A San Francisco apartment fire garnered a lot of attention from the customers about where the water was. Take this misunderstanding and turn it into a list of 'What if..." drills.



An apartment fire in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood became a short video sensation as it captured what appeared to be a delay in getting water onto the seat of the fire. As usual most comments about the firefighting, from civilians and firefighters, focused on their ignorance and our blundering attempt to educate. The fire and similar ones afterward give us a number of subjects to use in this month's training prompt.
Stairway Collapse During Bronx Apartment Fire
Buffalo Firefighters Escape Potentially Explosive Fire


We posed questions on Facebook asking 1. How many reasons can you list of reasons why the interior attack may be delayed? and 2. When was the last time you trained on one of them? Here are some of the replies and other reasons in three simple categories that should give you plenty to work with.

Engine Company
Pump failure
Defective or dead hydrant
Burst length
Stretched short/too much
Inexperienced/excitable driver
Obstructed or defective standpipe riser
Obstruction in the nozzle
Occupants/victims in path of nozzleteam

Ladder Company
Difficulty forcing entry
Multiple doors to force
Scissor gates
Hoarding/Collyer mansion conditions
Booby traps

Fireground Communication
Fire has possession of interior hall and/or stairway
Obvious rescues
Interior collapse
Holes in the floor
Secondary fire or fire in other locations
Understaffed companies
Injured members

How many additional reasons can you think of that would cause a delay in getting water on the fire? Think about the ones that apply to your area and operations and discuss how your members would:
1. Identify the problem
2. Communicate the problem
3. Fix the problem.

Read more of Backstep Firefighter and others at FireEMSBlogs.com.

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If your going external, just use this.
Playing off the question "where's the water?' is simply a headline for this post, taken from the audible comments in the attached video. A headline, a teaser, something to attract your attention and lead you to read further. The post is meant for readers to, as written out, consider what would cause a delay in the engine company attacking the fire. Looking at the various reasons listed, as well as figuring ones from a reader's own personal experience, can provide training opportunities.

The 21 reasons listed between the post and reader comments should give an inquiring reader a subject to discuss and train with other members of his department on. Or one could go back to the usual interactive swap meet of last word posts and such. The reasons listed are not intended to out-sleuth the SFFD incident commanders, but are combined with the video - and two other news stories - to stimulate the training and discussion. We all should agree that the best time to figure out the solutions to the possible reasons is well before the alarm is struck.

Bill Carey
I think you missed this... at the end of HappyMedics post

Justin Schorr
SFFD E51
First, I hate to be called out. When I comment its not personal. I believe I respected the members of the SFFD severals times by writing IT COULD HAPPEN TO ANYONE AND HAS HAPPENED TO ME why, because mistakes happen in the fire service. But we need to use them as lessons so they don't happen again.

As far as the size of my department. its kind of like my.... its not the biggest or the best but it gets the job done. My company runs about 300 calls a year. But like SFFD we fight fire and it only takes one to hurt you. Like the SFFD we make mistakes and like the SFFD we do the best we can with what we have. If this video was of Belvedere, (my company), NYC, or some dirt water company in nowhereville tihe responses would be the same. Its not about the SFFD it was about the situation pure and simple.

As far as construction goes I know SFFD has probelms with houses that appear to be 1 story in front but can be 3 stories in the back. Thats the mistake Imade with Ratings.
you forgot *crew hooks hose to hydrant but other end does not get hooked to truck*.... LMAO.... then everyone leaves... ya there was some trouble over that ( maybe that falls under excitable ppl..???)
i am REALLY anti - monitor. (although that ones kinda cool) huge waste of water i think... which is an issue for us because we usually just have aport a tank and tanker shuttle. sometimes hydrant but the flow and pressure is often not enough (we have to relay pump water anyway)................... or the hydrant is broken but no one wants to tell fire dept.... NICE. lol. and dont want us to service test cause it causes disturbance in town water (LMFAO)... silly
Want to be really anti-monitor

On Thursday, the department demonstrated its new Hytrans Fire System, which can suck 12,000 gallons of water per minute from the bay, and then pump it through hoses to a fire as far as six miles away. The system cost $4.7 million for the hardware, alone......

http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/topics/new-firefighting-tool...

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