BY JASON RIVERA
All firefighters know that performing a primary search is considered a truck company skill, but what if your fire department doesn’t have a dedicated truck company, or your dedicated truck company is ordered to perform other fireground tasks? The answer to both: We must perform an engine-based search.
- Truck Company Operations Without the Truck
- Quick Task Accomplishment: Engine Company Primary Search
- The Long and Short of It: Maximizing Primary Search on the Suburban Fireground
- Primary Search: Accomplish the Mission
A primary search is “a rapid but thorough search performed before or during fire suppression”—that is, a team or a single firefighter, per local protocol, will search for known or unknown victims under the most hostile conditions. This aggressive tactic may be performed ahead of, and with or without the protection of, a hoseline.
“Rapid” and “thorough” are key to the search technique. Since victims have a small window of survivability, they must be found quickly, but quickness need not be at the expense of completeness to ensure no victims are missed. A high-quality primary search is not easy and, when performed in addition to stretching a hoseline, will likely complicate things, but all is not lost if the skill is practiced on a company level.
Search Options
All firefighters should know that getting the initial attack line in place quickly and efficiently is of the utmost importance to controlling the fire. They must also realize that getting this line in place may also preserve life by eliminating the problem (the fire); the quicker this happens, the quicker things will get better. But what about the victims who are already overcome and who may be lying unconscious on a bed or on the floor? We must find and remove them from the building as quickly as possible to initiate lifesaving measures.
Search as You Stretch
The first option is a technique in which we search while we stretch. This may be best for situations where we have three firefighters or fewer on the initial-arriving engine or we have some members on the first-arriving engine and others arriving in personal vehicles, as in a volunteer or combination department. Here, the team of firefighters stretches the line with specific hoseline assignments (nozzle, backup, control, and so forth). As the line is advanced, members may break off and search individual rooms. Once the rooms are cleared, the members would return to the line and continue to help advance the line or proceed up to the next room to be searched. One benefit of this option is that the members are never far off the line and can communicate clearly with each other as they proceed deeper into the building. They also shouldn’t be away from the line for very long, making the advancement smooth and continuous.
Split Team Attack
In a split team attack, we put a minimum of two members on hoseline advancement and assign two members to the primary search. This method frees up the search team to perform their duties without the need to multitask, therefore allowing them to focus on the search. The downside to this is that it will slow the the hoseline advancement because of the limited number of personnel helping to move it. To maximize our potential, it is essential that the two members on the line remain spaced apart appropriately so that the line keeps making forward progress while ensuring that communication is not lost.
(1) Members train to be proficient at stretching the initial attack line. (Photo by author.)
(2) A crew of firefighters stretches the initial attack line. (Photo by Chelsea Curreri.)
All Members Do the Stretch
A third option is to commit all members to the stretch to expedite getting to the seat of the fire. This option will be our quickest method of applying water to what is burning but will delay finding victims unless they happen to be in our path of travel. Once a knockdown is achieved, the members can then break off the line and begin their searches. As we’ve stated earlier, everything gets better once the fire goes out. So, by that theory, this may be the go-to move in situations where there are no reported victims trapped and no hard evidence that there may be victims present (e.g., car in the driveway late at night, civilians in the street, telephone reports of victims, and so forth). Although we never want to assume that there aren’t victims, we also must base our tactical decisions on the best information possible.
Another option, although potentially hazardous, is to perform the search without the protection of the hoseline. This option should be limited to a situation in which the victim’s location is known—e.g., when a family member is pointing out exactly in which room the victim is. Also, the fire must be incipient, the search area must be isolated, or the members searching must be able to isolate themselves and perform this search quickly. An example could be a vent-enter-search (VES) of a second-floor bedroom, with the fire located on the first floor. When the searching members make access to the room using a ground ladder, they must remove all the glass, the window sash, and any window treatments from the window and sweep and sound the floor. Sweeping is performed first carefully to avoid impaling a victim who is just inside the window on the floor. Once sweeping and sounding are completed, the firefighter enters the room while maintaining a position below the neutral plane and lands on all fours. At this point, a good practice is to leave the six-foot hook positioned diagonally from the windowsill to the floor as a point of reference when the entire search is complete, to mark our egress point if we need to make an emergency exit. Next, members must make a beeline to the bedroom door and close it to isolate themselves from the rest of the house. Finally, they can begin a quick search of the room while making sure to check on top of and under beds, in closets, and for bunk beds. When the search of that room is complete, they can peek in the hallway to check on conditions. However, realize that any search performed beyond that room will bring us farther from the means of egress; if there is still no attack line in place, this could put the search team in a very dangerous position. As stated earlier, reserve this risky move for seasoned firefighters and only when the associated benefit justifies the risk.
