BY ALAN BRUNACINI
In recent columns, we have been discussing various topics that might help young firefighters better understand some of the activities involved in their new career. Our effectiveness and survival are directly connected to both how early we become students of our profession and how long we stay in firefighting school. Our classroom is the hazard zone, and just when you think you are a graduate student, a new, different situation you never imagined will cause you to instantly become a freshman again. The day you feel you have learned everything there is to know about firefighting should be your last day in the fire service.
Going to school and getting the lesson before the test eliminates a lot of the pain that occurs when the order is reversed. Life’s regular curriculum naturally occurs in enough of an unscheduled and imperfect way that we will get plenty of out-of-order “test before the lesson” experiences (road rash) to make the whole educational process really exciting. Lots of times, we get zapped by something/somebody and then wonder why we had not learned and rehearsed the behavior ahead of time—the no-brainers seem to be the most frustrating.
The lesson before the test order is particularly critical for a firefighter (regardless of age) because a lot of the classes we attend are conducted in a “schoolyard” called the fireground. This is a really unforgiving place where a single tactical/operational mistake can be fatal. Fireground survival depends on the ability to quickly identify and then effectively react to hazardous conditions that are present and to also predict the immediate future of those conditions. If the conditions “outrun” our ability to forecast where they are going, those conditions can overwhelm our ability to protect ourselves. When this happens, the fire is now managing us—we are no longer managing the fire. Now, those unmanaged conditions can assault/murder us.
I used the term “no-brainers” above and noted how frustrating they can be. They are typically really simple and also really profound, as most simple stuff is. I would like to discuss here what a no-brainer would be to today’s young folk and how the habits and reactions that go naturally with young firefighters’ “native” computer/electronic ability can get them (actually everyone) in trouble on the fireground. This is going to sound sort of strange. I will make the point in a bit.
Today, we all know where we are better than any generation before us. We live in a global positioning system (GPS)-located and -directed world. A modern cell phone has become an electronic Swiss Army knife. One of the many features it has is that it will instantly tell you where you are, and if you type in where you want to go, it will tell you how to get there—and it will also tell you every Italian restaurant along the way and if they serve red or Alfredo sauce. As you drive to your destination, you are being directed by an amazing (to me) little electronic box that has a very efficient (read very assertive) female geo master inside it. She will direct/order you verbally where to turn and how far you have to go to get to your destination. She sounds a lot like your fifth grade teacher and has very little patience (actually raises her voice!) if you do not obey effectively. I am sure that your phone and the “lady in the box” have made today’s hard copy mapmaker yesterday’s buggy whip maker. If Christopher Columbus had a GPS, he would have known where he was going and what he actually discovered.
I notice that young people today are not as inclined to pay attention to their physical surroundings, particularly when they are going places, simply because they are so skillful at using electronic systems to direct their travels. I worked on a fire truck in a prehistoric time when we actually used physical maps and we were required to memorize the streets, landmarks, and target hazards in our first-due response areas. I was assigned to a two-piece engine company (pump and wagon), and we were responsible (among other things all connected to hydraulics in some way) for charging standpipes and extending attack lines out of stairwells. We learned and then continually reviewed the number of lengths of hose required to reach the end of the hallways in all the downtown buildings. The only electronic equipment we had was a two-channel rig radio.
Now that same company (Engine 1) has a mobile computer terminal (MCT). It automatically brings up and displays a map of the area in which it is responding, shows the best routing and the hydrants, and indicates if there is a preplan of the occupancy available. The system will show all the built-in fire protection of that occupancy. The responding battalion chief can view on the command MCT an area map that has icons that dynamically show the current location for all the units responding. I am not certain if the system can recommend an Italian restaurant, but it can indicate just about everything else. Times have changed, and now looking at a modern computer screen replaces all the old-time, first-due area memorizing.
I heard a story the other day at a conference where a young firefighter riding backward to a call “Google Earthed” an aerial picture of the building and surrounding area to which they were responding and handed the phone to his boss in the front seat. That was a completely natural response for today’s fire youth—perhaps he also sent the picture to all the other fire lads and lassies who also were bouncing around in the jump seats of the other units responding on the alarm and texted a message to everyone about what Starbucks they would all meet in when they got off duty the next morning.
