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How many ways out do you have????
I recently went around to other areas watching structure fires to see things we are doing right and wrong. I have had numerous discussions with line officers and fire fighters and there was one fact the was so easy to see.
Where are your ladders?? How many ways of regress do you have? Looking at the notes I have 70% of the time I found only 1 ground ladder to the second floor when you had fire load on that floor? Is that enough means of escape? Shouldn't we be looking how we can make rapid egress as well as regress?
I am a strong believer of RIT/FAST but I asked numerous teams "You have a man down on the c-side second floor staircase is gone you have one ground ladder on A-side what is your action"? All said the same send a 2 man team in the the a-side and ladder the c-side???? Shouldn't we have that means of egress there already. Also does you department let crews inside know where they have laddered the structure? Use the radios let them know where they can go for escape. This should be in your SOPs If you have ever been caught and ran to a window wondering if they have a ladder there or will you have to jump and get hurt you would understand. We all carry ladders USE THEM LEARN THEM AND STAY ALIVE WITH THEM.
Where are your ladders?? How many ways of regress do you have? Looking at the notes I have 70% of the time I found only 1 ground ladder to the second floor when you had fire load on that floor? Is that enough means of escape? Shouldn't we be looking how we can make rapid egress as well as regress?
I am a strong believer of RIT/FAST but I asked numerous teams "You have a man down on the c-side second floor staircase is gone you have one ground ladder on A-side what is your action"? All said the same send a 2 man team in the the a-side and ladder the c-side???? Shouldn't we have that means of egress there already. Also does you department let crews inside know where they have laddered the structure? Use the radios let them know where they can go for escape. This should be in your SOPs If you have ever been caught and ran to a window wondering if they have a ladder there or will you have to jump and get hurt you would understand. We all carry ladders USE THEM LEARN THEM AND STAY ALIVE WITH THEM.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Paul on
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I strongly agree with the you on the ladder placement when on the fire ground for egress and regress. From my perspective as FF II, living in a rural area, It is imperative that all FF's continually practice these types of senerios. If your departments SOPS are enforced chances are that your department will never have to explain to the families and or the community why there is a LODD. You will never know when the real situation will test your skills. The NFPA is STRONGLY stresses that all departments enforce the standards that we are taught to preserve life and safety of all brother/sister FF's
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Permalink Reply by Jason Brooks on
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If we do not protect ourselves, noone is going to do it for us. Train the way you play. Don't just talk about it. If we get our guys into the habit of throwing ladders at training instead of saying " I would put one there and there", it will become second nature.
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Permalink Reply by David McElroy on
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I agree with you as well, look at the way Boston Ma Fire does ladder work, I think they do the best laddder work in the country. At a working fire there are ground ladders an all sides of the building and there are ariel ladders on as many sides of the building as possible.
There should be an SOG in notifying the crews working in the building where the ladders are located for escape and one of those SOG's should be to make a "Firefighter Friendly Window" where the ground ladder is located. When I say "Firefighter Friendly Window" I mean clean the entire window out so only the window frame remains. That way if you need to exit and you are searching for a window and you reach up and feel a sash there is not a ladder there but If you feel a window that is totally cleaned out(no sash,glass etc) thats where your ladder is.
I think we take a business as usual approach with portable ladders and dont train with them as much as we should.I also dont think we train on emergency procedures / firefighter self rescue as much as we should as well
Just my 2 cents worth, hope it helps
Dave
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Permalink Reply by Dan Hoey on
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I agree the practice of saying I would do this or that instead of doing it when training needs to be done. I had a crew of pretty new guys in a training tower with a smoke machine and I told them you just lost your staircase and shit just hit the fan WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO!!!!! I got a bunch of deer in the head lights and when one said I will call to see where a ladder was I told go ahead and the answer was Ladder we didnt put any up do you need it???
My case in point!
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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on
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Dan, I found this in the EMS section and I'm bumping this so others can see it and perhaps reply. I don't know if you can edit the post to be in the General Firefighting forum; if not we'll keep bumping.
