LETTERS … I GET LETTERS
TOM BRENNAN
Readers often e-mail questions to me about structure fire operations. The questions are sometimes basic, but since the basics are the foundation of this column, I will answer some of the questions here.
How can you decide when to send a hoseline up the outside of a garden apartment by rope or by ladder rather than by the stairwell? Garden apartments by nature are two- or three-story attached combustible buildings separated by wooden walls and connected by a common attic space that is most often peaked. There is almost no circumstance in which you should send a line up the outside of the structure–at least of the original fire building section. You must protect the interior stairs at all times. The interior search teams are moving too fast from section to section to have to think that their exit route may not be protected from fire exposure below or adjacent to their location or that, in the worst-case scenario, they have to fight their way back out of the building.
The only time that small rope could be used is at multiple-alarm fires at these structures where the strategy is offensive (interior) for the fire building and you are simultaneously defending the attached exposures, also from the interior. In this case, the tactic is to find where fire is not and hold it by opening the interior (floors and walls); rapidly positioning charged hoselines to keep it from passing your position; and pushing it back to the building, occupancy, or point of origin. It is easier to move hoselines around and into the various levels of the exposure sections of the entire structure (given that you have proper staffing levels and the ability to increase them for final fire control) by first pulling ceilings and dropping small-diameter rope from the windows to get the lines into position faster.
Ladders are out of the question here for hoseline use during fire control. So many may be needed for front, rear, side, and roof areas. You also have to move the ladders rapidly as the search effort expands or re-focuses based on fire location and spread after arrival. A hoseline on a ladder–portable, aerial, or tower–makes that ladder device a permanent standpipe assembly. You cannot move it by routine or (worse) in an emergency.
What are some tips for climbing aerial ladders? Should you look up or down when descending? As far as your eye target when descending aerial ladders (portable also), it is usually down and watching what your feet are doing–unless, of course, you are timing a falling and flaming cornice or counting the number of “brothers” following in rapid exit fashion out of the opening from which you just came.
“Look down descending” is the target for the line of sight for many other reasons. First, the rungs are not lined up for each section! The only time that the aerial sections (usually four) will line up with each other is if the ladder is used for roof access or for large-caliber stream devices. If your objective is anything else on the building façade, then the aerial tips belong at or below the lowest entrance point of the opening you choose–usually the windowsill. No window that I know of was in the proper place that, once the aerial was raised and rung locks (dogs) applied, the tips were then in the right place.
Another reason to look down is that today`s aerial devices are not often made of steel. Lighter weight metals require a lot more support in the form of triangular plates under the rungs and additional truss assemblies–vertical on the rails and horizontal in the space between rungs. These do not seem as such a nuisance when ascending to an object at a structural fire as they do when you try descending. Make sure you know where your next foot is going, especially if you are carrying a small victim!
As to whether to face the aerial or the street when descending, don`t give me that SOP stuff. There are enough of you who prefer to face the street in descending stair fashion, especially if the aerial device is at a low angle. We need more motivational reasons than simply “SOP.” Again, remember all the tripping hazards. Then visualize what would happen to you if you should trip and fall forward–when forward is out and off the ladder and not in toward the rungs.
I have seen photos of firefighters guiding civilians removed from fire apartments down ladders with the civilians facing the street. That sure would make for a great investigative report and put a crimp in your successfully removing a victim–or even halt your career–should the victim trip and fall off the ladder.
There is only one answer: Face the ladder at all times–especially if you are carrying a small object such as a child, a pet, or a tool. If you have both hands free to hold the rails firmly, you have no business using the aerial at fires, anyway.
TOM BRENNAN has more than 35 years of fire service experience. His career spans more than 20 years with the Fire Department of New York as well as four years as chief of the Waterbury (CT) Fire Department. He was the editor of Fire Engineering for eight years and currently is a technical editor. He is co-editor of The Fire Chief`s Handbook, Fifth Edition (Fire Engineering Books, 1995). He was the recipient of the 1998 Fire Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award. Brennan is featured in the video Brennan and Bruno Unplugged (Fire Engineering/FDIC, 1999).
