revived by medical treatment. We have no way of knowing if the third child was viable when she was found by a firefighter because she and her rescuer were caught in a flashover before they could exit the building.
Survivability is often determined by a small, seemingly insignificant twist of fate. Four year ago, I responded to an apartment fire in which four young children, ranging from 18 months to three years of age, died. Like the Keokuk fire, the fire started on the kitchen stove. The mother had put the children down for a nap and left the apartment to use a neighbor’s phone. A towel had been left over the top of the bedroom door where the children were sleeping. This prevented the door from completely closing. She returned to find smoke pouring from her apartment.
On arrival, we found heavy, black, turbulent smoke pouring from the eaves of the apartment. A police officer had already forced the front door, and smoke was already to the floor. The mother told us where the children were and how many there were. Even though only six firefighters from an engine and ladder company were present, all were quickly committed to an aggressive attack and search. We quickly recovered the children, but we were unable to revive them.
It would appear this was another case where survivability profiling or a risk/benefit analysis would have said there was no chance of survival for victims and we should wait until a rapid intervention team was in place, a water supply established, and an accountability system established. This would have been wrong.
Once the fire was knocked down and victims turned over to EMS for transport, I went down the hall to the room where victims were found. Smoke had blackened the bedroom, and the extreme heat had melted plastic objects in the room. I then opened the closed door to the bedroom across the hall. There was no sign of smoke or heat damage anywhere in the room. Had the door to the children’s room been closed or had the children been in the other bedroom, they would have survived.
The risk/benefit analysis I use and teach says, “We will risk a lot, in a highly calculated manner, to attempt to save a savable life.” During early operations at the Keokuk duplex, the firefighters had several reasons to believe there could have been savable lives in the structure. First, the mother and one child had escaped. Second, the firefighters were able to operate and conduct search operations right up to the moment of flashover. Their primary search must have been extremely effective, as they found all three children in a very short period of time and were able to remove two of the children from the structure before the apartment flashed over. Finally, both the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (http://fire.nist.gov/cdpubs/nistr_68541/duplex.htm) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) (http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/fire.reports/face200004.html) reports indicate that there were bathroom and closet doors within the apartment that were closed. There are indications from the NIST model that spaces behind these doors were survivable up to and possibly even after the flashover. We know that children often hide from a fire in such areas, and firefighters are trained to search these areas during the primary search.
The one thing that might have made a difference in this incident would have been the quick deployment of the 1¾-inch attack line to cool the superheated gases building up in the dining room and living room of the apartment. This might have prevented the flashover. I will not pursue that issue, as I suspect that the surviving firefighters on the scene have already second-guessed that issue many times. It is not my intention to add any additional pain to an already painful situation. Hindsight is great, and we have already established that there just were not enough firefighters on the scene to do everything that could or should have been done.
I believe the brave Keokuk firefighters did exactly what any red-blooded American firefighter should and would do: They tried to save the lives of three children three days before Christmas. I don’t believe these firefighters would have been able to look at themselves in a mirror for the rest of their lives had they not tried.
I was a National Fallen Firefighters Foundation escort officer at the Fallen Firefighters Memorial at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland, in October 2000 (for the families of firefighters who died in 1999). Although my assigned family was from another incident, I had the honor of sharing a table at lunch with the Keokuk families. We discussed the fire and some of the second-guessing in some of the after-action reports as to whether the firefighters should have entered the structure. I told the families then that I felt their firefighters had acted very bravely in the highest and best traditions of the fire service. I still feel that way.
Both the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) (http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/PDF/Keokuk.pdf) and NIOSH wrote investigative reports with all sorts of great suggestions of things the firefighters at Keokuk could have done differently to prevent their deaths. In an ideal world, it would be great if the fire service could implement all those steps at every fire. The simple fact is that most of the fire departments in this country cannot put the 16 firefighters and a chief required by NFPA standards on a fire scene in a reasonable period of time. In the current economic environment, that situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. If we are going to take the position that we are not going to make aggressive attacks or aggressive searches in less-than-ideal situations, then we can lay off a lot of firefighters, because it doesn’t take that many firefighters to conduct defensive operations. Don’t be too quick to determine a fire is not survivable.
Less than two weeks before I received the December issue of Fire Engineering, I had used the NIOSH report of the Keokuk fire as a teaching point to a 22-person funded rookie class. The teaching point was that sometimes when you do this job, even when you do everything right, the fire wins. Ten years later, God bless the souls of Jason L. Bitting, David M. McNally, and Nathan R. Tuck. May their families know that their loved ones died while acting professionally and bravely.
Dale Perry, JD, EFO, CEM
Professional Development Officer
Gainesville (GA) Fire Department
Stephen Marsar responds: Dale Perry hit the proverbial nail on the head that second-guessing and hindsight only take away from the very brave Keokuk firefighters.
The reason I used the Keokuk tragedy as an example is as follows: When I first read that story, I was humbled by the actions of those brave men. They removed two infants and died with a third child in their arms. In a world where the word “hero” is used all too often, these courageous firefighters undoubtedly epitomized it. They set the bar for which the term “hero” should be used.
Each investigative report on that fire revealed that with limited staffing, the inability to commence both fire attack and search and rescue operations, coupled with the severity of the fire and smoke condition found on arrival, the outcome for the victims would have been the same. Chief Mark Wessel of the Keokuk Fire Department has said that “… it is much easier to look at a reporter with rubble in the background than to look into the faces of the grieving family of a firefighter.”
In the fire Dale Perry and his department described with three additional firefighters and a simultaneous “aggressive” fire attack and search, his members admirably removed four known victims (without a rapid intervention team and in full compliance with National Fire Protection Association standards). However, had a “small, seemingly insignificant twist of fate” injured or killed one or more of his firefighters, the outcome for the victims would have been the same.
Perry stated that “survivability profiling would have said there was little chance for the victims’ survival.” He would have been right! Granted, if the children were in the room across the hall, they may have survived. And, after a quick fire knockdown, his firefighters may have found them there, but the firefighters would have been able to do so with a greater margin of safety and in a relatively safer environment.
In a future article, I will use realistic and scientifically based studies to show that the survival time for fire victims is extremely short. A closed door may buy victims more time, but it is no guarantee of safety from toxic gases, smoke, or flames. Survivability profiling, like firefighting, is not an exact science, nor is it an easy concept to wrap our arms around. Admittedly, hundreds—if not thousands—of lives are saved every year because firefighters assume victims are trapped. It has been discovered that less than one-half of one percent of civilian fire fatalities occur in the same fires where firefighters are killed. These facts simply cannot be ignored.
I agree with Perry that we must not be “too quick to determine a fire is not survivable” (that may take precious seconds away from viable victims) but, at the same time, we cannot ignore survivability profiling and be so quick to go into harm’s way when there is little (or nothing) to be gained or where we are the only lives at risk.
Like Perry, I wholeheartedly believe the Keokuk firefighters did what most red-blooded firefighters would have done—10 years ago. A second tragedy would be not to learn from their sacrifice. There is no doubt that they acted bravely and unselfishly in the highest traditions of the fire service. May they rest in peace.
