Chief Has Many Areas of Concern At Single-Family Residential Fires
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The first-alarm chief at single-family house fires bears a major responsibility for the life and property losses in the smaller cities and suburban communities. In rural areas, he is responsible for handling nearly all the fires on the initial alarm and most times, he may be the chief of department.
With first-alarm chiefs who handle tenement and other multiple-dwelling fires, he shares the burden of responding to the dwelling fires that account for approximately three-quarters of the fire deaths in this nation each year.
Along with other chief officers who direct the initial attacks on fires, the first-alarm chief at single-family house fires must rapidly size up the fire and develop a fireground strategy after considering such problems as search and rescue, protection of exposures, confinement of the fire, extinguishment, overhaul, ventilation and salvage.
Vital truth
These are a lot of things to consider, but through experience he has learned one vital truth about initial fireground operations:
An immediate, aggressive attack on the fire can minimize all the other problems.
A room on the first floor of a 2 1/2-story single-family house is fully involved in fire and occupants are trapped in the second-floor bedrooms. The single stairway is impassable and rescue over ladders will take time. Simultaneously, the roof should be opened to relieve the buildup of lethal gases and heat on the second floor. There is limited manpower to accomplish these tasks.
Conditions permitting, the chief officer knows that a stream of 200 to 250 gpm can knock down a room fire of considerable size and make the stairway available. The quick knockdown and availability of the stairs is accomplished quicker than it would take to raise a ladder to the second floor and a second ladder to the roof. The fire fighters who would have had to open the roof can take a small line to the second floor to rescue the occupants. Others can aid in the rescue efforts, ventilate horizontally and check for fire spread.
By knocking down the fire, the problems of protecting interior exposures and confining the fire have been eliminated. The buildup of heat on the second floor has ceased and horizontal ventilation from the inside has improved conditions needed to sustain life and has bought time to accomplish the removal of those persons trapped on the second floor. Overhaul-the search for hidden fire-can be done more thoroughly in a less hostile atmosphere created by ventilation and knockdown of the fire, and salvage becomes a routine operation.
Capability recognized
A good stop? Yes, but only because the first-alarm chief knew that his companies had the capability to make a strong attack that would knock down the fire and he ordered this attack because he knew its success would minimize all his other problems.
It is axiomatic that when fire creates a really serious rescue problem, a hose line and ventilation must be employed to assure success of the rescue effort. This is particularly important for the first-alarm chief to recognize because the need for rescue is greatest upon the arrival of the first-alarm assignment at house fires. The need for rescue at this type of occupancy drops to practically nothing as extra alarms are struck. In other words, rescues will be made under the command of the first-alarm chief at single-family homes or they won’t be made at all.
Where rescue is not an obvious need upon arrival at a residential fire, the chief officer must make the search of the premises a top priority. We say “top priority” because in some incidents, a primary search of all areas cannot be made without ventilation and the protection of a hose line.
The sight of persons trapped by fire in a residence should be only the tip of the iceberg to the first-alarm chief. If one or two persons are leaning out windows, the chief should consider in his size-up of the situation the possibility that others may not have been able to make it to windows so the rescue problem could be more extensive than what is visible from the outside.
As soon as conditions permit, a secondary search of the home should be made to make certain that no one trapped by the fire was overlooked during the primary search.
Transfer of manpower
If the chief has only an undermanned truck company, then at this point he may have to beef up the search with fire fighters from his engine companies. While it is vital to a successful fireground operation that the various tasks be carried out by companies, there are times when it is expedient for a chief to ask a company officer to order one or more members to assist another company.
The first-alarm chief should always be aware of this option, but he also should restrict its use to the times when it is warranted by fireground needs.
The first-alarm chief may not arrive on the fireground in time to determine the size of the fire line put into service, but it is his responsibility to see that a line with an adequate rate of flow is used. If necessary, he must order a second line stretched so that the application rate is sufficient to knock down fire. Basically, it is the engine company officer’s responsibility to know what size line he should stretch for the initial attack. However, this knowledge does not relieve the chief officer of the burden of supervision to make certain that the stream used is proper for the strategy the chief has devised.
