MAKE THE BUILDING BEHAVE
RANDOM THOUGHTS
TOM BRENNAN is chief of the Waterbury (CT) Fire Department and technical director and former editor of Fire Engineering He spent more than 20 years in some of the world’s busiest ladder companies in the City of New York (NY) Fire Department
For years on this back page I have tried to “keep it simple” and discuss or share small, successful tactics that are “always there” at structure fires and other emergencies we consider routine. This month, however, I want to discuss staffing in our fire service.
During recent years, the issue of how many firefighters are to respond on fire apparatus has become a hot issue in every corner of our emergency response world. When we get near an effective number, it gets shot full of so many holes that the “secret” number is indiscernable, and we are off and running again.
The closest we ever got was in the language of the original NFPA 1500 Standard (Standard on Fire Department Occupational Safety and Health Program) addendum. And now that appears to have gone up in smoke. Organizations qualified to speak on the issue—the international Association of Fire Chiefs and the International Association of Fire Fighters—went to war in public over their differences. The issue recently moved deeper down the “long hallway” with the news that the IAFF is severing all ties with the NFPA.
Now the thoughts. 1 have been a fire service responder for more than .50 years—during the times that ambulance runs didn’t count as fire activity. That time span allowed me to respond to more than 30,000 alarms summoning the fire service in the true sense of the word. Activity-measured, more than 50 percent of that number was for structure firefighting duties.
The controversy between the two leading organizations representing responding fire service personnel is as follows: One declared that the minimum number should be four; the other declared that the head of the fire service organization is the best authority to determine the staffing levels per district. I looked away in frustration at both answers.
There are more than 30,000 fire departments in the United States. Only a handful of chiefs have been able to professionally account for proper and adequate staffing levels and have not “caved in” to the economic pressures of city managers and financial wizards who need to see body bags before they listen. It also could be that many of us don’t really know how to get our point across to anyone who doesn’t understand fire service “lingo.” Some fire service leaders have argued that they have a ladder company function in town because the truck gets to the scene with one or two firefighters, or the engine responds with two or three personnel. Rubbish!
From my experience, there is only one answer when it comes to accounting for civilian life hazard (and property conservation) in fire buildings through a professional, expert, successful, and safe operation: It is our ability to make the environment in which we operate operable—in short, to make the building behave. That means people. And people means sufficient, properly trained, effective firefighters.
Sure, the hoselines we use are lighter than the old ones. You can stretch a line to the structure with two people —two sanitation engineers, two politicians, tw’o lawyers, two anybodies. It is when the door to the fire compartment, the building, opens that we need the teams of professional firefighters. The line must move with the proper speed and consistency to control the building, and therefore account for the life hazard—be it civilian or firefighter. Then, sufficient additional lines must be stretched so the teams can perform effectively and safely. Flow many trucks we deliver has nothing to do with it!
To make this building behave, we also need the support functions of forcible entry, search, ventilation, and more—truck work. This must be done all at once and not as soon as possible. The lack of these support functions is one of the real reasons there are so many flashover/smoke-explosion injuries. Injuries stop when the fire goes out. Engine operations need the functions around them to perform as rapidly as possible, if at all.
We need the whole team—a knowledgeable leadership, an aggressive and professional union, and any other assistance to get our message across. The message is getting lost with everyone standing on each other’s shoes. Let’s get on each other’s shoulders for once.
