Mistakes, we have been saying here for two months, are really lessons in our business-unless we refuse to learn from them and do “it” again. However, lately a mistake sometimes is just that-a major error that is so costly that we look away from it instead of correct it.
One mistake that is so costly is the reduction of personnel who respond to fires in the United States today. Most would say “fires and emergencies” when finishing the previous sentence. So, why did I say just “fires”? Because the injury and death rates to our uniformed personnel relate directly not only to activities done while responding to and operating at structures thought to be on fire but also to our civilian charges we are so proud to announce in our mission statements across the land.
We have been talking of tactics on the fireground and that if the activity (tactic, task) is performed poorly, late, or not at all, it should be brought up in the critique and corrected for the next time-LESSON. But, when the tactic cannot be performed in a coordinated manner because no one is on the fireground to do it, it is a MISTAKE!
Truck work. Truck work (extinguishment support functions) tactics suffer the most-especially ventilation, the ability to make the building behave.
Ventilation-from above, from the side, from inside, from outside-is the major key to smoothly extinguishing fire within the structure and to all of the related successes: protecting life, property, and the environment.
Poorly performed or absent ventilation will cause the fire building to behave poorly and is one of the most direct (and indirect) causes of firefighting injuries to our members.
Today, we have so many costly and painful firefighter injuries (some leading to death) from explosive phenomena related to an aggressive interior attack of fire buildings. Flashover, rollover (flameover), smoke explosion, and cold smoke (remote) explosions could almost never occur when prompt and proper ventilation is performed in coordination with the rapid advance of interior handlines to the fire location. You can’t have fire blow out of your hearth (fireplace) at home if the flue is opened. If you forget about opening the flue, you will be sure to create a major lesson in the family’s living quarters.
Failure to open top-floor fires at the roof before pulling the ceilings below has caused explosive gases trapped under pressure to “seek” ignition in the fire compartment below. The explosive and concussive fireball that results can blow down on those operating directly in the fire area and, in some cases, in remote (cold smoke) locations. A poorly placed ventilation hole cut in a location remote from the fire area will pull the fire unnaturally over the heads of those operating below and cause entrapment or, at the least, confusion and delay.
Today, departments are routinely surprised by the ignition of gases in an enormous heat sink in a high overhead space of a commercial building. No one saw the second roof team put an additional hole in the roof a great distance from the seat of the fire.
Surprises. Therein lies the red flag indicating that dialogue (critique) is necessary and correction (change) and communication are indicated. That flag is “SURPRISE.”
Surprise should not be a watchword of this business. Do you want to be surprised at every fire operation to which you respond? Do you want to be guided by a command system that is surprised at events that can become catastrophic at the fire scene? Do you want every fire event to which you respond investigated by federal, state, or buff-type agencies? Sure, the answer is no! But how is that accomplished?
As professionals, we must whittle down our personal surprise list by all the training procedures and dialogues and critiques and tricks we can muster. As officers, we must convey this same message to our subordinates so that the professionalism of our “job” is ensured. Then, we will not have department members who failed because they did not do all that throwing up their arms and wringing their hands, saying, “We just don’t have the experienced personnel any more!” Nonsense!
Collapse. This is one of the mistakes on our firegrounds lately-not so much collapse itself, but the fact that the injuries and deaths and (in the least) strategic breakdown of operations are tied to the expression, “We were surprised by (partial, full) collapse during operations.”
Boys and girls, collapse on the fireground after operations have commenced should (almost) NEVER be a surprise! Collapse is forecast by communication from trained and aware personnel who know what they are looking for or at and realize the ramifications. There are so many indicators that this structure may fail in strength: the preplan developed after inspections, behavior indicators directly related to that type of construction, exterior signs that are part of your rapid size-up, information being communicated to the outside by searching and “looking” firefighters operating inside, and collapse indicators watched for and noted by exterior command teams (a reason to be a walking boss). All these indicators (or an unusual lack of them) gathered at command will indicate the moment to change strategy smoothly and prepare for collapse without having to experience all the Mayday communications we hear about so often on our nation’s firegrounds.
The lesson here is to get the personnel to the scene by marketing, greater alarm, and mutual aid to perform the tactics commensurate with the strategy chosen to make a structure on fire behave in a positive (for our interior attack) manner and to gather the data to prevent surprise-in short, to put out the fire in a timely and safe-as-possible manner and get everyone home. ■
■ 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.
