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RIT/FAST Teams
I was reading an article today about the Kansas City Fire Department RIT Team. It talked about how they had lost a chief during a large area search and that after the incident they developed what they now call as the L.A.S.T system which stands for Large Area Search Team. It is a system their RIT team uses in case of open area searches such as warehouses.
My question is does anyone know of or themselves have a RIT/Fast team that has a specialized system such as Kansas City or other systems that their RIT/Fast teams have developed, or acquired for different situations on the fire ground?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Hatfield on
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Our department uses the RIT team system, but as far as anything in a large area such as a forest or anything like that we don't have anything in place. When you say they lost a chief, was there no radio contact ? Our department deals with Forest fires and it is standard to have radio and 2 way GPS for all teams.
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Permalink Reply by Sparky3317 on
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The incident was a commercial structure fire. They had heavy smoke in the building and when they called the evacuation of the building the chief got disoriented and couldnt find his way out. According to the article they were having radio issues and the RIT teams that went into find the chief kept running out of air and had to keep backing out. By the time they got to him it was to late and he was pronounced at a local hospital. The incident took place back in 1999 and can be found in the first issue of Urban Firefighter Magazine for full details. So that is why they came up with the L.A.S.T system.
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Permalink Reply by Dave on
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Phoenix did a study on this, search the results. Informative reading and a lot was learnt. Just to refresh my memory, AVG ff ran out of air 16.5 minute, took the rit team and AVG 22 minutes to find the down member.
We train on open searches with ropes and TIC.
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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Joshua,
Large Area Search training is a training technique and not a designated team. Everyone should be trained on large area search if you have occupancies that require interior operations in a large area. Otherwise, firefighters can and will get into trouble when operating inside a large commercial occupancy like a school, church, or a department store.
This really has nothing to do with RIT except that RIT should be trained in it as well.
FETC
www.fetcservices.com
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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I agree with FETC.
Such a search procedure is a skill that should be trained on where all members are capable of doing such a search.
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FETC, I understand what your saying about all firefighters being trained in large area searches.
The L.A.S.T system of Kansas City FD is a RIT operational technique in which the RIT team uses to operate for finding down firefighters in large commercial occupancies.
It is not a seperate team.
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Permalink Reply by John Karl Ambrusch, III on
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In my county, it'd think it would be somewhat difficult to do simply because of the vast mutual aid agreements. That's if you're referring to R.I.T. proper. There are other teams like our USAR that can perform what it sounds like you're getting at, but L.A.R.T. and R.I.T. are two totally separate monsters with two totally different focuses.
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Joshua, I read the article and they have blended a large area search training class using main line, tethers and smaller ropes with a progressive RIT personal functional assignment. (who carries what, who does what, etc. and made a policy on it. To be honest this is how RIT would have to be done in a large area.
Our RIT has positional assignments just like theirs on every fire. If we were to go in for a guy in a large commercial area, we would have to use our LAS training along with our functional RIT assignments to get the job done.
KCFD just packaged the training as LAS - RIT.
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