Yes, it's nice to have a ladder but in this situation it was for the wrong reason and usage. The roof is assembled in trusses where if one members gives way then the rest fall like dominos. We try to minimize having firefighters on the roof if theres fire through the roof or is "spongie"/soft. I would prefer a tower ladder, so this way theres a safe platform. Also, with the houses being one and half story, there's no problem with getting to the hot spots with pike poles/hooks and water streams.

If these structures were two story or more, then yes they can take a ladder and ladder all four sides.

FAST teams seem to take away from common sense and the basics of firefighting. There's been too many situations and testing where it can take a FAST team an average of 10 to 20 minutes to get the firefighter out if trapped or lost. Question is, will that firefighter still be alive and salvagable?

Does your fire department practice FAST/RIT operations? If so, what are the procedures?

Hi Timothy,

Even if is was a bad idea, I think we can use this case for demonstration of organisation problem. On the fire ground, thing happened quickly. If I see I need a nozzle, I must not have to search it for minutes: I open the door of the "box", pick up the nozzle and that's it. You can see how it's easy to break an organisation, only by changing the location of a tool: you will see the guy opening tghe door and stay "paralyzed" in front of the empty box. In half of a second, the entire world is falling over him.

In that case, we mus perfectly know were OUR things are.

The A team work perfectly when the A chief give order to A team, the B team work perfectly when B chief give order to B team. If team need to work together, if A team need some tool from B team, OK: A guys ask A chief, A chief ask B chief and B chief give order. That's the way things must be done. Here the questions are:
- Did the FATS guy had a higer rank than you?
- Did the organisation of the Fireservice, descrive the FAST can give order to attack team?
- What was the opinion of your chief?

From my personnel opinion, I would have replied to the FAST guy "Who are you? I receive order only from my chief, and you are not my chief". :)

Best regards
Pierre-Louis

Concerning the fact we have FATS/RIT or not, first answer can be "No, we don't have". Maybe this answer is disturbing, but I've another one, more disturbing "We don't have, because we don't need". :)

In fact, for years I'm studying US FF way of doing, and try to understand why European way of doing is so different. I just discover, a few month ago that the reason were not technics, ventilation, kind of nozzle and so on, but the fact that the global approach is very different.

We can make the comparison with vehicule. With a vehicule you can go from one place to an other. With all to tools we have, we can fight the fire. That's a goal, needing actions and we perform action for this goal.
If you tell me "do you wear seat belt?" and my answer is NO. You will probably think I'm not "safe". But if I ask you "do you wear a helmet when using your vehicule?" you will answer NO, and maybe I'll think you are not safe. But we are all safe. Why? Because you use a car, and I use a motorcyle. :)

For firefighting, this is the same problem; we both fight the fire but with a different approach. So you need ventilation, you need "roofer", you need FATS and RIT. We don't need that. We need fog nozzle with many fog technics and we use them during many actions, and especially at some times when you would not use nozzle.
In fact you fight the fire with a "small" use of many tools, and we fight the fire with "many different use" of a small amount of tools. The phylosophy is different.

Today, US FF face problems not because the way of fighting fire is not good. It's good on both side. US FF face a budget problem as using many tools need to buy them. So the decrease of budget will have an impact on the number of tools, and this impact is more important for you, than for European FF. Also, by using many tools you need many team and face a problem of organisation. So you need ICS, and so on. We don't need that as we fight with smallest team, but we need to have team with a higher level of efficiency.

Best regards
Pierre-Louis