The Social Network & Community JUST for Firefighters
RIT Team Forming, Got Any Ideas?
so im starting up this whole county wide RIT team.. it is county wide cause as you all know man power in the volunteer departments is a big issue.. im trying to work it off of a multi department page when a RIT team is needed.. THen Multiple memebers from the closest departments show up and form the Rit team.. Its an interesting concept to get started since i know nobody that has ever seen it or have talked to anybody that has ever heard of such a thing.. im starting to get alot of the bases covered but with sumthing like this everytime i find a solution it creates another problem.. i am just looking for suggestion and ideas that maybe me or my team havnt thought of yet.. so please give me your criticism and your comments.. any help is greatly appreciated
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Thom Farrell on
-
Hey Brother. I feel your pain. I am going through the exact same thing. If I come up with anything I will be sure to let you know.
-
Permalink Reply by Devil Doc on
-
Contact other areas that have RIT teams set up and ask them to assist you. You could also call the National Fire Protection Agency at (617) 770-3000 and ask to talk to someone in their Public Fire Protection Department or you can call the United States Fire Administration at (301) 447-1000 and ask to speak to someone in the Emergency Response Support Branch.
-
Permalink Reply by Marty on
-
Good Luck...We are starting a R.I.T. team at our fire department. We are going to have extra training on R.I.T. every month. The biggest problem I see with including other departments is the fact that you don't work with and see them as much as you do people on your own department. Knowing each of your firefighters limitations will help a great deal. Also there S.O.G./S.O.P. may be different. We are using 2 firefighters and two officers. As our staffing grows so will our R.I.T. Team.
-
Permalink Reply by FETC on
-
I know some do this type of copncept but around my way it won't work. You are going to have to go through the process of getting permission, approval, liability waivers from all the fire chief's approving them to respond in a POV without their full department response, workmens comp, when someone dies is it going to be their fire departments LODD or yours and who is paying or covering the lawsuit? Big liability with single resource deployment, what about gear, SCBA's if others are not wearing the same (your RIT themselves could be wearing 4 different types of packs - no continuity) If RIT 2 deploys to rescue a RIT 1 member, are they carrying (4) different brand SCBA RIT PACKS? Then the challenge of training individual members from all over the county with an additional special training night, then you have the arrival of individual members to a fire without coordination (got to have the right guys) otherwise they could easily freelance and their department heads have no clue what they are doing at a fire, then you have times when 1 or 2 arrive and wait for others to show up as compared to an engine or ladder arriving as the RIT company? We looked at this and couldn't get past the issues.
So why don't you do what most others do. Pick a department that is one or two towns out and do RIT class for yours and their department members. When you have a fire, they respond as the RIT and when they have a fire, you will be their RIT company. Doesn't strip the neighboring department who is coming to the fire to work. Less issues with quality control, training, liability (tone them as the assigned RIT) they have knowledge of your SCBA's, tools, equipment and capailibiltes. Then send a Chief Officer and you now have RIT Rescue Branch Officer. I teach a class on how to cover RIT on the rural level.
FETC
www.fetcservices.com
-
Permalink Reply by Mark Oomkes on
-
A few departments (including ours) started talking about doing this a few years back. Not sure exactly why it went by the wayside. The plan was to just have the closest dept send 1 company with a RIT crew to the fire. We started doing some additional training, then it went away.
One other bit of advice (may not need it) but one thing that happened was the depts involved started training so heavily on RIT and FF survival that many of the basics were being ignored: smoke reading, line advancement, hose streams, reading\sizing up the building. With a little bit of prodding, this has now changed.
I fully realize poop is going to happen at times and there is nothing we can do, but a lot of the problems can be reduced if we have the basics down pat.
-
Permalink Reply by masonfire30 on
-
OK people lets stop making excuses not to have a RIT team and start working on ways to implement them in your area. As for the four differnt mask and scba. Most of your newer scba have a rit connection on them. If you don't have that option them take a spare scba with mask in with you and change out the whole system, something is better than nothing. When we set up our RIT team for the area we used protocols from other dept's(goggle search).and having a commitee that consisted of all the area dept's. THIS IS WHERE WE HAVE TO BE PROACTIVE NOT REACTIVE LIFES ARE ON THE LINE!!!
-
-
Masonfire, I gave an overview from a RIT committee that had formed and wanted to start what essentially would have been a specialized regional team. Now you being 3 years in the fire service, most of my views were from an administrator, fire chief or town manager liability concern but I also provided solutions to the problem of not having a rapid intervention team.
And only new airpacks with a UDC feature will have universal connections... I have seen departments within their own that have different generations of the same model, some with some without UDC. That will take nearly a decade or more to see everyone having them.
-
-
THIS IS WHERE WE HAVE TO BE PROACTIVE NOT REACTIVE LIFES ARE ON THE LINE!!!
As a brief aside, it's "lives" not "lifes", but onward and forward.
The OP asked for criticism and comments. He's getting both.
And I am not sure where you see that anybody has said they don't have them, just that there are quite a few obstacles to overcome for a regional\countywide RIT system.
Also, as I stated, if we focus, refocus and rerefocus on the basics, the likelihood of needing a RIT team will be greatly reduced.
Whether you like it or not, FETC brought up very valid points that need to be considered. We were working on doing it with just one engine company from a non-responding dept and that didn't work out, probably for political reasons. So now we use either our own or MA for establishing a RIT.
-
-
sorry for the misspell, anyways our RIT comes from two nieghboring dept upon request of IC. Two from one dept and they bring the RIT engine the other dept brings a med unit with 2 paramedics,because we know heart attacks are the number 1 killer of firefighters. Also sorry how I came across I'm just saying something is better than nothing. Just having two person RIT with hand tools standing at the ready just in case something goes wrong is better than nothing.
-
Permalink Reply by Randy Totten on
-
We are a rural VFD and our county just went through this. We have 8 VFD in the county and for any structure three are paged. Last year about 25 of us went a RIT course and we trained the rest of our county structural FF in RIT, so that all the structural FF have the training. If a structure fire is paged the IC pulls FF from the responding units to make up the RIT team. We have also included RIT into the Mod 1 class. The only real complaint that I have had (this is just a personal complaint) is being assigned to a RIT team with people I don't know. The one thing RIT showed me was team work is key. Unfortunately the only way is to train more and together. RIT is a must for everyone and something that we all pray we never have to do but we need to be ready at all times. Good luck with it and train hard...
-
Permalink Reply by Capt./Chaplain Mike Petrosky on
-
I believe there was just an article outlining how one dept. started their county wide RIT concept in Fire Engineering magazine a couple months back. Check into that, check the magazine and the website. Google it, someone has information out there. It won't be an easy task and it will take time and organization from all parties involved. Hope it all works out for you.
-
-
The only real complaint that I have had (this is just a personal complaint) is being assigned to a RIT team with people I don't know.
This reminds me of a live fire training we did years back. The powers that be were pairing up inexperienced FF's with experienced to go in and extinguish. So, I pair up with this guy from the neighboring dept (actually the one I'm on now) and start talking before we go in, ask him about his experience and so on and he tells me he's never been in on a fire but was on a RIT once.
I about crapped myself, managed to not drop my jaw to the ground and said "Oh, OK".
Enough reliving those WTF moments.
© 2024 Created by Firefighter Nation WebChief.
Powered by