My interest in focusing on the skill that our young members have in electronically orienting themselves to the world they live in is to make a point about the most disorienting place there is: inside a building on fire where the roof is still intact. I want to stress that, at this point, we might as well shut off and save the batteries of all the GPS stuff we love so much because the satellite signal just bounces off the roof of the fire building. Now, when we are operating on the inside, we are on our own—no big eye in the sky that never sleeps.
Our service has actively attempted to round up all the gee-whiz technology that has been produced for the past 25 years to somehow develop a firefighter locator system. During my career, we hosted repeated visits of teams of rocket scientists (literally) who were talking to street firefighters and incident commanders (ICs) to see how a locater system would fit in with how we operate. Such a system would give the IC the capability to track the location and hopefully the status of the firefighters operating inside the hazard zone.
So far the ability we have to penetrate an intact roof is a lot like ladder pipe fire streams bouncing off the outside of that same roof. The problem with the water is that it can’t get inside where the fire is, and the problem with the locator is that the signal can’t get through the roof to get inside where the firefighters (and the fire) are. It’s just like what happens to your satellite radio when you go through the tunnel—no tunes are transmitted from outer space while you’re inside. To my knowledge, the technicians have not yet figured out a practical system that can consistently penetrate the roof of a fire building to connect the firefighter and the satellite; by the same token, we have not yet figured out how to convince an intact roof to stop doing what it was designed to do—shed water.
With the current technology capability, we must use portable radios between the inside firefighters and the outside IC to establish and maintain an effective operational and safety inside/outside connection. The IC also develops a tactical-level command team of offsite bosses (sectors/divisions/groups) to assist and support maintaining control of the position and function closer to the task-level workers who are operating in the interior of the fire building.
It is a critical capability for the command team to always be able to effectively control the position and function of the inside workers. A critical command and control factor for the IC is the ability of the troops assigned and operating inside to quickly and accurately describe where they are—i.e., their physical location—in the hazard zone. While this sounds simple, when we look at the time-compressed, confused, high-stress period of active initial attack operations, being able to orient/locate yourself and then rationally report that location is very difficult.
Last month in this column, we discussed how important it is for all of us to continually increase our awareness of the physical arrangement of every place we are. As we go about our daily rounds, we must pay attention to the physical profile of the place where we are in relation to our ability to tactically operate there. In effect, we should instinctively do a mental preplan of whatever we are looking at, wherever we are. We should also notice and note how the humans that go with that place behave and react and how we can effectively connect to those people when they become part of an active incident.
As we improve our ability to load better and better tactical information into our mental files, we must also refine our personal local positioning system (LPS) capability. I know this probably sounds kind of nutty, but consider that you are going into the hazard zone for rescue and fire control. If you are going in, it means the overall operational strategy is offensive. In pretty much all offensive situations, most of the roof is still present. In fact, if the fire has burned a major part of the roof off, the strategy is generally defensive, and everyone is outside surrounding the fire area beyond the collapse zone conducting a water festival. Imagine you are operating inside (offensively) and for whatever reasons you get “stuck” (lost and/or trapped) and require assistance. You push the button of your personal portable and transmit to highest priority the most critical word you can say on a radio: “Mayday.”
Now, the race is on, and the IC knows that your survival time frame is directly connected to how much air you have in your self-contained breathing apparatus tank. The rapid intervention ability is directly connected to being able to find you. Now it’s show time—and it’s real simple and real critical: The more accurately you can relate your location, the faster the cavalry can find you and the better your chances of making it to Starbucks the next morning.
I am not suggesting that to improve our LPS we must suffer a major personality change. Modern electronic equipment has made our personal and professional lives more convenient, safer, and fun and, thankfully, it is here to stay. What I am saying is that to do our jobs, we must go into and then always be able to come out of an immediately dangerous to life and health environment. If you have not developed the very personal (not electronic) ability to mentally orient yourself and then to describe where you are way before you need to, you will be in big trouble because your GPS stopped working when you went through the front door.
Retired Chief ALAN BRUNACINI is a fire service author and speaker. He and his sons own the quarterly fire service magazine BSHIFTER.com and the Blue Card hazard zone training and certification system. He can be reached at alanbrunacini@cox.net.
Alan Brunacini will present “Bruno and Norman ‘Unplugged’ ” on Wednesday, April 18, 5:30 p.m.-7:15 p.m., at FDIC in Indianapolis.
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