Technical Rescue Size-Up: Where to Start

Training Notebook ❘ bY MIKE GIROUX

If you have been in the fire service for some time, you should be familiar with two acronyms that have assisted you and your firefighting personnel with priorities and size-up issues at fires: COAL WAS WEALTH and RECEOVS.

• Systematic Size-up Reports for Structure Fires
• Sizing Up the Situation Before Arrival
• Planning for Successful Size-Up
• Joe Pronesti: Communications on the Fireground

Understanding the Acronyms

COAL WAS WEALTH is used in the fire service mostly by company officers and command staff. However, it is a beneficial tool for every unit and personnel member arriving on scene to help better size up the situation. All personnel must fully understand each letter of COAL WAS WEALTH and how they relate to the fire scene.

• Construction: What type of construction is the structure? Knowing this will help with tactics.
• Occupancy: Residential, commercial, industrial, and so on.
• Area: How big is the involved space, and what is the potential spread of the fire?
• Life hazards: Do we have life inside, and what are the hazards? This applies not only to the civilians but also to our firefighters. Look for placards, hazmat storage, or even bars on windows.
• Water: Do we have enough water, and are we going to have a water problem based on the area of fire consumption, number or lack of hydrants, and number of engines?
• Auxiliary systems: Are they operational or hindering us (sprinklers, standpipes, and so on)?
• Street conditions: Are the streets accessible for arriving units? If not, make decisions based on standard operating procedures or fire area involvement.
• Weather: What impact will it have on the scene, access, response time, and safety?
• Exposures: Adjacent buildings, radiant heat, and embers traveling to other buildings or structures.
• Apparatus and personnel: Do we have the right type of apparatus positioned in optimal locations, and are personnel trained to the correct level to handle this situation?
• Location: Confirm the exact location with street name and number. Establish a staging area, if needed, and identify your exposures.
• Time: Time of day. Know traffic patterns, how much light is left in the day, the need for additional lighting units, and so on.
• Height: The height of the building not only for establishing collapse zones but for situating your apparatus in the correct place.

The second acronym, RECEOVS, helps set your priorities on the fireground. It is very simple and basic and should be performed by everyone on the fire scene.

• Rescue: The life hazard, which takes number-one priority at all responses.
• Exposures: This applies not just to the exposures of the adjacent structures but also to the exposures inside the building.
• Confinement: Confine the fire. When possible, isolate to one particular area of the structure. Sometimes, it is much easier said than done.
• Extinguish: Put the fire out. Use whatever you have to, which could be water from the hose, foam, or any type of extinguishing agent from a can or system. Contrary to some beliefs, you cannot beat the fire out with a hook.
• Overhaul: Open the area and look for any type of extension.
• Ventilation: Vent when appropriate and needed.
• Salvage: Protect property in adjacent rooms or on floors. Objects such as pictures and family heirlooms are priceless to individuals experiencing a terrible event. Try your best to salvage those items for the family.

Both these acronyms are excellent when confronted with a building or house fire. The fire department responds to so many more emergencies than just fires; there are building and trench collapses, confined space incidents, and high-angle rope emergencies, among many other calls for help. When a technical rescue emergency occurs, how do we conduct the size-up? What are your tactics to set up your team or department’s priorities and start your incident action plan (IAP) for these incidents? For example, with a trench collapse, most people will relay the size-up with, “Unit X is on scene; we have a trench collapse with two people trapped inside, several people trying to gain entry into the trench at this time. We will advise.” However, once the first officer gets off the rig, he becomes swamped by workers telling him they must get in there—“Two workers are down in there, hurry, hurry, hurry!” At this point, the officer’s senses become overloaded, and he starts to bark random orders at his crew without having a game plan or some type of systematic approach.

Here, the officer should take a step back, evaluate the situation, and come up with a game plan. Again, this is easier said than done, but you must train your mind to do this.

