BY TOM BRENNAN
I can’t believe that we cannot get away from talking about more mistakes on the fireground. I guess the value is in just that—talking about it enough to make it a lesson for all. A trick to use when you fall into the trap of telling yourself that you don’t get a chance to have an experience level in structural firefighting that makes you feel comfortable and that you are constantly improving is to use everyone else’s experiences! And then use them again, because things that go wrong (or not for the best) on the fireground are usually surrounded with many other lessons if we look and “dialogue” about them long enough.
We have been talking about fire in a structure at which you are to operate aggressively from the interior. Remember, it is your constant responsibility to know where the fire is, where you are, and where “OUT” is all the time. The second thing is to make the building behave in such a manner that it continues to be relatively safe for you, the firefighter, to operate within the enclosure.
Another mistake is to get lulled into “checking off” levels of awareness as you progress in your operations within the structure—in short, becoming cocky and “routine.”
Engine companies make the mistake (oops, lesson) by passing fire or forgetting to monitor what the qualities of that fire are doing about two feet over their heads. We are fortunate today because mandated levels of protective clothing and self-contained breathing systems provide the best individual protection for us than at any time in the history of firefighting. The cost to our safety—and, therefore, our efficiency—remains in reduced levels of communication and in the firefighter’s atmospheric awareness that the fire is “misbehaving” around him or her. If you catch the mistakes, they are lessons. Remember? And there are a few beauties here.
The first is that those operating hoseline while wearing SCBA (search teams, too, but mostly hoseline teams) tend to bunch up too close, so close as to be nonsupportive to each other and certainly an “anchor” on the speed of the advance operation. If you don’t realize it and talk about it and rehearse, it will haunt you forever, as every “job” for you is a new experience!
The second error at this point is losing track of the behavior of your surroundings and the changes in conditions taking place because of the enclosed fire situation. We have never suffered such a high percentage of injuries and deaths from the fire’s explosive misbehavior per structure fire than we have in recent times. We are again talking of smoke explosions, flashover events, local sudden collapse, and lost and trapped within structure. There are many reasons for this, but the one that is controllable, the one that you can control at the “next” fire, is to monitor conditions around you and know where you are all the time. Remember that flashover and smoke explosion can become NONevents with prompt and proper truck work and the rapid cooling of engine work, combined with effective communication.
Officers of engine companies must be more than the “number 2 or 3” on the handline. Get a glove off, and “feel” the atmosphere above your advancing team. The bare skin of the hand or the cheek and neck is the only way to feel the rapid heat buildup within the structure that will forecast a flashover condition and give you enough time to exit, if you know where you are. The myth and nonsense of the ears of a firefighter being the indicator are perpetuated from generation to generation of firefighter and must be stopped. Ears are cartilage and are severely damaged by excessively high heat before we can reverse our condition. Trust me on this: I have a lot of “no-ears Norman” friends.
As the firefight goes on, trucks get mentally “detached” too. Learn what different levels of noise on the fire floor can represent in your department and your shift. I worked with some great and legendary engine officers. Some operated as quietly as you can imagine all the time. Another screamed from the time he got on the apparatus for the run, whether he was calling for more hose or telling his team to shut down and take up. At critiques, you would have to know this to understand when communications are effective for you.
But, the most vulnerable position for truck members to mentally lose track of where they are is when operating on the floor(s) above the fire. This is especially true if it feels like a temporary area of refuge as you begin your search.
Learn about secondary exits for you and how to locate them and use them. Ensure forcible EXITS in your domain. Check if the exits you are moving toward are unlocked from outside in private dwellings and one-story commercial structures. Know where the fire escapes are in multi-story buildings, and you should have communicated for the secondary portable ladder or aerial device location.
Where and how do you monitor fire conditions below or adjacent to your operations? Have you told those below where you are going? Do they understand their responsibility to you and that your safe egress comes before theirs? Make effective use of your team member to monitor operations below and communicate to you if the conditions below become out of control or “chancy” at best. (Hmm … and you are running out of ideas for company drills.)
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 Un-plugged (Fire Engineering/FDIC, 1999). He is a regular contributor to Firenuggets.com.
