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Roof Collapse: Is Your RIT Ready?
Firefighters Injured in Los Angeles Church Fire
Two were caught in a roof collapse and a third was shocked by a nearby power line
Fireground and Mayday Audio:
What is the staffing of companies given the rapid intervention assignment in your area and on the first alarm? If not on the first alarm, why?
Can companies assigned to the RIT, RIC or FAST your fireground realistically be expected to handle more than one downed or missing firefighter?
As the fireground incident grows, does your Incident Commander request additional companies to be assigned as a RIT, RIC or FAST?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by captnjak on
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One or two firefighters will not be enough in many (most?) cases.
Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't happen. Counting on staying lucky is bad policy.
Taking firefighters away from supression, search and ventilation for RIT is bad policy.
I'll repeat what I said earlier: Hoping for the best and then winging it is a bad idea.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Frenzel on
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one or two not enough to carry out another ff?; or do you mean one or two not enough to find them, or not enough for an interior attack?
And I never sayd that we just count on staying lucky, but, and I repeat myself as well, any ff at our station and fd is trained to act as RIT - it just wasn't necessary to do so in the past years.
Or let me ask you like this: Would you constantly staff a unit, which never does get work on scene? We remain flexible by all the ff being able to do that job. And with our limited station crew of sth around 20 we staff the 28 cars and trucks of our station. And I also said more than once that we have quite a manpower on scene, already at the 1st alarm even if the fire isn't confirmed yet. And if it is confirmed and more than the everyday small fire, then we are even more units and firefighters on scene, many of them just being on standby, so in case of RIT we wouldn't necessarily take ff away from other jobs, but the ones on standby get into action.
Just a small example: last week had a reported fire nearby my house: The (paid / full time) FD responded with Chief, Command, 2 Engines and the Tower Ladder, the Volunteer FD responded with two companies, which means 2 Engines, 1 Tanker, 1 Hose truck and 2 Crew vans, the PD responded with 2 patrol cars from the state police and 3 vans from the Riot Police, the EMS with 4 Ambulances, 1 Transport Ambulance, 1 Emergency doctor and 1 EMS Chief - all that as 1st alarm, and in the end there wasn't a fire at all. We don't have to take anyone away from thei duty on scene, but we would be able to do so as well. Ventilation doesn't take much of the manpower: just 2 to 3 ff, and all of them don't really do much except from setting up the ventilation unit and open smoke ventilation hatches or windows...
So what is "hoping to stay lucky" for you when we DO have ff which can get someone out when necessary?
And keep in mind: things work different over here. Thus we don't send out a heavy rescue truck to a fire alarm or a 'normal' structure fire (actually that's not just us but all but one German FD act like this, not sending out a Heavy Rescue Truck)
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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Paul,
I think I follow what you are saying here, but you are trying to incorporate a lot of information.
What the other guys are saying is when it comes to RIT, there is a dedicated company assigned that role. However, even RIT can vary significantly over here depending upon dept, area, and staffing. For most depts, you typically see a similar response like you may have, but the difference is there is a seperate crew assigned RIT. It sounds like you may already be doing that, such as utilizing the "standby" personnel, and that is essentially how it is done in most depts over here.
In most cases, any FF is able to do RIT. How the duty is assigned can vary. For us, it would be the third due engine company. For our neighboring dept, the IC will assign RIT to an outside dept providing mutual aid etc. So essentially anyone can do RIT, at one incident, the engine company assigned RIT for that operation, could be assigned fire attack the next incident.
What RIT can do on a scene also can vary. For us, we incorporate a "working RIT", where the members can perform forcible entry, ladder the structure, do utility control, etc. The don't necessarily have to remain idle, but they should be ready to stop a task to perform a RIT operation if needed.It seems like what you are describing more is what we would call "2 in 2 out" over here, which would be the minimum to initiate an offensive fire attack without confirmed victims. When you say you have more companies coming in and they do "standby", essentially that is the same thing, except most places here, the crew assigned RIT knows that is their role. So if the RIT crew can set up and be ready to deploy, but aren't utilized in other fireground activities like manning a backup line or performing vent, etc.
When it does come to an actual RIT incident though, there is going to be a lot of resources used and I think that is part of what the other guys are trying to say to you. A rescue of a downed FF can be difficult and time consuming and can eat up staffing to get a FF out, depending on their circumstance. At the same time, the fireground operations still have to continue, the fire still needs to be fought and perhaps more agreesively considering the RIT operation. This means it is going to take more staffing and additional alarms. I think that is what some of the other guys are saying a bit. I could be off, but just how I'm reading things right now.
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ah okay then I understand that, so your RIT crew also do some jobs on scene like to ladder the structure. To me it first sounded like they'd do nothing else than RIT work itself.
Yeah seems like they and I ran a little bit into different directions with our arguments ^^
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