Company officer training
While it is up to the initial alarm chief to develop a strategy for the fire attack, it is necessary for company officers to be trained in strategy as well as fireground tactics if the department is to operate effectively on the fireground. While tactics are primarily the responsibility of the chief officers, company officers should have sufficient training in fireground strategy to be able to use the tactics that will best implement the strategy of the chief officer.
One of the ways to improve the understanding of strategy by company officers is for first-alarm chiefs to conduct critiques of fires with the companies under their command and explain why certain strategies were used and how they were carried out successfully or with something less than success on the fireground.
Through these critiques, if done with understanding, company officers will learn what their chief officers expect of them on the fireground and they will better be able to fulfill the expectations of their chiefs.
Chief’s burden eased
Company officers who are knowledgeable in both tactics and strategy will require little in the way of explanation of orders on the fireground and this will greatly ease the command burden of the chief officer. The time that chief officers expend in explaining in detail what must be done by company officers on the fireground is time they can better spend evaluating the changing situation and maintaining command control of the fire.
A well-trained engine company officer needs to be told only to stretch a line to a certain area and the chief should feel certain that the right size line will be taken in the proper manner to most effectively control the fire. In the same way, a truck company officer need only be told to effect horizontal ventilation or to open up the roof and no further explanation should be necessary from the chief officer.
As training improves, the chief officer should find it even unnecessary to order a truck company officer to open the roof or to ventilate horizontally because the ladder company officer should have the freedom to use his judgment and the chief should exercise only a supervisory role regarding ventilation.
Obviously, the training objectives of first-alarm chiefs must be coordinated with the department’s training officer. The desires of the chief officers should be in harmony with department fire fighting standards and practices, and operations that chiefs find to be weak on the fireground can be strengthened by altering the training program.
Training for promotion
What is sometimes not recognized is that first-alarm chief officers also have a responsibility to train company officers to become chief officers. Frequently a word or two of explanation when time permits on the fireground can help develop company officers’ understanding of the chiefs role as the fireground strategist and commander. The critiques we have mentioned are an ideal situation for expanding the training of company officers to become chief officers as well as to become better company officers on the fireground.
Unfortunately, officer training is the weakest part of training programs throughout the fire service. In most fire departments, fire fighters-even those on the promotion lists-receive little or no training in the responsibilities of company officers. In turn, company officers get even less training to become chief officers.
An immediate way to start correcting this situation is for the chief officers to talk with company officers about command problems and solutions. After a fire is under control, the work pressure eases considerably and there is time for on-the-job training if the chief officers recognize the advantages to be gained in terms of improved fireground effectiveness.
Supervisory duty
Chief officers are supervisors on the fireground and they should never forget that. Facts are facts and the truth is that most fires in single-family dwellings are nickel-and-dime fires that don’t require much effort to extinguish. The mattress fire, the smoking fluorescent ballast, and the cabinets over the stove ignited by burning grease don’t provide much of a challenge.
So when a somewhat more challenging fire occurs and the first-alarm response is short on manpower, the chief officer too often is tempted to lend a hand to get a hose line in faster or to do some horizontal ventilation or something else that is a fire fighter’s job. As soon as the chief starts doing fire fighter work, he no longer is a chief officer and he starts to lose command of the fire. He is evading his principal responsibility on the fireground-to maintain command of the fireground.
Once the chief loses command of the fireground, the efficiency and effectiveness of the fire attack dissolves into an uncontrolled mob scene, which accomplishes little with a maximum of effort, an increased fire loss and a greater chance of personal injuries.
Command post
As the fireground commander, the first-alarm chief should establish a command post whenever his size-up indicates an extended period of fire fighting. For a minor fire, such as a mattress fire, that requires the services of only one engine company and a truck company, the formality of a command post is superfluous.
However, a working fire demands the establishment of a command post- normally at the front of the fire. A good way to do this is for the chief to use his car as the command post. The car gives him the advantage of being able to use its mobile radio with a communication range that exceeds that of walkietalkies.
There is nothing engraved in stone that says the chief must remain at the command post throughout the fire. He will inevitably find that he wants to be at the command post until he has assigned all companies to operate on the fire. After the companies are working, the chief will find it useful to take a walk and see for himself how the operation is progressing. By carrying a walkietalkie, the chief will never be out of reach of his company officers and he will be able to maintain control of the fireground. If a fire fighter is available, he can remain at the command post while the chief looks around the fireground.