This is an excellent discussion, and it made me realize that many of us focus on putting the wet stuff on the red stuff and all of the maneuvers required to do so. Things like water supply, tanker operations and even how to or not to pull the preconnects off.
Thanks for reminding us about the use of a very important yet often overlooked tool.
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Permalink Reply by Doug on
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Agreed! As we're not too far from one another neighbor, I see that as a big problem in this area. Not enough ground ladders are being thrown!!! And frankly, it pisses me off!
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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bump....more pertinent than word games
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Permalink Reply by capcityff on
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I like using this picture as an example of ladder placement. This is a picture of my volly department, Prince George's County, MD. My career department, Washington, DC is also religious about throwing every ladder on the truck. With a working fire there's three 5-man truck companies on scene(one is RIT). No point standing around. It takes less than a minute to pull a ladder off the truck and throw it. Just get them all out.
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Permalink Reply by Pierre-Louis Lamballais on
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Hi,
I agree for the use of ladder but, as usual, I notice you, as US FF, focus on "the way out" and not on real attack (for us, the interior agressive attack with solid bore is not serious).
I study structural fire for many years and some tell I'm an expert in that area (don't know if that's true) as creator of http://www.flashover.fr
Our international flashover instructor group (http://www.tantad.com) study firefighting tactics for years.
We were (are) full advocate of ladder placement, area for tools on the ground, delimitation of area and so on. At the same time, we have made heavy research on nozzle techniques. A few weeks ago, the two reseach came in a kind of opposition.
In fact, the nozzle techniques we teach are very effective and need only a very small amount of instruction (2 hours to explain the 5 nozzles techniques used in structural firefighting, to 6 students, with explanation, demonstration and practice).
A few weeks ago, a fire service from Belgium, which FF were our students and use our nozzle techniques, send us a mail with a power point they've made about a fire they extinguish on december 2011. It's great, proove the efficiency of nozzle techniques, and at the same time, shake a lot our tactic.
In order to understand, just start by seeing this slide show, from Ontario. It's a typical way of doing in the USA, with many guys, trucks and so on.
Just see the size of the fire at the begining,number of FF, number of trucks, and imagine the time spend on the scene. For that, I agree at 100% that ladder placement is a security issue that we can't avoid.
But know, read this article. That's the description of the Belgium fire. Just notice the only common point is the initial size of fire;
Very nice job, but we discover that our nozzle tehcniques, even if we know they were good, are in fact so good that they don't give use enought time to perform all the things we were thinking about, from a tactical and safety approach.
On the Ontario fire scene, laddering, delimitation of area and RIT are logical "tools". On the Belgium fire scene, the speed is so impressive that maybe we must consider all these logical action to be performed by the second truck, and not the first one.
In fact, it seems that rather focusing on safety, it would be better to start focusing on attack. This will give a better overview of the time we had to perform other action.
Best regards
Pierre-Louis
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I don't agree that we only focus on the way out. We all have certain jobs. Some are inside putting the fire out, some are searching, some are ventilating, and some are throwing ladders. There's guys focusing on a way out but that doesn't distract from the other guys putting the fire out. We can do more than one thing at a time.
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Read the article and next time you will fight such a fire, just see the amount of water you need and the time you spend.
And also, you write some do this, some doi that, other do this and other do that...
2 for interior attack, two for searching, two for ventilation, two for ladder, a guy at the pump and a chief.10 on the fire scene, so two trucks.
Again, read the article: 4 guys and a chief, one truck.At the time where the USA budget is in a bad way, I think 5 with one truck is more near the futur than 10 with two trucks...
From a tactical point of view, the time of extinction in the case of the Belgium FF is so small that we don't have time to perform ventilation or any think like that (and in 99% of the case the ventilation is of no use)
This can be done by a second truck, but not by the first one.
But I'm sure you haven't read the text.
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Permalink Reply by Shareef Abdu Nur on
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On my Truck, on my shift, we try to throw ladders to every window on every floor that members are operating on. We are trying to get the rest of the department to do the same and even implement this into our SOP's. The administration is not opposed to it, we just don't have the necessary manpower.
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