Pre-Fire Plan Is Useful Only If It’s Workable
departments
The Volunteers Corner
When you first venture into pre-fire planning, it is natural to fall into the error of planning in great detail to fight the tremendous fire that never occurs.
Basically, pre-fire plans should be simple. This is true whether the plan is for the entire fire department all the way through multiple alarms and mutual aid or just for a single engine company in its first-due district.
How simple the plan must be is governed by two things—the capability in your fire department to retrieve pre-fire plan information and the ability of the chief officers to implement the pre-fire plan.
Required fire flow: The first step in developing a pre-fire plan is to determine the fire flow required to extinguish a fire that fully involves a target hazard—whether it be a factory, a large mercantile building or a modern condominium. Once you have determined the rate of water application needed—whether it be 500 or 8000 gpm—you then have to determine whether that amount of water is available.
In determining the required fire flow, don’t forget to include the flows necessary to protect exposures. You also have to consider the fact that the width of some large manufacturing buildings and warehouses is too great to allow penetration of fire streams to the center of the building. This, of course, will extend the time the fire will burn and the length of time the maximum fire flow will be required.
The size of the building may make the use of master streams necessary to attain the desired penetration of the building. Large streams add up to large fire flows. Look at the exposures in a similar fashion. Are they far enough away to be protected with 200 or 250-gpm hand lines or are the exposures close enough to demand master streams? The answer will affect the total fire flow required.
A little item that is sometimes overlooked is the amount of water that an automatic sprinkler system would require—particularly when fire starts in an unsprinklered portion of a building, such as a factory, and threatens to overwhelm the sprinkler system.
Available fire flow: The next thing to determine is how much water is available to fight a fire in the occupancy being pre-fire planned. Not only do you have to consider the rate of application—gpm—available, but you also have to estimate how long the rate of application can be maintained.
For example, there have been fires that have exhausted the water in the storage tanks of small town water systems. A swimming pool draft might provide 1000 gpm—but for only 10 minutes. Know the fire flow that your department can maintain with a tanker shuttle or a pumper relay with 4 or 5-inch hose to each target hazard.
The answer to the available fire flow will affect the fire fighting strategy in your prefire plan. If the available fire flow is less than
the maximum required fire flow, then your plan must be flexible enough to propose a strong offensive strategy for fires within the limits of the available fire flow and the defensive strategy for fires requiring more water than is available. The best thing your plan can do is to leave the decision to the fireground commander.
Equipment needed: The amount of water that you will be able to put on a fire will be a guide to determining how much major equipment you will need. Don’t estimate that you will need two 1000-gpm pumpers to handle a fire that requires 2000 gpm when the records of your department indicate that at large fires your pumpers average only 500 or 600 gpm. The chances are that that will also be the average at the structure you are prefire planning. Be realistic about pumping and remember that engine companies also include manpower needed to handle lines and set up master stream devices.
If you use tanker shuttles or pumper relays with large diameter hose, figure out how many tankers or feet of large diameter hose are needed and where you can obtain the tankers or hose. This may mean not only multiple alarms, but also mutual aid.
Also, consider the truck company work that may be required—extra manpower for search and rescue at high occupancy structures, such as nursing homes and schools, and for extensive opening up for ventilation at factories and warehouses. Indicate how you are going to get that manpower—either by calling ladder companies or more engine companies to do the truck company work.
Staging areas: Within your own department, you should have complete control over the response of multiple alarm companies. No pre-fire plan should attempt to spot each company. However, it can provide for assignments by radio from the command post and your rules and regulations can require companies still without an assignment to stop at least one intersection from the fireground until they get an assignment. This will allow them to proceed to their assignments without turning around.
Don’t expect mutual aid companies to take the same interest in your pre-fire plan as your companies do. Consider the use of staging areas in the vicinity of your target hazards. If incoming mutual aid companies do not receive an assignment by radio during their response, they can report to the staging area. This also is useful when only manpower—not apparatus—is needed. Furthermore, mutual aid officers are more likely to remember the location of a staging area than a number of specific assignments—which usually don’t work out anyway.
Remember, the command post is established to supervise fireground operations. Let the command post do that. Don’t clutter up your pre-fire plan with details that the command post will have to jettison to fight the fire effectively.