Transitional Attack
The term transitional attack itself creates a lively discussion. I do not dispute the science behind transitional attack; I believe what they say. I do take exception with the idea of applying water, no matter how quickly, through a window to achieve some sort of knockdown while unconscious unprotected victims may lay on the floor inside this untenable building. To do so rearranges the Life safety, Incident stabilization, and Property conservation (LIP) hierarchy that we all learned in basic firefighter school. When we apply water from the outside, we are putting more of an emphasis on incident stabilization (knockdown) than we are on life safety (the removal of unconscious victims). The water applied from the exterior will cool the interior environment; I do not dispute that. But it isn’t cooling the atmosphere to a tenable level or removing the smoke and superheated gases inside the structure from which the victims have no protection. The only way to give the victims a fighting chance is to get inside, find them, and remove them from this atmosphere as quickly as humanly possible.
(3) A firefighter prepares to VES a bedroom. (Photo by Chelsea Curreri.)
(4) A well-involved structure fire is quickly brought under control. [Photo courtesy of Christiana (DE) Fire Company.]
I will not say that the transitional attack option is an absolute no-go in all situations. It may be the tactic of choice in areas with the following: extremely limited personnel (fewer than three firefighters on an engine); protracted response times; and in areas where, for a variety of reasons, we cannot assemble a high-quality interior firefighting crew immediately. I fully understand that not every fire department can throw more than 30 members, all arriving within a few minutes of each other, at a reported fire. In these circumstances, when the public sees the fire department arrive, they expect action. We must take swift and decisive action, with the public’s well-being as our highest priority. If this is the case, we may choose to apply water from the exterior for a short period of time in the hopes of “resetting” the fire prior to making entry.
In extreme limited staffing situations, we must also be prepared for taking the actions necessary when there is a known victim. We may choose to perform a quick hit from the exterior or perhaps even a blitz attack while two members prepare to search. In this case, the pump operator may use the deck gun or other mounted master stream device to apply water from the exterior. This practice reduces the number of members needed because no line is stretched. For this to succeed, it must meet the following criteria:
- Fire must be showing from an accessible part of the building.
- The driver/operator must position the engine so that water can be applied from the mounted nozzle directly into the area showing fire.
- The master stream device should have a shutoff mounted near its orifice. Without it, water is wasted as the pump operator sends water to the nozzle and attempts to aim the nozzle. Even if the nozzle is aimed prior to sending water, the stream may miss and the operator may often waste time climbing up and down from the top of the rig.
- The tank size will come into play. Often, a master stream device’s smallest tip is 13⁄8 inches, flowing roughly 500 gallons per minute. That high flow allows little room for error when aiming the stream; this problem is magnified as the tip size increases.
- The timing between the exterior flow and the advance of the interior crew must be impeccable. We don’t want to flow this stream onto the crew as they begin their search, but we do want to achieve the maximum amount of knockdown prior to entry.
With all these available options, which one is the best for your department? The only way to discover whichever one works for you and your specific situation is to go out and practice. Training for these scenarios in as realistic a setting as possible is essential. Run your numbers and see what your average turnout per incident is. If your department averages five members on scene for the first eight minutes, practice for it. When you conduct your live fire training, don’t put 12 members on the initial attack line if that’s not what you do. Practice for your reality! Stagger your training responses and see what it’s like to stretch with two or three members. Position your engine far away from the training building’s entrance so everyone can experience a long stretch. Play with different hose configurations. A minuteman load plays out very differently than a flat pack. Get feedback from the people who are doing the job! Set your engine up for your district. Make the equipment work for you.
Shorthanded tasks are some of the most dangerous operations firefighters will perform, but they are most departments’ reality. In these times of budget cuts, declining volunteerism, and company shutdowns, we are constantly asked to do more with less. What hasn’t changed, though, is our need to serve the public with aggressive tactics to protect those in need. Primary search is just one of those tasks that we must complete at every fire, never as an afterthought. Searches must be aggressive, quick, thorough, and complete, with or without a dedicated truck company.
JASON RIVERA is a 30-year veteran of the fire service and the assigned driver for New Haven (CT) Fire Department Rescue Co. 1, a firefighter with the Christiana (DE) Fire Company, and a rescue specialist for the Massachusetts FEMA US&R team MA-TF1. Rivera is a Pro-Board certified Fire Service Instructor Level 3.
