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Critical need for RIT teams
In southern Rhode Island there aren't really any thoroughly trained RIT teams that I am aware of. I think a neighboring department are calling themselves a RIT team I am just not sure the extent of their training. What does this department do when they get a working fire with the RIT team? Do you have a 2 in 2 out rule? Does the C/O stand by this rule? How is Rapid Intervention handled in your district?
I think there is a major need for these teams across America and world wide, it will give a faster jump when someone is in trouble. We all are human, and with that being said all can fall into harms way. What better way to get help than a team of professionals whom are there for that one purpose?
I think there is a major need for these teams across America and world wide, it will give a faster jump when someone is in trouble. We all are human, and with that being said all can fall into harms way. What better way to get help than a team of professionals whom are there for that one purpose?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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If you're dragging the downed firefighter in a Stokes or SKED, you should be able to tuck the second SCBA and transfill hose in and eliminate the entanglement problem. Regardless of the drag method, if the hose gets entangled, just disconnect it from the downed firefighter and keep dragging.
As for transfilling being risky, you're absolutely correct.
In a RIT situation, it's generally an acceptable, relative risk.
I think it falls into the "risk a lot to save a lot" category.
If you're transfilling from a RIT SCBA, the entanglement risk is reduced even more - less stuff sticking out and dragging, so there's less chance of tangling a RIT pack in debris than a standard SCBA. Either way, a complete SCBA is a much better RIT choice than just taking a spare cyinder. If you have difficulty just getting to the URC, think about how difficult it will be doing a hot zone cylinder change.
Ben
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FETC,
More on what I posted last night...
What I didn't articulate very well is that if you take an assignment that's already short-staffed and carve a RIT out of it, then you still don't add to the overall number of firefighters on the scene. That creates a situation that is ripe for RIT to get diverted into rescuing civilians, forcing rear doors, throwing ladders, etc. If they're doing that non-RIT stuff, they're a) using energy that needs to be conserved, b) potentially gets the RIT out of position for a potential firefighter rescue, and c) potentially making RIT unavailable for their primary assignment (firefighter rescue) when the Mayday gets called. Any good truck or rescue company - and a lot of good engine companies - can force doors, throw ladders, vent, and rescue civilians. Those are things that don't require RIT training, special equipment, or any kind of special team.
If RIT is doing anything other than monitoring fire/smoke conditions, tracking the interior companies to the best of their ability, and standing by with a well-thought-out RIT tool cache, then they're not putting 100% of their attention to RIT. I'm pretty sure that a distracted RIT won't be an effective RIT if they're needeed.
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Perkel on
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OSHA and NFPA have guidelines that will help establish the minimum needs and go check out the website rapidintervention.com. I have seen many different approaches to this task. Paid and volunteer depts will have many different obsticles to tackle. Volunteer depts will have to deal with manpower and level of training issues as well as the actual fireground experience levels. Paid depts deal with the added resource allocation needed and the size of the dept is where this plays a role. FDNY uses the term FAST TRUCK some use RIT and I've heard several other names used also but they all mean the same thing the guys that can and will go in and get you out when the shit hits the fan. That is why they need the proper training manpower and experience to get the job done.
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Siren,
It sounds as if you guys have a pretty good RIT plan - and the manpower to actually implement it.
3rd-due truck, though, what's that? We have one truck, our only nearby mutual aid has one truck, and we're talking 30 miles away with a wait to staff the truck with vollys to get a 3rd truck.
If you guys SOG calls for 1st truck to the front and 2nd truck to the rear like a lot of departments in te northeast, then you have the opening up and ground ladder issues covered without having RIT do it. Ditto for interior search with a rescue company. I'd love to see even one staffed rescue company in my entire county!
Calling a 2nd alarm as part of a Mayday response - now there's a terrific idea. It sounds as if your department is a lot more proactive about actually getting the manpower it takes to fight the fire and staff/use RIT at the same time than most. I guess I'll just have to wear the green helmet today... :-)
Ben
Ben
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Permalink Reply by James Billings on
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I understand what your saying, about other depts not being trained on this RIT teams, As an Instructor through the state of Kentucky , I've talked to some chiefs in my county to train with us on this matter and it works well they have pulled togather and had a Firefighter Rescue and survival tower built and we all understand the need for such teams and training, to answer your question on the 2 in and 2 out doesn't count for (bonifed) volunteer depts, and in it depends on the IC and SOP'S. i will look into this more for you.
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Permalink Reply by FETC on
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James,
Might want to check on the 2in/ 2out rule, I don't remember any document saying the rule was exempt for true (bonified) volunteer departments...
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Ben,
I know when I respond to a post, that my fingers can't possibly type as fast as my mind is going and it is frustrating at times when my thoughts become vague on the screen. So let me address your concerns as "quotes" and then I will reply...