Change of command
If the fire situation is serious enough for a second alarm, the first-alarm chief will formally turn over command of the fire to the higher-ranking chief responding on the second alarm. The first-alarm chief should brief his successor on the status of the fire, what the various companies are doing and what he was planning to do next. The firstalarm chief should briefly outline the assignments he has given to any second-alarm companies present and what he planned to do with the companies that have not yet arrived on the fireground. It is then the responsibility of the new fireground commander to make a decision as to whether he will continue the strategy of his predecessor or make some changes.
For the first-alarm chief, standard operating procedures are a tremendous help in getting companies to work with a minimum number of orders. In those first few minutes on the fireground, the chief must size up the fire and issue orders to his companies. At a working fire, a multitude of details must be covered, and the chief can find himself so busy with details that he can’t see the broad scope of the problem unless his department has standard operating procedures.
The SOP eliminates the need to issue a number of orders. Company officers know what they are expected to do under a variety of circumstances. In hydrant areas, engine company officers should be responsible for locating a hydrant for their water supply. Ladder company officers know that they are primarily responsible for search and rescue, ventilation and forcible entry. In a rural area, the first-in engine company officer knows, for example, that in his department the SOP is to position his engine at the fire and set up for either a pumper relay or a tanker shuttle.
Turn page
The first-alarm chief must see that the SOP is followed consistently. Otherwise, there is the danger that the SOP will be ignored when it is vital at a working fire.
Water supply
As we mentioned above, obtaining a water supply is the responsibility of the engine company officer. However, the first-alarm chief must be fully knowedgeable about the water supply. In hydrant areas, he should know the approximate fire flows and in areas without a hydrant system, he has to know the locations of the water sources and the gpm that can be delivered to the fireground by pumper relay or tanker shuttle.
The chief’s fire attack strategy has to be developed within the bounds of the available fire flows-the amount of water that can be delivered to the fireground. Unless the chief works within the water supply limitations, he may order more streams into operation than can be supplied from the hydrants, tanker shuttle or pumper relay. The result will be ineffective streams and the necessity to revise the strategy.
What he does with the water supply is something the first-in chief has to decide in relat ion to the volume of fire and the accessibility of the fire. Let’s say that a fire flow of 1000 gpm is available in a suburban hydranted area. With a large volume of fire showing in the first-floor store of a three-story building with apartments on the upper two floors, the chief could order a blitz attack with a 1000-gpm stream from a deluge gun mounted atop the first-in pumper while hand lines are stretched. Or he could order the operation of four 250-gpm hand lines. The thing he cannot do is to order the use of the 1000-gpm master stream and even one 250-gpm hand line because the total required flow exceeds the available fire flow of 1000 gpm.
Sense of tinning
At large fires, the first-in officer must know how long it takes to put a deluge gun, ladder pipe or a water tower into operation because he has to position the master stream device where it will be effective at the time it receives water- not where it would be effective at the time the order was issued.
The chief also has to have a sense of timing for such tasks as opening up a roof and getting lines to upper floors. With heavy fire in a supermarket with a roof supported by unprotected steel trusses, can the roof be vented before there is danger of the steel trusses failing? If the chief believes there is time enough, then he has to depend on his truck company officer to make a further evaluation of the roof when he reaches it. If the ladder company officer decides the roof is unsafe, that decision is final.
Safety of personnel is constantly in the mind of a good chief officer from the time the bell hits until all units are back in quarters. The one-alarm fire can take the life of a fire fighter just as easily as the multiple-alarm fire.
In his size-up the first-alarm chief must evaluate the building construction in relation to fire fighter safety. We just mentioned unprotected steel trusses as a collapse hazard. Other types of buildings have other types of structural weaknesses and the chief officer must be knowledgeable about them.
Windshield survey
As he drives through his district on routine business, a chief should make a windshield survey of the various types of buildings that can be death traps for fire fighters. This knowledge of building types will assist the first-in chief in developing a fire attack strategy that will provide for the safety of the men.
