I was in Johannesburg lecturing at a conference when a firefighter came up to me. “Paul, all the text books on fire-fighting tactics seem to take it for granted that there is going to be adequate resources and staffing on-scene at every structure fire. Furthermore, just about all of the standard operating procedures I have seen are written for staffing of five and above. In our little town we will get three firefighters responding to a structure fire on a single engine and they will be there for around 30 minutes before aid arrives from surrounding districts. Believe me when I say, things aren’t going to improve in this respect. How should we approach fires? How can we base our documented guidelines (SOPs) that you talk of on a common ‘risk based approach?”

The stark reality of limited staffing and fire-ground resources sometimes means an initial response of firefighters is restricted to a three-person crew. Further still, in some rural areas it is common for this crew to be alone on-scene, without immediate support or back up for quite sometime. It is surprising perhaps that the three person crew is a ‘standard’ response in many parts of the globe, including parts of rural and even urban USA. One thing is certain and that is adequate crewing standards should always be hotly pursued through labor relations where possible. Past staffing studies clearly demonstrate that critical tasking on the primary and secondary response to a structure fire (and a wide range of other incident types) is dramatically affected where staffing is inadequate. Key tasks just don’t get carried out and firefighters are sometimes morally forced into situations where their safety is recklessly compromised.

However, where there are three-person crews operating at fires then we must surely offer clear risk-based guidelines from a safety perspective. With this in mind, the concept of 'quick-water' attack using ‘3D Firefighting’ techniques to conserve and maximize the limited water supply available on the first arriving engine is a strategy that has gained enormous popularity with fire departments that respond with limited resources.

The Critical Tasking Performance Index (CTPI) demonstrates 3-person crews are only able to guarantee 23% of the critical tasks necessary on arrival at a structure fire. An initial response of at least 10-14 firefighters must be assembled on-scene to achieve a CTPI of 100% at even the most basic of ‘low-rise’ structure fires and it is clear that ‘critical tasks’ need careful prioritizing where crews and resources are limited in numbers. However, the document also demonstrates how a limited staffing CTPI may be dramatically improved by using the three-phased tactical approach described in the Fire2000.com staffing bulletin.

Reduced property damage; improved viability of retrieving live casualties; and safer firefighting operations for limited staffed responses are the result of careful deployment of three person crews following risk assessed fire-fighting concepts.

www.euro-firefighter.com