OK, This was forwarded to me at work and though I am on a Ladder Company, I am not assigned to nor do we have a Tower Ladder. So with that said, I am interested in hearing your thoughts on the following fire ground photographs.

The guys on my company did immediately notice that the roof ladder appears to be upside down and the hooks are on the bottom of the ladder as well.


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Well as you know Safety second. And how is it held on to the bucket. must be a really strong operator up there.
This is one of the most unsafe acts of any operations that I have seen. I know that I would never try this. I'm trying to figure out the reasoning behind this operation. Hes not wearing a SCBA nor does he have a tool of any kind. This roof is steep enough that a wrong step or even a slip, hes on the ground. Its bad placement of the tower, ladder, bucket, whatever everyone wants to call it. Plenty of room to place the bucket at the roof. Even using 24' or 35' extension ladders on the ground would be a good idea. WOW!!
Yes the story behind this would enlighten us all. Maybe it will show up in Firehouse Magezine some day. Any way with the light smoke conditions, no extension in any part of the roof and no visible fire, my guess it could be a training scenario.
Safety first - NO SCBA, NO GLOVES and NO PARTNER? I am with a Tower company and have never experienced this situation. But when its time to improvise for life safety we must do what we must.
Be safeout there
Geo168
i notice their was a few safty issues. gloves, what about tools, what about an airpack? never seen it done. i guess as long as the guy got down save that really what matters the most.
Instead of jumping on the bandwagon here, my educated guess is the person here may be an instructor and this could be a controlled burn situation. It is hard to tell just from the picture, but it looks as though the roof has been cut before and looks like paneling was placed over the holes. There could be several reasons for the person to get to the roof this way, but we don't know.

As for the roof ladder thing, as mentioned there are some ladders with hooks on both ends. However, I don't believe the ladder was being supported by the hooks from the platform. Instead the ladder was probably tied in on some brackets that way. It is hard to tell from the lower platform lights if there is a bracket, but the gate is probably on the side of the platform, thus the reason for the roof ladder placed there.

I personaly doubt this was an emergency situation, but the FF used the ladder to climb down to the roof, checked out whatever and climbed back up. My guess is he was the only one in the platform. Reasoning for it doesn't make sense to me, heck just lower the platform.

The one thing though is was this picture just arbitrarly found on the web or does anyone know the dept in question? If they received the pic from someone, find out what dept and ask them....better than multiple people just guessing. And no, I've never seen this done, nor recommend it.
The only thing i can see is the power line might have been in the way of a direct line rescue for the bucket to reach and in order to do the rescue they imporvised and it looks very dangerous but it looks like it did the job. very very gutsay to say the least
If this is an instructor he should be reprimanded for having no SCBA!
I really doubt this is a rescue given there really doesn't appear to be some immediate rescue indicators. The smoke is pretty light venting from the windows and other areas, I just don't see this as someone in immediate danger.

As for having no SCBA, again leads me to believe an instructor of some sort. As for calling for a reprimand, why jump to conclusions based off a picture, does one really know what is going on here? Not on these forums. The pic of the FF on the roof doesn't look like he is getting any smoke anyway, as he is also outside. The second pic shows him climbing back up when there is some smoke. Tough to say what is going on, but calling for reprimand...I won't do without knowing more facts.

To me it almost looks like an instructor getting a "bird's eye" view of a team going in and couldn't get the view from the bucket at first, thus going to where he was. I doubt the safety of such a stunt, but again I need more facts to judge here.
It would seem to me that before we critique these photos mabea, just mabea, we should have the facts first.
It's on FF Close Calls, with no story. I was hoping they would've been able to find out more info for us.
FF Close Calls
First of all, I was not there so to critique this one would be hard and unfair at least. I read about a Truck Co that has hooks on both ends of their roof ladders. It keeps you from having to spin the ladder when your sitting on the peak. It also looks like there are power lines that kept the Bucket from being placed in a better position. And it seems that this is a egress or rescue of a member trapped on the roof. Without some of the details, it is really hard to 2nd guess this picture. Thank God that there is not always a camera around whenever I do something unsafe or stupid.

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