What Should We Be Seeing and Doing?

BY MIKE MASON

It has been a good 10 years since rapid intervention first gained its foothold in the fire service. My involvement with it has been an eye-opening experience with unbelievable progress and innovations as well as setbacks and controversy.

What should we be seeing and doing in rapid intervention as it pertains to the firefighters, line officers, and chief officers at fireground incidents?

The most experienced firefighters can have difficulty in applying realistic approaches to rapid intervention methods, techniques, and maneuvers, especially if they haven’t pursued the training. Worse yet is the department that didn’t provide the means to get the training that not only saves lives but also ensures an enhanced measure of safety on the fireground. Even worse than that are the firefighters who wait for the department to provide the means for the training, when it is their responsibility to obtain the training for themselves, their coworkers, their department, and their family.

REALISTIC AND APPROPRIATE

Many individuals and departments talk a big game but are not truly a student of the game when it comes to rapid intervention. Some have interpreted, toyed with, chewed up, and regurgitated rapid intervention into several approaches, methods, maneuvers, and techniques. Some of these individuals might be considered pretty prominent figures in the instruction and lecture world. These respected and appreciated individuals, though, are starting to lose sight of true rapid intervention capabilities and their life-saving expectations. Rapid intervention may very well become too theoretical with inappropriate applications, resulting in less than adequate results for the line firefighter all the way up to the chief in training and on the fireground.

WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW

Here is what constitutes the bottom line when it comes to rapid intervention:

• Make available consistent, innovative training in rapid intervention and self-survival skills.
• Provide the students with a knowledge of and training in air management skills.
• Teach and reinforce proactive and reactive behaviors during fireground incidents.
• Introduce clear, simple, and innovative methodologies in techniques and maneuvers that can be performed under extreme duress.
• Instill knowledge of the purpose of basic rapid intervention tactics and strategies for all members—from firefighters to the chief.
• Develop simple but urgent operating guidelines.
• Ensure that the students have a knowledge of the appropriate equipment required.
• Help the students understand how rapid intervention is tactically positioned and deployed.
• Provide the freedom needed to have rapid intervention function effectively on the fireground.

Through the years of my instructing career, combination, and volunteer departments, I have found that these departments’ needs and priorities of rapid intervention were well intentioned but difficult for some departments to achieve. In many cases, it was extremely difficult for some departments to muster even a two-person dedicated RIT, let alone a four- or five-person dedicated RIT some other departments have. What can one department do and accomplish for rapid intervention that another department can’t do? The answer is that each department must train, train, train according to its level of realities.

IMPROVING THE ODDS

It is more important that each firefighter and officer be trained as thoroughly as possible in self-survival skills and rapid intervention techniques and maneuvers to ensure and enhance the safety and potential rescue of a distressed firefighter on the fireground no matter what the response size or staffing presence. Rapid intervention and firefighter rescue and survival are totally entwined. If your members are adequately trained, you can provide better outcomes for the fallen firefighter and rescuers. Many times when a Mayday incident occurs, firefighters rush in to help a fallen firefighter before a RIT response, even with the presence of a dedicated RIT. This is not a lack of discipline but the reality of human nature relative to the need to save others that has been imbedded in our makeup as firefighters. It’s simple: We react through commitment and training to the emergencies, and we really react to emergencies when it’s one of our own.

Without self-survival or rapid intervention skills, our reactions would turn into additional losses, especially when we are right there when it occurs. So you see, rapid intervention is truly a rapid response in the hands of any number of well-trained individuals who know what to do. When the RIT arrives, whether its seconds or minutes into a Mayday, it just provides those reacting in the immediate area with an improved chance because of a plan of action and additional resources where there may have been none. Regarding Maydays, the first minute is chaos. If the chaos continues, it will defeat or decrease the probability for success.

Actions of a Well-Trained RIT

A well-trained rapid intervention team does the following.

