Rural Firefighting Operations: A Look at What Works

BY SETH BARKER

The majority of the fire service resides in a rural setting. Volunteer, combination, and small career fire departments make up most of the American fire service. You will notice that most of the literature, training, classes, and conferences are focused on a robust response profile with plenty of help on the way. For most of us, this is not a reality. National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1710, Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments, states that a fire department should be able to put 15 firefighters on the scene of a low-hazard emergency—in under eight minutes. Suburban, urban, and metropolitan areas can accomplish this with ease. For most of us pursuing training in rural areas, this is simply not feasible.

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• Truck Company Work in the Rural Environment: Rural Truck Tactics
• Rural Connections: Water Supply
• Rural Connections: The Importance of Training

Location Matters

I work for an organization that has a unique response profile. We reside in the southwest corner of Montana, surrounded by national forest. We are roughly 35 miles north of Yellowstone National Park and 52 miles south of Bozeman. This location creates a unique situation when we ask for help.

To say that we reside in a rural setting is an understatement. In fact, our organization used to be called Gallatin Canyon Consolidated Rural Fire District. Our nearest mutual-aid engine company takes anywhere from 25 to 40 minutes to respond to our incidents. When I started, we had 36 volunteers and three paid members. Since inflation, the housing crisis, and most recently the pandemic, that model has changed to an all-career department, with a few members living up to two hours away.

There are only seven members who reside within the fire district boundary. This creates a situation where callbacks are next to impossible for an escalated event (photo 1).

Problem Solving

Our organization has become creative with strategies and tactics. We started by taking deep dives into similar fire departments’ training programs. We quickly realized that this methodology did not support how we do business. Most organizations can call for help and receive it quickly. We cannot.

We had to formulate a plan to institute a best-practice approach that would allow us to continue our operations safely and effectively, with minimal staffing. We had to get outside our bubble in the southwest corner of the state and seek other options.

A Life-Changing Experience

I attended a workshop in Indiana where I met many of the mentors I have today. One encouraged me to attend FDIC International in Indianapolis. It was at FDIC that my eyes opened to the rest of the fire service.

My mentor guided me around, offering suggestions on classes and workshops. He took me to a lunch meeting with the International Society of Fire Service Instructors (ISFSI). I joined the organization that day. If I could mark a day where my career and organization took a major turn toward improving exponentially, it was that day. I met likeminded individuals who shared my passion for training and career development.

I navigated a sea of information and tried my best to “hold onto what works and abandon the rest.” It was still very challenging to find organizations or instructors who spoke to my situation. I found excellent content to bring back to my organization, but I was having a hard time matching the tactics with the response profile.

The Hard Part

When I took over training for our organization, it was an early promotion. I probably did not have the right skill set for the job at the time. I spent a lot of time instructing the skills I was comfortable with and very little time on concepts I did not understand.

I feel like this holds true with the fire service as well. The hard skills are the easy ones: stretching a line, throwing a ladder, and forcing a door. It’s the tactics that are tough: moving hoselines through buildings, extricating customers from a second floor, and carrying out an exterior attack to an interior attack on a fire. These tactics might seem easy with a robust response profile; however, with minimal staffing, they demand a second look.

Let’s look at my organization. We have a report of a working structure fire in a second-story, single-family residence. There is a known occupant on the second floor in a bedroom on the C side. Our typical response to an incident is six people with a chief. We would have one person pumping, one performing incident command, two people on interior attack, and two on rapid intervention crew/backup.

That leaves one person on the exterior to receive the customer on a ladder or soften the structure. It demands the two interior firefighters make an aggressive stop to forward progression of the fire while performing a rescue. What may seem like a routine task or fire for some is an extreme hardship for others.

To make sense of all this, we must understand what we are dealing with first. In the Firefighter I curriculum, there are three hours of fire behavior training. In the Firefighter II curriculum, there is no fire behavior training. In Fire Officer I and II, there is no fire behavior training. All our decisions depend on what the fire is doing or what it’s about to do. I remember when I was teaching my organization in the beginning of my career, I would skim quickly over fire behavior because I was uncomfortable with it and did not understand it. This is a classic brand-new-instructor mistake.

Important Realizations

I needed to ensure my organization would get better as safely as possible, and I had to be a student of fire science to incorporate the best possible tactics. I started digesting as much information from the Underwriters Laboratories Fire Safety Research Institute (UL FSRI) as possible. I made it my mission to be able to speak about its research, safety series, and tests.

I immediately implemented its coursework into our curriculum on a local level so our organization could have the foundation to make better decisions. This dramatically changed the way we did things on the fireground. It showed our membership the “why” and not just something they saw on YouTube and thought looked cool.

Our fire department concentrated on understanding fire behavior and how the occupancy influenced that behavior. We had to consider important questions like the following:

• What stage is the fire in?
• What is developing?
• How does the fire move through a building?
• How does a hose stream influence the fire?
• What is the rescue profile?
• What is the risk management profile telling us?

All these questions can be answered by evidence-based research to form a solid incident action plan.

The Incident Action Plan

Let’s go back to the scenario we discussed earlier. If we understand fire behavior and how it relates to the structure, we implement tactics for safer outcomes. For example, if we recognize from the exterior that there is survivable space, the fire is in the incipient stage, and the person is behind a closed door, we might pivot toward a window-based search for our customer rather than an interior search. Suddenly, this rural operation becomes much more attainable with minimal staffing.

When discussing rural fire operations, it is very important to discuss the concept of “brilliance in the basics.” Let’s look at a project that we are about to do in our garage. I will argue that you will use the same five tools on every project, almost every time, and I call them the “Big 5”:

1. Level.
2. Tape measure.
3. Hammer.
4. Screwdriver.
5. Square.