Truck placement on scene.....

This is a big problem at alot of Dept's. Lets hear some stories and idea's way's to solve problems and train to be more prepaired upon arrival.

We got toned to a 2story wood frame multi fam house for fire alarm. This house is on the corner of a main road and a side street with a stone wall lining the lot. the driveway was off the side street. the engine first on scene pulled onto the side street and stopped now blocking all of the side street. the police car had pulled up prior to engine and parked on the street after the driveway. Now here comes the ladder with now no place to park ends up parked on the main road before the side street. Ok i understand the ladder is a 100' stick but that doesn't mean you can park down the street. lucky for the home owner it was a false alarm because when IC who was driving the engine was in the house If there was a true emergancy there is no IC outside doing a 360 plus instead of setting up lines, raising ladders, and starting a search they would have been moving trucks into the right places so they could actually use them. Not only would that cause a huge cluster but look like a bunch of civilians just trying to be heros. Or is that all they are when they don't show up to any of the training because the Chief say's they don't have to because they're his kids. But that's a whole other topic in it self haha.

Lets hear some stories, ideas, and resolutions.

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Permalink Reply by Duane on January 28, 2010 at 8:48am

It is important for us as firefighters to understand the concept and implentation of incident preplanning. There are numerous instances of situations such as this occurring not only in the voluteer sectors but in paid fire departments as well. We need to ensure that our Lieutenants, Captains, Chiefs and Police are educated in our apparatus and the parameters each requires for its service. My department identifies areas where our ladder may have problems getting into and work out a plan well in advance of an incident to prepare ourselves in the event we have a problem. This means we have to take the engine and the ladder and our support vehicles (i.e. IC, Rescue, Police, etc.) to the potential location and simulate a response setup. This does take time and resources to do that may interfere with normal everyday operations. However, incident preplanning must take precedence and be allowed to be scheduled into our daily activities. There has been many times where without the preplan in place we would have been "caught with our pants down" and caused embarrassment to our department. Next time you're out on a "false alarm" or a "supper run", take the time to park the apparatus as if you were responding to a call. Quiz each other on response tasks, apparatus proper placements, law enforcement involvement, etc. By keeping up to date with our skills, knowledge and expertise, we will prevent the unthinkable from happening to us and allow us to get home safely. Incident preplanning is small part of the Life safety initiative- everyone goes home. Make sure we take our safety seriously, our lives depend on it.

Duane E. Kaitschuck, FFII/NREMT-B