firemoose827

Very good points here as well. I was basing my response on the fact that I live in a split level home, and my stairs are open to the lower level. The garage is located right next to the stairs and even if the lower level were not entirely involved, it would still be impinging on the stairs and weakening them significantly. I remember when I took the Building Construction course, the instructor stated it well; You need to know the building construction and fire behavior in order to get ahead of the fire. If I were the first arriving officer I would look for a pass door into the lower level, on my house there is one next to the garage doors and one in back of the house as well, but a quick 360 would find that. I would have sent the line through that door to attack the fire in the garage, clearly the room of origin as you stated. If I knew for a fact that all the occupants were accounted for, then the attack goes through the basement door and I would see how conditions change before going through the front door on those stairs to check for extension. Good points. Just remember, there are a hundred tactics to use and a thousand tools to help us achieve them based on the departments equipment, initial response, conditions on arrival and response area.

I think an important aspect to remember here is it is a split level home. The amount of fire showing from the garage indicates to me that the whole lower level is well involved, that handline should have went in through the garage, not the stairs which had heavy fire conditions directly underneath them. I live in a split level, and my stairs are open to the lower level, so any fire involvement would weaken those stairs pretty significantly. I believe a quick attack through the garage would have knocked down the fire quickly enough to control it.

Sorry to hear about this Rob, I will send prayers your way daily. Keep us posted.

Every decent fire prevention program will always target any trouble areas in their district, the real challenge is being able to catch these trouble areas, and making the people USE the detectors. Like someone mentioned, you hear the low battery beeps everywhere and that's because they refuse to replace the battery until its too late. They would rather spend the money on beer and other things than a few batteries and its sad. You can lead a horse to water but unfortunately you cant force them to drink it.

Thank you, I am now logged on to my original membership. Thanks.

Happy retirement. One of the good memories I have is the Christmas eve ride along with you a few years ago. I appreciated the opportunity.

I'm glad you said this. I know of a guy with a bad hip, can't even walk right let alone crawl, and he was allowed as interior...recently he failed his physical and was labeled an exterior firefighter only. What did they do? Why, make him lieutenant of course.

Sueg, I will gladly post them when they are approved and accepted. They are done now, but just in draft and have not been reviewed by the officers, commissioners and membership yet. It will be interesting to see the different aspects of different SOP's from different response areas and populations. Like in my area, we are about 3.9 square miles of territory with about 3,000 people (2010 Census). Ours as they stand now before being changed and altered and then approved are about 2 and a half pages. I bet there could be some areas with larger populations and bigger call volumes that probably have triple the amount of pages. Does anyone have an SOP already written and enforced?

How many departments out there have SOP or SOG's written for either active shooter, or domestic violence incidents? I ask seriously, because our county is in the process of developing a training for these type of incidents and our department was the testing agency for the draft class written by our past chief now county deputy fire coordinator and SFI. It was a great class and it discussed having written policies for these incidents. After the class my chief approached me and asked if I would be willing to write an SOP for our department. I have a draft written and would be interested to see other SOP's that might exist to compare. Thanks in advance.

I agree. Picking up a portable pond and putting it away or picking up thousands of feet of 5 inch hose....hmmmm.... We do a lot of tanker shuttle work, we have no water distribution system at all in my town so therefore we have no hydrants. We have about 4 dry-hydrants located in different areas of our town and other drafting sites we use with good results. We usually call for tankers fast and furious, and when we get 4 or 5 tankers rolling we can usually keep up a good fire flow, un-interrupted. We also use 5" hose sometimes if there is a pond or good size stream on the property, but when it comes time to pick it up all of the mutual aid manpower has disappeared...amazingly enough....and no one is there to help...

I respect the hell out of our brother and sister police officers and I have no issue with any of them attempting to make a rescue if the opportunity presents itself. But I do have one issue, and I can monday morning quarterback this particular incident I am about to discuss because it happened in my district and I was first IC, then operations for the incident. My issue is this; we were requested to respond to a residence for "Excellerant spilled in the residence" (exactly how dispatch gave it to us). When I got on the radio and stated I was enroute I asked for more information, they simply repeated the original, stating that there was some type of excellerant spilled in the residence, nothing further. So I wrote it off to being a fuel oil tank leaking in the basement or maybe someone accidentally spilled some gas in the garage or something......BOY was I wrong. I pulled up to the scene in our first due engine/tanker to a scene loaded with state troopers. I get out and approach the one trooper and he tells me there is a woman inside doused in gasoline and threatening to light herself if they went in to get her. I FLIPPED out, and told the trooper we should all evacuate to a safe distance based on the fact the house was FILLED with gas fumes and was explosive (if the LEL was right) but we were taking no chances. This trooper failed to give us all of the information when we were dispatched, and we should have been staging on the road until the trooper negotiator talked her out or worse...They allowed us to drive right up to the scene and park next to the house in a circular driveway and said nothing to us. My panties are in a bunch as well and I will also not get over it. And this is odd for my area because we have a great working relationship with all of the LE agencies in the county and have always worked well together. Why did they fail to give us appropriate notice and give us all of the information, even if it was over the cell phone? We could have all been killed, blown away.

Wow. I found that wearing the radio on the strap under the coat takes away some of the strength of the signal. But then again I am in cow country with a lot of comms problems. Some times I am hoding my portable up in the air while talking, with one leg extended, and a halligan in the other hand...only works some times. We wear them in the radio pocket all the time with the mic clipped to the collar tab.

Rest in Peace, thoughts and prayers to all involved.

I can relate to this. Had a big fire in our mutual aid departments district a week ago, and while we were responding in the back of our rescue truck getting our gear on, one of the probies who just finished her FF1 class got her air pack on and then turned her back to me and said out loud "Turn me on". I smiled and said "Hey sure, but arent you married?" It was one of those moments you realised what you were saying...as you were saying it...and wished you could take it back...but fortunately she laughed and joked back with me and the others laughed too. I was thankful she didnt scream sexual harrassment or cry to the chief about it. But thats what we are supposed to do in the fire service, joke around with each other and break balls, it is how you know someone isnt mad at you. Like someone else said its when you are not getting your balls busted you should be worried. I agree though.

I myself have gone through and are still dealing with issues from the past calls. I did the wrong thing and held it inside, now I am paying for it. I was thinking about how to reach out to others so they dont do the same thing I did. This is a perfect idea for us, as a support to those that need to talk. I am open to talk to people who need to, just contact me. There is also a web site I used to belong to and forgot the whole name, but it was counselors, FD Chaplains and Salvation Army personnel that were reaching out to first responders as an avenue to vent and talk about things they see on calls. I believe it was "Emergency and Disaster Responders" or something similar. I will look it up and have it for those that want to check it out. I feel we need to talk about stuff with others that have gone through it, its better than trying to explain it to someone with no experience and still get any help...when they have no clue its hard to help. Good idea.