Technical Rescue Acronym

Although we have acronyms for structure fires, we don’t have any for technical rescues. So, I have devised the acronym WHATS UP to help anyone arriving at a technical rescue. This acronym will help prioritize your needs and initiate your IAP. Very similar to COAL WAS WEALTH and RECEOVS, WHATS UP can be used by not only technical rescue companies but also the first-arriving unit on scene, regardless of if it is a tech rescue unit or not. I developed this acronym over several years and have used it in every type of technical rescue situation possible. It works for everything from trench rescue jobs to the most advanced confined space situation and all the other technical rescues in between. It is simple and easy to remember; on arrival at a technical rescue, I will approach the foreman or battalion chief (if he arrives first) and ask him about the priorities, and I start to get the game plan rolling.

• What do I have to size up? This could be a trench (length, width, depth, conditions, victims, and so on), high-angle rope (building or structure type, height, situation), or confined-space incident (vessel type, portal diameter, depth, width, height, configuration internal/ external, hazards). Also, add anything else you see that will play a role in the situation and how many victims are involved.
• Happened, happening, can happen. Look at the scene and predict possible events that created this incident. Next, look at what is currently happening and what could possibly happen if the situation is not changed for the better. For example, if you are at a trench incident, you were called because someone was trapped by a wall collapse. Looking at it, do you have a fissure that will further fail the wall, or did you have a slough-in that created an unsupported lip, which has the potential of collapse? Is the wall still collapsing? Did the shoring fail, and is it still failing?
• Actions needed immediately to mitigate the problem. If we look at a confined-space incident, the immediate actions we can take to help the victim include ventilation and retrieval; it may even be as simple as dropping a talk box to assess the individual and find out what happened. We may need to place a pump into the hole to dewater it. With swing-stage scaffolding, we would lock out/tag out or maybe secure a line to the victim. The situation will dictate your initial action.
• Time. Time has several different categories. The first is how long the victim has been in his situation; this will help you with your risk vs. benefit analysis. Next is the time of day. Is it close to rush hour and we need to shut down roads, or are we operating during midday? Is it close to dusk and we may need additional lighting, or is it early morning in the summer and light isn’t an issue? Next is the time of year. Are we operating during late fall or early winter, and we may need warmers for our personnel? We must also consider victims coming down with hypothermia and try to keep them warm when possible. If we are operating in the summer, we may need a rehab unit for fluid replacement. So, we must look at several things regarding time. Don’t get tunnel vision and focus only on your victim—your personnel are your most important resource. Make sure they are taken care of.
• Safety. We must identify the safety concerns for our personnel as well as the victims. When you think about safety, you think of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations. For example, if you are performing a confined space rescue, put in place atmospheric monitoring and retrieval (which needs to be a skill by all those on scene) prior to rescuers entering the space. If this is a trench rescue, place a ladder no more than 25 feet away from where the rescuers are working. If this is a high-angle rope rescue such as a “pick-off” with line transfer, look at the safety of how we will place the victim on the lines and how his weight will be distributed should we have a line failure.
• U (You). Do you have the training to perform this rescue? Do you need resources? Do you have the proper equipment designed for use for this type of rescue? If your answer is “no” to any of the above questions, are you able to acquire help or mutual aid from the county, another city, or a neighboring department? If you are dependent on a mutual-aid agreement, you must make sure their personnel are trained for this type of rescue and have the proper equipment to perform it safely.
  • Perform the rescue. If you have all the needed training and resources and you already performed the steps prior to this one, the only thing left is to perform the rescue. We all know that we not only need to have Plan A in place, we need a Plan B while working on Plan C and thinking about Plan D.

Over the years, I have followed these steps. Not only did it simplify my rescues, but it also set my priorities and started to formulate my plan or our IAP. This is by no means the only option for devising an IAP and setting your priorities for a technical rescue, but it does contain the three factors I need to hear: (1) It is simple to remember because everyone on scene asks “What’s up?”; (2) it is safe because it helps you secure the scene, platform, space, trench, and so on, prior to anyone entering; and (3) it’s proven because I have used it for years and have yet to see it not work for a technical rescue. (This is not to say that someday I may come across a rescue where it may not fully work, but so far it has not let me down.)