• It acknowledges receiving its RIT assignment and announces its arrival at the scene through Dispatch and Command.
• It brings the right personal equipment to do the job—rope bag, air supply, irons, thermal imaging camera, webbing, lights, wire cutters—and gets the secondary equipment not in use from vehicles in the fire area (rotary saws, ladders, for example).
• It goes to the sector involved in the offensive/defensive procedures, not to the command post. If you don’t know where the sector involved in the offensive/defensive procedures is, report to the command post. At larger incidents (high-rise, commercial, warehouse, for example), report to a forward area. Check in with a sector officer. Announce your presence and sector position to Command. If no sector is established, establish one. Inform Command.
• It establishes its presence as soon as possible at the proper sector of the structure involved—preferably where the offensive procedures enter the structure. Where has the hoseline made entry? Where is the primary search conducted? Are firefighters on the second floor? In the basement? Where is the main body of fire? Where is the fire going? Who’s in charge of whom?
• It monitors all fireground radio communications and establishes an additional radio channel for RIT communications, if possible. This facilitates properly tracking firefighters’ movements and assignments as well as the actions of firefighters in the interior and on the roof. Encircling the building also makes it possible to see firefighters as they move around performing their tasks, check the fire’s progression, and assess any compromising of the structure—improving the accountability of firefighters.
• RITs no longer stand around; they are physically proactive like ants on an anthill. They collect secondary equipment such as a powered saw and ladders and even establish a secondary or third hoseline lead-out, if none is present, to protect firefighters as well as themselves when needed.
• When RITs need equipment, they should go to the nearest engine or truck, confer with the driver/operator, and get it. Driver/operators should be instructed through policy that if a RIT asks for something, they should give it to the RIT if it’s on the rig and not in use.
• Good RIT teams are proactive and are allowed to function in that capacity. Seeking approval to perform proactive behaviors is time consuming and occupies radio traffic. Instead, advise sectors or command personnel of your actions. If it’s closed up, open it up without affecting fire conditions. For any type of second-floor operations, the RIT should raise ladders to windows—at least two, one on each of two sides of the structure. RITs are to provide more ways out of a structure for interior firefighters; this also provides the RIT with more ways to get in to reach a firefighter in distress.
• RITs should help out on hoseline advancements while ensuring the integrity of the stretch (kinks, turns, doors, etc).
• A RIT for the fireground should be like having a giant safety officer for Command. The RIT should inform and update its sector or Command on the firefight—from improved conditions to worsening conditions that are or have gone unnoticed.
• The RIT should continually monitor the potential for collapse and its warning signs. Every member of the team should have two sides of the structure in view at all times when not performing a task.
• If a Mayday is called, the RIT can help firefighters racing in to remain focused on protecting the rescue effort as well.

The aforementioned proactive behaviors represent just a minor glimpse into the attitudes and adjustments firefighters and their departments should be moving toward regarding rapid intervention. Keep in mind that in many areas of the country, rapid intervention can barely exceed the expectations of the two-in/two-out concept required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Fire Protection Association. Nonetheless, departments should still be involved and train on all aspects of firefighter rescue and survival, regardless of the response or staffing situation in providing rapid intervention.

IMPLEMENTATION AND TRAINING

Fire departments of all sizes, career and volunteer, should implement successful firefighter rescue and survival programs that include rapid intervention techniques and philosophies. Training involving rapid intervention along with firefighter rescue and survival should be held at least once every 60 days and also be incorporated into training routines even more often. The techniques, maneuvers, and skills should be simple but innovative; they are meant to produce high success rates under extreme duress. If firefighter rescue and survival skills and rapid intervention skills are too complicated and cannot be grasped during training, they are being presented incorrectly. Improper training will cause additional injuries and deaths on the fireground should a Mayday occur. Departments and their administrators should seek out and send firefighters to solid programs with experienced instructors so they can bring back appropriate training and philosophies in firefighter rescue and survival. This will help with the establishment of strong policies and training programs. There are many programs, texts, and experienced instructors in rapid intervention and firefighter rescue and survival throughout the country.

Any firefighter and line officer could be assigned to RIT functions on any given response or fire incident; therefore, they need to acquire sound techniques and maneuvers in firefighter rescue and survival. Just as important is that every firefighter have thorough training in self-survival skills and the closely intertwined rapid intervention skills. This provides departments and their members with an intimate understanding of what it means to be a firefighter in distress and what to do if a Mayday occurs. This gives rescuers a better chance to assist distressed firefighters with more predictable behaviors. Training has to be ingrained repeatedly into behaviors.

Also of vital importance is the implementation of appropriate and relevant operating guidelines pertaining to the department’s abilities and mutual-aid counterparts. This means that to have a truly successful training program in firefighter rescue and survival, you need to involve your neighbors. It does little good if your department is proactive while the mutual-aid company arriving at your working structure fire as an assigned RIT hasn’t a clue! Finally, it is important to have SOGs relative to how your department and your mutual-aid departments establish a RIT on the fireground. Your RIT, whether a two- or three-person team or a four- or five-person team, needs to be in place as soon as possible within a response.

We constantly hear in radio and dispatch procedures the placing of the RIT well behind the first-in companies. Sometimes, it is so far down the line in the response that it should be called a “rehab” team, not a RIT. This type of response gives little comfort to the firefighters on the inside of the firefight. It is useless to have everyone out of the extinguished smoldering structure before the RIT arrives—or, even worse, showing up after the Mayday with an unfavorable outcome. Firefighters are subject to distress earlier than later at fire incidents. Having Dispatch or Command assign a RIT from a fourth- or fifth-arriving engine or truck is pushing the envelope and increases the chance that you will be caught by surprise when a firefighter in distress needs the RIT now!

MIKE MASON is a lieutenant in the Downers Grove (IL) Fire Department, where he is assigned to No. 3 engine. He is the founder and director of the not-for-profit organization RICOFIRERESCUE, INC., which has been educating and training firefighters in firefighter rescue and survival and rapid intervention for the past eight years. He is the author of R.I.C.O. Rapid Intervention Company Operations and provides the national hands-on program under the same name.