Some of the newest condominiums and fast-food restaurants of at least two national chains have roofs supported by lightweight 2X4 wood trusses that will result in early roof collapse once a working fire gets into the cockloft. If the fire is voluminous enough to indicate that it will soon be in the truss area between the ceiling and the roof, then the first-alarm chief will have to order a heavier than normal stream operated on the fire to ensure an immediate knockdown and prevent entry of fire into the cockloft. Once a volume of fire takes possession of the cockloft, personnel must be withdrawn from the building. Therefore, the chief should have little concern for water damage in such a situation. Such wood truss construction is a threat to the lives of fire fighters as soon as it is involved in fire. The only defense is to keep fire away from it regardless of extra water damage.
The first-alarm chief also needs to have a lot of fortitude to handle a fire in balloon frame houses. He has to have the knowledge-and particularly the guts-to immediately open up interior walls at the first indication that fire has entered them.
Recognize the big one
Because 90 to 95 percent of fires in single-family houses are one-line fires, the large fire must be properly recognized by the chief officer. It’s not enough to see that the fire is more extensive than the run-of-the-mill ones; the first-alarm chief must recognize the extent of the fire by ordering an initial attack designed for the large fire. Although it happens rarely, the chief has to recognize in a flash when the first line on the fire should be a master stream. Actually, this ability to recognize and react properly to the more serious fires is why the chief wears crossed trumpets.
Many ordinary one-line fires can be handled perfectly satisfactorily by company officers observing the department’s SOP, and the wise first-alarm chief recognizes this. When the attack on the fire is progressing as it should, he will maintain a subdued presence on the fireground and let a company officer continue as fireground commander. However, the chief will recognize that while he may allow a company officer to share his command, he still retains full responsibility for the fireground operation. He knows that in sharing the command, he is giving the company officer the opportunity to increase his confidence in making command decisions. It is on-the-job training for the day the company officer becomes a chief officer.
Only when necessary need the first-in chief officer take over active command when company officers have the situation well in hand.
Developing alternatives
Even while developing the strategy for attacking the fire, the first-in chief officer should be considering alternatives to his planned course of action. Fire is a moving natural phenomenon and by necessity, the strategy to combat it also should be a moving or flexible plan that can be adapted by alternatives to the fire’s course of action. The chief officer should remember that his strategy that is being implemented can never be regarded as complete until the fire has been extinguished.
The first-alarm chief officer must be his own toughest critic. He must be constantly on the alert to watch the progress of the fire attack. When he sees either signs of failure or even the lack of progress by hose lines, he must have options that can be used to better the situation.
For example, if fire is in the attic space of a 2 1/2 or 3-story house, the first-alarm chief may carry out the common practice of sending an engine company up the interior stairs to hit the fire from below. At the same time, he will order the roof opened by a ladder company. However, the first-alarm chief should again use his sense of timing and recognize when the engine company has becomes bogged down and unable to make progress against the fire. Proficient chiefs will have foreseen the possibility of this situation and already will have an engine company with a line ready to go to the roof and attack from the outside.
Although an outside attack is regarded as a less advantageous operation than an inside attack, it becomes the preferred choice after the inside attack has been proven a failure. This second choice is an option that the chief officer recognizes in his original development of strategy.
Cellar fires
The same situation will hold true in cellar fires where the first-alarm chief will want to make the initial attack into the cellar down the interior stairway. At the time he orders this attack, the chief knows that he has the option of making the attack through an exterior cellar door and will have an engine company ready to make that move from the outside if the interior attack is unsuccessful.
The alert first-alarm chief recognizes that the success or failure of his initial strategy means the difference between holding a fire in a dwelling to a first alarm or resorting to multiple alarms. Therefore, he knows that he must quickly recognize any inadequacies of various company efforts and have some options that those companies can use to improve their attack on the fire.
In some cases, improvement may come from as simple an action as moving the position of a hose line a few feet. In heavy smoke, the crew may be unaware of a partition or other obstacle that is making the stream useless. Relocating the line a short distance away can sometimes result in a clean shot at the fire.
The chief officer learns by experience-some of it when he was a fire fighter-that after working hard to make entry and advance a line into a house or other building-well involved in fire, there comes a time when the hose crew becomes complacent about maintaining its position. Unless the engine company officer remains aggressive, the question of why the line is not continuing to advance will be left unanswered. However, this is an answer that the fireground commander must have and he must call for that answer.