Putting WHATS UP to Work

Now that you know how the acronym works, let’s put it to the test at the scene of a confined space rescue (photo 1). I will give you how it was received at your firehouse through your dispatch system and then we will look at the scene when you first arrive. We will then walk through the acronym and plug all the information in the appropriate spots to see how it all fits together. The information you received through your critical information dispatch system (CIDS) is as follows:

• Confined space rescue.
• Location is Avenue A across from Street B.
• One victim down inside the space with no response for approximately 10 minutes.

For the most part, this may be all the information you get from your CIDS, and you will have to figure the rest out when you arrive. On your way to the scene, the first-due unit officer should be thinking about employing a tech rescue team if one is not already dispatched. The officer should also be thinking about how he wants to divide his team to get the most information on the situation as possible. This info should include sending one individual with an atmospheric monitor, if available on the unit, to where the permit is located. Most permits are located on the outside of the confined space, where the workers will be entering the space, provided that the space is permit required. If it isn’t, the firefighter will have to use his judgment and experience to figure out what has happened and is currently happening in the space.

While your personnel are reading the permit, put the atmospheric monitor in the space to get an initial reading to see what is going on in the atmosphere. As the first officer, the main purpose is for recon of the scene and to relay the information to the incoming units. After his personnel gets back to him regarding the permit information, they discover that hot work (welding repairs) was being done inside the vessel prior to the victim not responding. So now, the first officer can start using the WHATS UP acronym and relay this information to other units.

Correlate and transmit to the other units the following information:

W: “Unit X to incoming units, we have the following at Avenue A and Street B. We have a confined space with a vertical opening, approximately 3 feet by 2 feet, with a vertical drop of 15 feet. There was hot work being done, with one patient located on the bottom of the vessel unconscious at this time. We are performing atmospheric monitoring now, which shows high carbon monoxide levels.

H: We know that this person was doing hot work, and this has changed the atmosphere, which caused the victim to become unconscious. Happening now is the atmosphere continues to be changing for the worse. What can happen is the victim could go into respiratory arrest if we don’t change the atmosphere quickly.

A: The best thing that we can do for this individual is place a fan into the space and try to place the flex tubing over the individual at the bottom, if possible. If not, then try to place it as close to the victim as possible. This will hopefully change the atmosphere next to the victim quickly, but it may not change the atmosphere in the space for some time.

T: We know the victim has been down inside the space for 20 minutes now, and the time of day is around 1300 hours. It is early spring, so temperature is not a problem right now, and we will have enough daylight to work on the top of the vessel without additional lights.

S: We know that, with confined space, we must perform atmospheric monitoring, which is occurring now, and we must document everything. One firefighter on the first unit, who started monitoring, is staying by the space with paperwork to document and comms system. We also know that in the 29 CFR 1910.249 standard, we must have retrieval in place for every rescuer and the victim. This could be a belay line, which can be converted into a mechanical advantage system to haul a rescuer or victim out of the space should something occur that was not planned. Other things to consider are fresh air breathing apparatus for victim and rescuers and rigging your rope systems with some type of high point.

U: You know that your department has a tech rescue response team, and they all have had training in several tech rescue disciplines including confined space. Your department also has several other units that are support companies when dealing with these types of incidents, so they are also called to the scene.

P: All units are on the scene. Rigging is complete, and the first rescuer is ready to enter the space. It has been only 12 minutes since the first unit was on scene, and the first rescuer is being lowered into the space.

This is just one technical rescue scene that we plugged into our acronym, and you can see it works well when setting up your priorities and starting your IAP. You can also use this acronym with any type of tech rescue situation. I have used it for years, and it has yet to fail me. This will most certainly help you focus on what needs to be done and in what order. The one thing that will really help you is to understand your OSHA regulations, which will ensure that safety will not be overlooked.

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MIKE GIROUX is a 23-year veteran of and a lieutenant with the Yonkers (NY) Fire Department, mostly working in special operations. He is a nationally certified fire officer and fire instructor and is responsible for all technical rescue and personal escape training in Yonkers. He has taught confined space, structural rope rescue, and collapse shoring throughout the country.