BY TOM BRENNAN
THE FIRST-ARRIVING FIREFIGHTERS MUST LEARN HOW TO COMMUNICATE AT A STRUCTURE FIRE IN A CALM AND INFORMATIVE MANNER.
Well, another month has gone by. I hope you are all taking the days one at a time instead of “gulps” like air at a newly broken window.
We were speaking of a few things that you should keep in your gun belt of tactics that will help your routine firefighting efforts without the pain and loss of time that thinking a new thought takes. We call this Keeping It Simple Stupid (K-I-S-S).
“Do I break this window or not?” How many of you faced that dilemma? The simple and quickly decided answer comes from where you are and what you are doing. If you are outside the building and merely causing an opening to the inside, you’d better get more information. Now the “Theory of Horizontal Ventilation” from the book comes into play for sure. But if you are part of the primary search team, it is a different story. If you come upon a window while crawling along a wall, and you feel like you want to break it, go ahead. There are two follow-up things that come into play here. First, if breaking that window will help you search another foot or more, go ahead. Second, we will sure talk about it later at the unit critique in the street as hose is being loaded.
What are the benefits of your breaking that window? Many! You calm yourself down, the enclosure gets lighter and cooler, the poisons rise a little off the floor, the intensity lessens, and the people you are looking for have a little more time for you to find them. If the team of outside people (Alphabet people) are on their toes, they will see the window break. They will know exactly where you are because only firefighters break windows from the inside of the building during extinguishment. If you are in a two-story building-garden apartment, private dwelling, condominium, or motel-you just found your second means of egress. All you have to find to help you is gravity!
Get your teams to communicate effectively, not romantically. The first-arriving firefighters must learn how to communicate at a structure fire in a calm and informative manner. Work hard at your own discipline, and help others to wipe out the radio nonsense you hear today.
“We have a structure fire within a three-story frame building that appears to be above the second floor and in the rear of the building. Fill the assignment.” Great-everyone knows what you know!
“Smoke showin’ ” and “Be informed that we have fire in a building” tell us nothing. In fact, the transmitter hasn’t got a logical process going yet, either. The worst is “Whoa, dispatch. We have a building here fully involved! We are stretchin’ in!” Talk about those lessons at drill for awhile.
Avoid the embarrassment of ordering additional help (second alarm, mutual aid) for a “nickel’s” worth of fire. See what you really have first. Sometimes the ride to the fire is filled with additional information: “PD on the scene and have fire in the rear of ellipse.” Or, you watch a “smudge” of smoke on the horizon for the entire two-minute response, and your hand is soaked around the radio transmitter-you know what you are going to say for blocks.
Well, a burning convertible car roof sure looks like a shaft fire from a few blocks away, and garbage dumpsters on fire, hidden from your view, reflect their flame into large areas. It happened to me, and it sure is embarrassing.
Get water on it! This K-I-S-S rule goes hand in hand with the one above. Don’t pull the panic rope until you get water on the fire. It may go out! The second benefit of this rule is it can help when you have what you believe are multiple victims in need of rescue and you have only two firefighters. Get water on the fire. You may save them all at once!
Where do I force this damn thing? If you are worth your “truck” salt, have this question in mind at every commercial structure fire (the engine should also) if you are looking for ease of entry and a smooth and orderly primary search and hoseline stretch ellipse if you are concerned with where the victims may be located ellipse if you are looking for a guaranteed path to the fire location to be unobstructed. If those are the problems, you need another K-I-S-S answer: Go the way the occupant goes! No matter where occupants are in the building or where the fire is, you can bet on a clear path from the fire or the occupants to the main occupant entrance.
Well, that’s enough K-I-S-Sing for one session. See ya next time.
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 Unplugged (Fire Engineering/FDIC, 1999).