Sometimes the answer is as simple as moving the line to hit the fire at a slightly different angle, as we noted. In other situations, the experienced chief officer needs only to “visit” with the hose crew, ask how things are going- and they get going. Then there are times when the line’s rate of water application is just not enough to knock down fire.
Chief needs information
First-alarm chiefs have a responsibility to encourage their company officers to keep informative communications open on the fireground and a company officer should immediately report the failure of his line to knock down fire.
Again, the chief officer has options. In some cases, the failure of the line to continue darkening down the fire may he the result of a lack of ventilat ion that has allowed a vast buildup of fire heat. In this case, the chief may select the option of increasing the amount of ventilation in the area. On the other hand, increasing ventilation may be impractical and the option to send in a second line will be chosen by the chief.
There is an axiom that when a hose line fails to darken down fire, either more water or more ventilation is needed.
The early use of options can be the salvation of the chiefs strategy, but how successfully the options are selected depends on the chief .officer’s ability to evaluate every segment of the fire attack and his accuracy in selecting the option that offers the best prospect for success. In any event, the chief must be ready to admit failure and try another approach.
Start of overhaul
As fire is extinguished, the companies start the overhaul process and the chief officer’s supervision concentrates on making certain that no hidden fire remains in the structure. All concealed spaces where fire may remain must be opened up. Ceilings must be pulled and walls opened where there is reason to suspect a trace of fire.
The chief officer must know how well trained and thorough his company officers are in overhaul procedures. Again, this is a situation where the chief can do a little on-the-job training with his companies when something unusual in overhauling is encountered.
At this stage of the fireground work, the chief should pay increased attention to the safety of his fire fighters. He has been concerned about safety from the initial response to the fire, but now his companies are engaged in the fireground operation that engenders an undue number of injuries. The experienced chief knows the reasons for this. The fire fighters are tired, the challenge of the fire that has kept them alert has gone, and there is a general feeling that the dangers are over.
The chief officer must exercise supervision to see that his company officers continue to observe all the safety rules for handling both power and hand tools. Those fire fighters who are taking a breather must be moved away from areas where others are opening up concealed spaces or pulling down structural members left dangling by the fire. Any opening in floors must be protected by a fire fighter stationed there or by erecting a barrier to prevent the unwary from falling to the floor below.
Salvage operations
As soon as possible during the fireground operation, the chief should consider the salvage problem. When the material exposed to water has high value, the chief should consider calling for a second alarm just to get enough people to spread salvage covers and do other salvage work. In most house fires, however, the limited manpower makes it necessary to give a salvage a low priority. As a result, salvage starts whenever fire fighters are freed from the other fireground duties by the extinguishment of the fire.
The chief must remember that salvage operations can reduce the potential fire loss and he should see that the most valuable property gets the first salvage efforts. When valuable jewelry, money, stock certificates, bonds or other valuables are uncovered during overhaul, the chief must make certain that departmental regulations are followed in safeguarding these valuables. Where no regulations or rules for handling valuables exist, the chief must make certain that the names of witnesses to the finding and safeguarding of the valuables are recorded. Generally, either the valuables are turned over to the owner in the presence of witnesses or they are turned over to the local police. Again, the chief should make certain that he has witnesses and also a receipt for the transfer.
The amount of salvage that is done depends on the available manpower and also on whether the cause of the fire has been determined. If the cause has not been determined, then the chief officer should control salvage operations so that the evidence needed by fire investigators is left undisturbed. This is particularly important where there is suspicion of arson. A room that has been swept clean during the salvage work leaves little to investigate except the common sense of those who permitted this to happen.
Relinquishing control
As his final action on the fireground, the chief in charge should formally turn over control of the property to the owner or the tenant. However, if further investigation of the fire is necessary because it is of suspicious origin, then termination of control of the property is left to the investigators.
In leaving, the chief has an opportunity to explain to the property owner or tenant the necessity for ventilation, which may have left a hole in a roof untouched by flame. The chief also should inform the occupant of security and other hazards-such as damaged electrical circuits that have been disconnected-that exist as a result of the fire.
The final conversation with the dwelling occupant can do much to leave a good impression of the fire department’s handling of the fire. The chief will find that the few minutes spent talking with the occupant can be time that is helpful both to the occupant and the fire departments public image.