Your Quote - "It's easy to say that there's "no excuse", but if you don't have the warm bodies or a reasonable way to get them in a hurry, what is the chief supposed to do? Never conduct an interior search? Never go interior for a room-and-contents incipient fire?
RESPONSE: Every person or organization here on FFN have different manpower challenges or concerns. You are responding with 30 guys on shift but isolated, we operate with 9 and most times fairly isolated for help. We cover the 2/in 2/out and conduct an interior attack. Now I am not talking about a fully staffed RIT response on arrival, that comes later as we find manpower but even though our initial response is lacking the numbers to cover the suggested NFPA staffing for a working fire we cover the 2in 2out. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say at the NFA, you do what with how many guys????
Your Quote: What I didn't articulate very well is that if you take an assignment that's already short-staffed and carve a RIT out of it, then you still don't add to the overall number of firefighters on the scene. That creates a situation that is ripe for RIT to get diverted into rescuing civilians, forcing rear doors, throwing ladders, etc. If they're doing that non-RIT stuff, they're a) using energy that needs to be conserved, b) potentially gets the RIT out of position for a potential firefighter rescue, and c) potentially making RIT unavailable for their primary assignment (firefighter rescue) when the Mayday gets called. Any good truck or rescue company - and a lot of good engine companies - can force doors, throw ladders, vent, and rescue civilians. Those are things that don't require RIT training, special equipment, or any kind of special team.
RESPONSE: 9 guys Ben,(9) the numbers don't add up to fully staffed companies. I couldn't agree more with you. All those functions do get completed, maybe not by the 1st alarm or the "labeled companies" that your describe, why because they do not exist initially. But hey we are not responding with 30 guys and we make efforts to handle the incident the best that we can with what we got. We are meeting the requirement of RIT by assigning it on arrival of the 2nd alarm, at a minimum of(4). Now, this is directly adding to the numbers on the fireground and not carving it out of the 1st alarm. Policy wise, because of the size of our 1st alarm response, for ANY size or type of building fire, the policy dictates that the 1st due line officer MUST upgrade to a 2nd alarm. When RIT arrives on scene, usually less than 8 minutes, staffed with 4, it most often is taxed to perform some outside functions that can be very critical towards firefighter safety. The old days we called them a Safety Engine??? Isn't that progressive thinking considering the Commander is doing the best he can with what resources he has at the time? Remember, RIT might be the first arriving company on the 2nd alarm...
Your Quote - If RIT is doing anything other than monitoring fire/smoke conditions, tracking the interior companies to the best of their ability, and standing by with a well-thought-out RIT tool cache, then they're not putting 100% of their attention to RIT. I'm pretty sure that a distracted RIT won't be an effective RIT if they're needeed.
RESPONSE: I agree to a point. If you have the manpower to cover all the other vital and basic functions on the fireground with well staffed companies, then OK. But not the case around here, what I have also seen is in well-staffed departments that charge RIT to do what you say is "the best for attention" I see the exact OPPOSITE. I find a company who is complacent, lazy and pissed off that they are assigned to stand-by, do nothing, usually found sitting on the bumper and disconnected to the incident because they are not part of it. So being short handed, and assigned as the RIT; though maybe not the best in your opinion, what I have seen is nobody complaining about the assignment around here. As they are more connected to the incident and have first hand understanding that certain things have been done if and when they are deployed.
In this country, I would bet that more people are struggling with how to cover 2in/ 2out and RIT with a small or lacking response like mine, as compared to a Chief who is saying one RIT company is not enough for a true mayday, and we should focus on better size-up, stratgey/tactics and not committing to born losers with 30 men per shift.
You are correct that 3 or 4 guys as RIT is a real false sense of security. That is why many big city departments dispatch a full alarm assignment as RIT, extra 2-1-1. Not the case here, or for most of the country as those resources do not exist. We have trained the command staff, to forecast the future and upgrade the alarm or just the next company into staging, for any lengthy incident in which companies are committed interiorly during a fire. Even if we are at "Probably will Hold" status. This front loads the manpower before a mayday occurs. This reduces the turnout time and over-the-road response times for a rural or distant company, places them on the scene,(in staging) awaiting orders if RIT-1 is deployed. Hey if your suffer an escalating event that requires the next alarm assignment, boom they are already on-site. Just another idea that some of us are forced to do by thinking outside the box...
Better yet, I think you will appreciate this because you are a big health and wellness guy. If you run a good fire, nobody gets hurt, why not cut the first-in companies loose, and move up the RIT assignment from staging to do the lengthy overhaul and reduce your firefighter's stress and overertion risk? Number 1 LODD Killer! This is obviously after the under control has been declared, and RIT-1 is still on scene. So why beat up the brothers who battled the hardest? The staging companies get connected and leave dirty, not pissed that you made them sit in the street the whole time and all the while you protecting your own by reducing stress.
So in conclusion, as this has been way too long and covered pretty much my entire training class, I hope that we can agree that we can't be compared to eachother operationally and how we are going to handle the exact same incident(s).
