What Happened To Scene Size-Up?

[antiquefirelt 994]

You may like Nitrous Oxide to make your car go fast.

It's just Laughing Gas to me.

I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to comment on cutting my response time in half! The insurance was cheaper buying a new home rather than a super charged buggy.

[cman473 56]

Scene Size Ups are very important and do indeed help responding crews what they are up against...but lets not forget that repetitive information or obvious information may not be needed and WILL tie up valuable air space, especially in the counties such as mine, that has few frequencies. There is no need whatsoever to Tell 911 to transmit your second alarm or 10-75 assignment and then in the same sentence that all companies are going to work. Its obvious that your going to "work" if command is transmitting a seconf alarm...unless of course it is standard operating procedure to sit in the truck and watch.

We have to watch out for useless and not needed transmissions to ensure the safety of our crews. Just my opinion.

[firemoose827 324]

Scene Size Ups are very important and do indeed help responding crews what they are up against...but lets not forget that repetitive information or obvious information may not be needed and WILL tie up valuable air space, especially in the counties such as mine, that has few frequencies. There is no need whatsoever to Tell 911 to transmit your second alarm or 10-75 assignment and then in the same sentence that all companies are going to work. Its obvious that your going to "work" if command is transmitting a seconf alarm...unless of course it is standard operating procedure to sit in the truck and watch.

We have to watch out for useless and not needed transmissions to ensure the safety of our crews. Just my opinion.

This is a good point and one I thought of myself but here is the thing; even in small counties like mine we have 4 channels to use, the main channel and 3 fireground frequencies, plus Law frequencies and EMS frequencies. In a large incident such as a structure, we are all instructed to switch to fireground 2 for all transmitions and channel one is for IC use only. If there are multiple incidents at once we use the 2nd and third channels as well. So if you keep the chatter to a minimum and only transmit what is necessary you can achieve both without problem. Dont get on the radio and spout the gettysburgh address...make it short and sweet and to the point "On scene, working fire in a 2 1/2 story wood frame, occupants safe, assuming command."

I would also like to see some of the terminology used more often such as saying "Urgent" or "Priority" to make everyone listen and stay off the air until your transmition is complete or to make the urgency of your situation known. Like "Urgent, attack to command there has been a collapse of second floor ceiling and floor is sagging, backing out for further orders."

At the least I would like to hear what I am responding to like a working fire, fully involved fire, or just food on a stove. Good points.

[antiquefirelt 994]

We utilize the "Urgent" message for all high priority transmissions, such as live lines down in the yard, collapse without entrapment, or other hazards to personnel on the fireground. It is taught o be used like a mayday in that you repeat it three times: "Urgent, urgent, urgent. There is a live power line laying in the yard on side 4." It is specifically not used for any member lost, trapped or otherwise as those are "Mayday" transmissions, but rather used for impending dangers.

I agree that over use of the radio can complicate situations and it comes down to basic discipline and understanding what's necessary, what is not and whenever face to face is possible, using that.

[firemoose827 324]

I had an interesting fire a few weeks ago that reminded me of this topic and I just had to share it.

We were dispatched to a structure fire at around 0530 along with our automatic mutual aid dept per our protocols. I called enroute to the station, and while responding, an assistant chief from the MA dept calls on scene and starts to call off all of our MA including the FAST response...Ok, at that point I guessed it was nothing.

I arrive on scene in the engine to find said chief standing in the yard, no gear, hands in pockets, telling me "Its nothing, just a tiny smoldering fire near the back door"...Ok, starting to get a little annoyed by his canceling our MA and FAST.

I walk towords the front of the house to do my sizeup and see blackened windows, an open front door with smoke banking down to knee level and intense heat felt through my gear, the windows were hot to the touch...Im starting to think at this point that this chief needs to go back to being a black coat.

I find out at this point that I am the only officer on scene from my dept and realise no report or assumption of command had been made, and I started to get my radio when my assistant chief shows up. I tell him what we REALY have and he too looks at me like hes going to go and give this "Chief" a piece of his mind also, than tell the crew to stretch the crosslay to the front door while I went to get a pack.

In just the minute or so it took to pack up, this "Chief" tells my crew to take the line around back instead of the front door, which was like a 300 foot stretch and our crosslays are 200 foot. My chief is now around the back doing his sizeup and could not stop them.

