Ladder bail/slide
Having coordinated the training of 480 firefighters in the “ladder slide” technique, I can say that it was not luck but leadership that prevented even a single injury. In 1999, 23 north suburban Chicago fire departments organized a half-day training session that covered specific “saving our own” skills. The “ladder bail,” as we call it (method A in “The Headfirst Ladder Slide: Three Methods,” October 2000), was one of them.
We conducted 30 sessions in 15 days using approximately 40 instructors. Each instructor attended a 16-hour training session followed by a three-hour final orientation, at which each instructor received an outline. The outline designated the lead instructor for each session, reviewed each skill, and emphasized safety precautions. For the ladder bail, we used a Class 1 harness with belay line on each student, which was needed on more than one occasion. We do not have a problem with this; that’s why the rope is there, so things can be tried and injuries avoided.
In conducting our training program, we expressed certain assumptions to attendees:
- Ladders should be placed to upper floors. We encourage later-arriving companies not assigned to advance lines to carry ladders from their rigs to the building and deploy them to windows as the companies enter the fireground. Success with this has been limited.
- Once a ladder is up, it is easier to roll it over to the next window than to wait for another to be brought from the rig.
- Ladders placed at windows for rescue (actual or potential) should be deployed with their tips at the windowsill.
- If the window is extremely large (i.e., six feet wide by four feet high), then the ladder might extend into the window.
I read the report on the Manteca, California, ladder bail training fatality (Editor’s Opinion, April 2000) and other printed criticisms and offer these observations.
- On the fireground, there won’t be rope, but consider your choices: Stay and get burned or trapped or try to get down the ladder without getting hurt.
- Some say we should forget the ladder slide and think prevention. This assumes that we can get the other guy to think prevention. What is the plan when the prudent firefighter must deal with the mistakes of others?
- With method A, there is no jumping or sliding down in getting onto the ladder. Once on the ladder, there is no requirement to slide down; you can climb down. Sliding only becomes an issue if there are multiple firefighters above you and you want to get out of the way quickly.
- Any situation can be “what if’d” indefinitely.
- Every firefighter we trained had completed basic NFPA 1001 Firefighter 1 training and regularly participates in department drills. Depending on the area of the country, some firefighters are better trained than others, and the attitude of some firefighters is responsible for this.
- Contrary to popular belief, the NFPA and most national fire service organizations do not “approve” specific techniques. NFPA standards are minimums and not maximums. Innovation is not prohibited simply because it is not in some accepted manual.
- As for proper climbing techniques, if the ladder can support 500 pounds at 07, an angle of 507 to 607 does not seem excessive.
I could go on and on. I ask critics: “How do you propose that firefighters get on a ladder when the upper half of the window opening has fire venting from it?” News footage broadcast on the five Chicago TV stations shows a Libertyville, Illinois, firefighter performing a ladder bail maneuver. The firefighter was performing post-knockdown fire suppression on the second floor when the room flashed over suddenly.
The big problem with this specific issue is the language and its appearance. Someone once said it’s not what you say but how you say it. For many, the focus seems to be the “slide” and that somehow this is a single maneuver out of the window and down to the ground.
In our instructor training and student delivery, the focus has always been on getting on the ladder in a controlled manner, making sure you are on the ladder first, and then getting to the ground. Had the technique been called something else and been popularized without the emphasis on sliding, some critics might have a different opinion.
Although some may say there is no place for this skill, after 23 years of fire service participation, I can say that there is definitely a place for it in my department.
Drew R. Smith
Deputy Chief
Prospect Heights (IL) Fire Protection District
Over the past several months, I have read nothing but how dangerous the “headfirst ladder slide” is. Well, let’s look at the whole picture.
We fight fires the way we train, and training is what keeps firefighters alive. This firefighter survival class is one of the best I have seen in a long time, and after training several hundred students, the students all seem to agree.
During your entire career in the fire service, you learn how to rescue trapped victims; in the survival class, you learn how to rescue yourself. Let’s face it. If a room starts lighting up (rollover/flashover), you will do whatever it takes to survive, whether it’s getting into another room or going out a window. This ladder slide is just another tool for firefighters to put in their toolboxes.
It is unfortunate that there have been some training accidents and that we have lost some brother and sister firefighters. But let’s not condemn the class itself, which offers a lot of important, lifesaving training scenarios that we hope we will never have to use.
Yes, ladder placement and timing play an important role, but if you think about it, so does everything else we do in the fire service. The bottom line is to train in a safe and efficient manner-and keep giving firefighters the tools they need to do the job and get out alive.
George Zayas
Fire Instructor
Rockland County Fire Training Center
Pomona, New York