Bill Greenwood, A/C and owner of FETC Services
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FETC,
Your points are valid, particularly for your situation.
In my case, the 30 per shift don't all get assigned on a given alarm.
We have 7 cross-staffed engine/medic companies, usually with 3 each, one station that has an additional medic with 2, a truck with 4, and a B/C. Anything more means that no one took vacation or called in sick today.
Our standard 1st alarm box response is 2 engines with 3 each, the third company bringing both their engine and medic with 3, the truck, and the B/C. That's 14 total, of which 2 (the chief and the 3rd due paramedic) aren't fighting the fire. That gives us an engine with 2 and a pump operator for fire attack, a second engine with 3 for the second line, half the truck forcing entry and doing the primary search, the other half of the truck ventilating, and the 2 non-paramedics from the 3rd due engine as RIT.
We're looking at improving this by doing two additional things that I strongly agree with. First, one of our shifts has become the local R&D shift for Phoenix's On Deck system. We haven't adopted it as an SOG yet, because we're still tweaking it, but we've used it on three fires with pretty good success. The only thing I don't like about On Deck is requiring the standby company to be masked up but not on air. That builds up a lot of unnecessary heat stress and has also been shown to build up CO2 in the mask. That starts getting the On Deck company fatigued from anaerobic respiration before they go to work. Add the near-tropical conditions we have here for half the year, and you have a recipe for a less-than-100% effective On Deck/RIT company.
The second thing we're doing is adding a 4th engine on working fires - kind of our shorthand for the extra help FDNY gets when they call an All Hands. The combination of the 4th engine and On Deck accomplishes both your point and mine - more manpower. The On Deck company automatically fills the RIT role until they're needed to do something else, then the next available company fills OnDeck/RIT. Initially, that is the 4th engine. The follow-on RIT/On Deck is normally the 1st due engine, post rehab.
The On Deck system addresses a lot of the problems you get from either active RIT, passive RIT, or no RIT. The bottom line is getting enough manpower to be able to accomplish multiple tasks in parallel, rather than in series.
The problem that the 4th engine at the fire leaves us is that we now have only 3 cross-staffed engine/medic companies and one staffed medic to cover the entire rest of our area. Since we average two of those companies on a medic call most of the time, that remaining cross-staffed engine/medic can become a VERY lonely company.
Your point about not being compared to each other rationally is pretty much what I was getting at. There are so many differences depending on where you are and what kind of system the local fire service is that response patterns and tactics - including RIT are going to vary a lot. I didn't want to make this just about how my department does it. I've worked in 4 different parts of the country and do a lot of visiting firefighter travel, so I've seen lots of other ways to do it in addition to mhy department's way.
Regards,
Ben
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Siren,
I know my post was long but I actually answered your question, it wasn't in my our organization I said that.
It's not training here either, how about going mutual aid and seeing RIT on cell phones??? WTF, how about accross the state, how about nationally?
Travel around, you will hear people say that the RIT assignment stinks. I've heard national speakers say the same thing about what they see/hear in other parts. There is people on the road, trying to change the actual culture, so guys don't feel that way. Men - usually Type A personalities, MACHO, I can fix everything, I can own everything, do anything / everything, usually have multiple divorces, bankrupt, or end up in jail. etc. Now tell them to sit on their hands and watch a fire and that is not NORMAL. Breeds some negativity, hence, complacency.
Hello look at your department's make up of personalities. Granted many have some thinkers too, one's who spend too much time thinking instead of doing, the type A firefighters usually walk all over them on emergencies.
I know you look at some LODD reports, you have seen, and read that RIT was not trained, not ready, not established, blah, blah, blah... you even see RIT wasn't ready, in some big departments. Why do you think one small portion of one of the biggest case studies in the history of Mayday / RIT deployment, out west, they actually have times that show how long it takes RIT to get ready, and actually deploy? What does that say?
Siren, envy is reaching...
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Siren,
Thats great that you don't see the conplacency issue, I am glad for that. As with a bunch of posts between Ben and I, we have concluded that many different issues, ideas, and needs because each of our organizations are different.
All I can say is I have seen and heard what I have seen...
And if you disagree than that is fine. But I have personally seen RIT personnel on cellphones, seen RIT sitting on bumpers, I own a video that recently was sold on the internet; not by the fire department but sold by others of a very large southern fire department, with RIT staged in the parking lot of a high rise fire... bought it, use it for training on RIT complacency.
And for the envy comment, well you need I remind you.
Quote: - Or maybe you should be wearing the green helmet. I'm sensing a little envy of departments that are better staffed :o)
Bigger is not always better, seen plenty of fire departments with more personnel, more stations, more problems too, and houses that run less calls than me. I can guarantee envy is not the issue...
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West Philly I just got an email of Truck 28 on fire whats up that that brother?
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West Philly,
I just got a picture via email of Truck 28 on fire, whats up with that brother?
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