By now Im pissed. I find the crew, who were all anxious to tell me that the line wasnt going to reach the back door, I calmly tell them thats exactly why I told them to go to the front door. By now our chief just yells for the pump operator to throw 3 more lengths on the line and we go to the back door, a glass sliding door, locked with the panic bar on the track, so we couldnt even force it. So...A perfectly good sliding door had to be broken. I make entry and immediately feel the intense heat through my gear, and see the flames start to grow deeper inside the room, than whammo, the laundry room about 6 feet in front of me receives the fresh air we let in and it flashes over.

Turned out that the fire started, than lost oxygen and just smoldered in the laundry room. The small "Smoldering" fire this chief saw was the drapes that caught fire, dropped to the floor, and were still burning by the slider. When we took the slider out the air rushed in and fueled the fire and it flashed. COuld have been worse, yes, and we were lucky, actually that "Chief" was lucky. Another 10 minutes and both myself and our chief would have been at work and there would have been none of our officers there to stop them from just going in to this house blind and getting burned.

We talked to this chief, and asked what he did when he arrived, and he said he just looked through the back door nd saw the small lick of flames, he went and opened the front door to start to vent the smoke out so we could find it easier, than called dispatch to cancel the mutual aid response.

Good sizeup is KEY to the outcome of the fire. This chief knows about good sizeup now, and he learned it from us.

Stay Safe

[antiquefirelt 994]

We talked to this chief, and asked what he did when he arrived, and he said he just looked through the back door nd saw the small lick of flames, he went and opened the front door to start to vent the smoke out so we could find it easier, than called dispatch to cancel the mutual aid response.

Good sizeup is KEY to the outcome of the fire. This chief knows about good sizeup now, and he learned it from us.

Stay Safe

I hope someone also educated the chief of the dangers of venting the building before a hoseline is ready to make an attack?

The last few years have proven that the fire service can learn new tricks and utilize actual science to assess how specific tactics effect the fireground. Anyone who hasn't had a chance to look at any of the work that Chicago FD, FDNY, UL and NIST (and others) has done should take a look on the UL website for some excellent training on how fire behaves under different conditions. The legend vs. modern home furnishing fires are particularly interesting as they show why many of yesteryears tactics need to be reevaluated or at least properly understood. http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/offerings/industries/buildingmaterials/fire/fireservice/

It sounds like this chief needs to recognize that today's smoldering fires are very often (always?) ventilation regulated and contain large amounts of superheated unburned particles and gases from modern household contents (plastics). While true backdraft is a rare occurrence, rapid fire development due to providing oxygen to these gases and particles should be anticipated.

Edited April 19, 2011 by antiquefirelt

[firemoose827 324]

I hope someone also educated the chief of the dangers of venting the building before a hoseline is ready to make an attack?

The last few years have proven that the fire service can learn new tricks and utilize actual science to assess how specific tactics effect the fireground. Anyone who hasn't had a chance to look at any of the work that Chicago FD, FDNY, UL and NIST (and others) has done should take a look on the UL website for some excellent training on how fire behaves under different conditions. The legend vs. modern home furnishing fires are particularly interesting as they show why many of yesteryears tactics need to be reevaluated or at least properly understood. http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/offerings/industries/buildingmaterials/fire/fireservice/

It sounds like this chief needs to recognize that today's smoldering fires are very often ventilation regulated and contain large amounts of superheated unburned particles and gases from modern household contents (plastics). While true backdraft is a rare occurrence, rapid fire development due to providing oxygen to these gases and particles should be anticipated.

He was, by both our chief and his at our drill night following the fire.

It was a modular style ranch house with energy efficient windows and doors, and it just snuffed out the fire. When he opened the front door the air slowly started to feed the fire, which was about 40 feet away from the front door but only 6 feet away from the back slider. When we took that the air hit it and it took off. It flashed in the laundry room just off the dining room where we made entry and started to come out into the dining area quick, but we hit it there and stopped it. There was even-char in the dining and kitchen, skylight covers melted in the kitchen but the glass held, and it just smoldered from there.

We were lucky no one got hurt, and our crew got the full critique 2 nights later and we explained it better to them as well. We also told this guy to never cancel our MA or our FAST response again without our approval, we ended up calling the MA BACK to the scene and they were a little upset, and the FAST team asked us what happened as well, but we explained it and they laughed it off.

Lesson Learned, everyone went home, no one hurt (except ego), and we have a better working relationship with our mutual aid dept now as a result of this with regular joint drills being planned.