BY ALAN BRUNACINI
Last month in our continuing series on situation evaluation (standard command function number two), we looked at a fairly complete list of critical fireground factors. The list was arranged in major categories that are the result of a lifetime of study, teaching, and trying to figure out what are the basic elements that must be evaluated and reacted to while we are conducting firefighting and incident command operations.
The size-up list is very basic, simple. Although it has almost a hundred items listed, those items make up the basic list of people, places, and things we must somehow evaluate and deal with when engaged in the hazard zone management business of our profession.
I realize that reading the July edition list probably did not keep you riveted to your seat in breathless anticipation of considering the next scintillating fireground factor. A major challenge for us is to study many times and learn a lot of really dull stuff that becomes the knowledge and skill foundation for doing what can quickly become really exciting (i.e., death defying) operational action. That action typically occurs in a place that will instantly conduct a toxic/thermal/collapse test on how well we remember and react to the lessons we should have learned back in “dull school.”
Another really mundane part of managing and making sense of the critical factor list is that (like most really critical stuff) the details, current reality, and latest developments that relate to the items on the list keep changing. Just about when you think you have mastered an understanding about that listed item, kaboom, some guy 500 miles away says something, learns something, or tests something new, and we are off to the unlearning/relearning races. These changes range from minor tune-ups to major overhauls of what we thought we knew about that item.
I guess that our ability and willingness to continually make these adjustments in our personal-professional knowledge base is what staying current really means. Always trying to stay up becomes more of a challenge the longer we go and the older we get simply because we have a lot of stuff loaded into our mental files. Some days, it seems that most of it is in a state of flux. Today, there is so much knowledge sailing around our industry, we had better be dividing our time between loading new information and revising old stuff to somehow stay current—it makes an old guy’s head (like mine) hurt.
A major challenge of increasing our ability to use the critical factor list is to first understand the details and dynamics of each of the factors and then to be able to connect the separate items into a condition that includes a combination of factors. Very few of the individual fireground conditions on the July list occur by themselves, and a major size-up function is to evaluate how the factors “mix” together to create a major condition—then the incident commander (IC) and the command team must develop and the troops must extend a response that matches and overpowers that condition. That evaluate-decide-order/act process becomes the foundation of what local, in-the-street incident command and operational action really mean.
There is currently a set of conditions (and the strategic reactions that go with those conditions) that I read, hear, and talk about that is troubling to me: Based on current tactical conditions, are we now correctly developing a safe and effective place on the fireground where offensive operations end and defensive action begins?
A major command-and-control role of the IC is to continually evaluate tactical conditions and then determine if operating companies should be positioned inside or outside the hazard zone. Although this is very basic and straightforward, it is one of the most challenging and important functions an IC must do, simply because that (offensive or defensive) strategic decision becomes the most absolutely critical basic operating position element in firefighter safety and survival. As we have said in this column (about 150 times), bad toxic/thermal/collapse things happen to the troops when they are in offensive positions under defensive conditions.
This is what is currently troubling me. Every fire test I read about seems to indicate that modern contents burn hotter/quicker (to say the least). The modern stuff is tested and then compared with “legacy” contents. The legacy furnishings burn within the easygoing, gradually increasing profile of the traditional time-temperature curve. Flashover occurs at the 20- to 25-minute range. Modern contents create an almost vertical time-temperature curve with flashover happening at the three- to five-minute (!) range.
Those same tests of modern vs. legacy building construction components reflect the same difference in collapse times as the contents tests. Under active fire conditions, modern lightweight construction, particularly where it is directly exposed to fire conditions (no covering like drywall), is just about to fail when we extend interior operations. Given our typical response and setup times, we can very quickly become a flashover-collapse sandwich.
A major command function of the IC is to separate the hazard zone workers from defensive conditions. Given that responsibility and the current realities of rational/scientific testing done by experienced and very street-smart fire scientists, it seems to me that we must now revise the timing we have traditionally applied to strategic (offensive/defensive) decision making to reflect the new quicker flashover/collapse times.
What this means in very practical terms is that we must assume that any tactical situation that involves modern contents and lightweight construction must be approached on our arrival as an actual or soon-to-become defensive situation. When we determine that conditions are late-stage offensive or early-stage defensive, such a situation requires very rapid initial exterior hoseline application (preferably with a large-caliber fire stream) followed by a well-evaluated and commanded interior attack.
I realize that this change is a major shift in our traditional attack approach. These modern changes require that we recalibrate our “fireground clock.” We must accelerate the timing of when we can expect defensive conditions to arrive on the fireground. If we cannot make such an adjustment, modern tactical conditions will continue to injure and kill us. Being able to first identify the presence of critical defensive factors and then quickly reacting to those conditions are now major responsibilities of the entire operations and command team.
Defensive conditions that occur early based on modern contents and construction are just as deadly as the old-time evolution of defensive that took half the night to eventually involve all the concealed places and finally burn out the roof and send a clear “it is now defensive!” message. Defensive is defensive, no matter if it arrives in the beginning, middle, or end of the event. The only way we can survive those conditions is not to get it on us and apply water from behind a barrier or from a distance until we can extinguish it down to an offensive size.
● Retired Chief ALAN BRUNACINI is a fire service author and speaker. He and his sons own the quarterly fire service magazine BSHIFTER.com and the Blue Card hazard zone training and certification system. He can be reached at [email protected].
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