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Ten Minutes in the Street: "On-scene with a whole lot of Fire Showin"
You could see the glow blocks away, but you waited until you arrived on scene and transmitted a working fire. Actually, you’re words were something to the effect of……
Well anyways, you’ve arrived and you have Heavy Fire evident on numerous floors and extending. You have escalating exposure issues, a rapidly expanding and developing fire with what appears to be lots of fire load in a very old building. If that wasn’t enough, you’ve got the balance of the responding alarm assignment heading your way and fast. You are either the first-due engine company officer or the first-due command officer. (You pick)
In either case, You are the incident commander.
• The building is and L-Shaped structure, circa 1925, with a brick construction.
• You determine construction type
• It’s sized about 80 ft x 120 feet (excluding the L-extension).
• The building is four stories in height.
• It has been vacant for an extended period of time
• It was scheduled to undergo renovation into condominiums.
We’re going to focus our time in the street onto the areas of incident command, preparing for extended operations and developing an incident action plan (IAP).
Here are the simple things to start your tactical gears grinding;
• What is the main goal of your initial IAP?
• What needs to be determined First?
• What are the first series of Strategic Objectives and Assignments?
• What would be the first series of Tactical Level Assignments be?
• What are the realistic resource needs required for this incident?
• What’s your incident management organizational structure going to look like?
• Assuming the degree of fire present now upon your arrival, what do you expect the required fire flow to be sixty minutes from now?
• What are the safety issues that you’re planning for?
• What are you going to do about the exposures?
• When confronted with a fire of this magnitude, what do you think are some of the major considerations that a large scale fire might involve?
Ok, this may be a “typical” fire to you, or it might be one of those career incidents that only come once in a great while. In any event, you’re in the street, you are in charge and there are companies calling you requesting assignments. Oh, by the way, the neighbors are beginning to be drawn to your vehicle, all looking for an immediate answer and resources to keep their homes (exposures) from being part of this “Really Big Fire”. Hey, did you remember to put more ICS forms in the book before you left quarters?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Christopher J. Naum, SFPE on
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Thanks for taking the time to share....
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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Local option / resources available but I kept it real, as he called this thread "10 minutes in the Street".
Another typical downfall is getting crazy and telling a dispatcher to skip alarms. If anyobody is skipping and striking an automatic four alarms is setting themselves up for failure from mass chaos when all four alarms arrive together...
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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Easy answer to this one - designate a Level II staging area, have the additional alarms report there, and move apparatus from the Staging Area to the scene as needed.
It works unless the company officers are completely undisciplined, in which case you have bigger problems that just making tactical assignments.
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Permalink Reply by Michael C. Harrison on
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Here are the simple things to start your tactical gears grinding;
• What is the main goal of your initial IAP? Extinguishment
• What needs to be determined First?Life Hazard
• What are the first series of Strategic Objectives and Assignments?Extinguishment /Life Hazard
• What would be the first series of Tactical Level Assignments be?Standard Operating Procedure (1st Engine to the front ; 2nd Engine to the rear ; 3rd Engine pick up 1st Engines hydrant ; 4th Engine pick up 2nd Engines hydrant ; 5th Engine lay-out from an independent hydrant and advance a line to the front for the RIC ; 1st Truck to the front ; 2nd Truck to the rear ; 3rd Truck RIC ; Rescue Squad to the front
• What are the realistic resource needs required for this incident?kind of a trick question...not exactly sure what you are looking for
• What’s your incident management organizational structure going to look like?Incident Commander/Operations (may or may not be the same person) . Attack Group . Vent Group . Rescue Group . RIC Group . EMS Group
• Assuming the degree of fire present now upon your arrival, what do you expect the required fire flow to be sixty minutes from now?0
• What are the safety issues that you’re planning for?kind of another trick question
• What are you going to do about the exposures?send Companies to check them
• When confronted with a fire of this magnitude, what do you think are some of the major considerations that a large scale fire might involve?additional alarm
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Yes Ben I used Level II staging in my reply, yes it does work. Many department's use it so in-frequently that it is unpracticed or just forgotten.
In past experiences of hearing other good officers jump alarms, dispatch was overwhelmed as well. I work out of a mutual aid system that tones 80+ towns and trying to tone 20-30 companies to one incident (at once) is a nightmare radio scenario for mantaining the dispatch frequency for other emergencies in the geographical repeater system.
Toning, toning on mutliple repeater sites, heck some towns get three tones for the single message, then all those trucks trying to sign on responding, saying they are on scene, etc.
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Sorry, I missed the reference in your first post.
I guess I'm spoiled...we use Level I staging for everyone except the first-due engine, first-due medic (if an EMS call), and the Battalion Chief on every call.
We use Level II staging infrequently, but we use it when indicated.
We have two dispatch centers dispatching for seven fire-rescue departments, one fire-rescue-EMS department, one ARFF department, and one EMS system. Radio channels include two fire and one EMS dispatch channels, 15 tac channels, and a variety of specialty channels such as 2 Major Incident/Interoperability channels, a Ground-to-Air (LZ only) channel, and a repeated, multichannel statewide mutual aid/disaster system with numerous channels and repeated links from anywhere in the state to the state EOC.
We still occasionally talk over each other, though by what you indicated, my area has it pretty good.
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You need a Vent Group with three floors of fire vented out the front windows?
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Permalink Reply by Smoke Eater on
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This is surround and drown from the get go. Definately need aerial devices and master streams flowing. Exposure protection is a huge issue as we have already seen. Have dispatch send PD for crowd control. Use master stream to clear crowd util PD arrives (sorry, couldn't resist that one...LOL). As far as the exposure that is currently taking off on the Brovo side, we would have to call for mutual aid, full response, and have them take on that fire. Something like this would turn into a huge cluster ---- around here. My county's Chiefs all think they are the Chief for the whole county. I would like to do a more detailed analysis of this but I'm low on time and energy.
Stay safe everyone!!!
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looks like that's what I wrote
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Looks pretty well ventilated without the vent group to me.
Those firefighters might be better employed somewhere else...searching the tenable parts of the building or setting up for the pending ladder pipe operations...just sayin'.
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I wouldn't worry about venting because I don't think anyone should be going in on this one. Like Ben said, fire blowing out of all possible windows? It's "hell" in there. Primary concern should be crowd control and protecting exposures. This one is defensive from the get go.
Stay safe!!!!
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Ben,
I don't recall saying this wasn't vented.
And our trucks (Vent Group) force doors, throw ladders, and do roof work along with searching......just sayin.
But I'm sure that since I didn't label them as Forcible Entry/Ladder/Roof/Search Group.....my line of thinking is the same line of thinking in Charleston (or elsewhere) that got people killed......hope I didn't beat ya to the punch
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