Manpower Usage During Working Fires?

[Bnechis 3,961]

I can recall on more then one occassion coming out of a "Bread and Butter" Job that is under control and seeing m/a Depts. staged outside and wanting to wring the IC's neck for embarrasing us.

Maybe thats the reason why stagging in many parts of the country is 2 blocks away. They are available in 30 seconds, but not in the way and able to harrass you.

Nothing wrong with a Depts. members wanting to handle their own and busting their asses. I'm not saying you should fight a Conflagration with a skeleton crew but for God's sake do you really need 2 to 3 neighboring Depts. for a 1 or 2 room Job? If your showin up with 5 to 7 members then yes you do and a solution has to be found to correct it but this should not be a problem for 15 to 20 dedicated members.

I agree about wanting to handle your own fire, my point was more about making sure you have enough back-up to available for the unexpected. Or even the expected......I know of way to many incidents, that the 1st in engine advises the IC, that they are getting low on air...then a few minutes later, they ask for relief on the line...then a few minutes later, they advise that they are coming out for air....AND NO ONE is assigned to replace them on the line. Where are the replacements? They were never called. Since most depts in Westchester are showing up with only 5-7 members (or fewer), then as you said we need to correct it. Its going to get far worst before it gets better, The tax cap is going to force reductions on every dept.

I'm not downplaying calling for assistance if it's required, I'm just wondering if it is needed as much as it is called for. I think the panic button in the IC's car may be pushed just a little too much and too early sometimes.

If every IC had a crystal ball, no firefighter would ever get hurt or killed. Since they do not it is their job to make sure that the members are backed up. Every text, SOP, training program teaches them...Not to play catch-up. The panic button is playing catch up if its not before the incident goes bad.

[FireMedic049 597]

The panic button is playing catch up if its not before the incident goes bad.

No, it can easily be before the incident goes bad too.

[FFPCogs 863]

The current direction in this thread got me to thinking...(yes I know a dangerous scenario). Now yes I know Westchester is slightly different than my area next door in CT, but there is more similarities than differences which extend far beyond just our neck of the woods. A few of us have observed that we'd be better off with a smaller number of motivated and well trained FFs working a scene, than all the kings men that are not quite on their A game. Numbers do not ensure a successful outcome by any means and in light of that I think it's safe to say that quality far outpaces quantity when it comes down to the crunch. But with each passing year it becomes more and more apparent that the experience many of us took for granted as a learning tool to bring the quality up is just not there anymore. Fire duty is down everywhere and along with that decline comes the decline in the availibilty of practical hands on experience that makes one a good fireman, for there is no better teacher in our field than "doing the job". Like any skill the more often you do it the better the vast majority become at doing it as time passes. So this leads us back to a fireground with a staging area chock full of eager FFs, there ready to go in a flash, but members now more often than not with far less experience and hence ability than their predecessors to draw on when they need it most. A vicious circle if ever there was one. For all the talk of consolidation or mutual aid, which are a part of the solution without doubt, what I think this comes down to in the end is the quality of the people we are relying on to do the work. Firemen put out fires and the better trained and more experienced they are, the better they will be at doing it which can then lead to requiring less of them if necessary to do it.

Does this mean we should put ourselves in a siutation where only the bare minimum or less in terms of manpower is expected to effectively work a scene, with no reserve? Of course not. It means that we should be looking at ways to give our people the tools necessary to do their jobs safely, but still do them with the resources they have. And one of the prime tools in acheiving that is experience, which if it isn't happening as frequently in the "real world" as it used to, we should be doing our damnest to provide in the training one. For us OSHA, and CT is an OSHA State, requires one live fire excercise a year...one. How much will your troops gain from that one excercise? My bet...not much. So then what. Well for my FD back home I have always tried to do as many live burns a year as we can, in years past usually around 6 to 8 but often more since our district is not a fire factory, and revolve our training around actual fireground scenarios...by and large running drills as incidents. This keeps members "in practice" as they do in drill what they do on the fireground, in real time as if they are actually at a job, thus adhering to what is for me a basic philosophy...train as you will work. I run my training sessions at work much the same way and in the last 6 months we've seen a marked improvement in both the abilities and motivation of the crews here both on and off the fireground. They are learning or reinforcing by doing and gaining what I'll be the first to admit is limited but still extremely valuable experience in fireground operations.

Believe it or not I am a certified Health and Safety Officer, and my "old school" beliefs, while seemingly "anti-safety" to some, are anything but. I take our safety and that of the fireground very seriously, but I believe that the safest fireground is one populated by FFs that actually know what they are doing...because they've done it. My UK colleagues have taken a different approach to training and in fact fireground operations, and it is one I see us heading towards. Safety above all else is their approach, so much so that the things that in the past allowed members to gain experience have become "too danerous" to do in training and thus on the scene. Firefighting is a hot, smoky, filthy and exhausting business and so too should it be with our training. We should be training in much the same, albeit far more controlled, environment as we deal with "out there" as a matter of course without the overemphasis on worrying if someone might get a boo boo. I happened to be looking through my old FF I book when I was moving on my last R&R. That book is from 1982 and what struck me most about it was that for the most part the firefighting part of it is the same 100 or so pages as the curent one, but we now have an additional 200 or more which deal with the "safe" way to do our job. More time is sometimes spent in drill covering the safe or proper way to do things than actually doing them and this leads back to experience..or more precisely the lack of it..and how that affects the fireground. I think we are doing members a great disservice by reducing their exposure in training to the realities of the job for their "safety". The answer to effective manpower usage does not lie in a book or video or even in SOPs that call for an army for a bedroom fire, it lies in the capabilities of those who will perform the job. It is up to us to build our FFs into the resource we need them to be, both individually and as a team, to meet the challenges faced. By doing so we will ensure, as much as is possible, not only that the job gets done even with limited manpower, but that it gets done and everyone goes home.

Cogs

Edited January 25, 2012 by FFPCogs

[Bnechis 3,961]

For us OSHA, and CT is an OSHA State, requires one live fire excercise a year...one. How much will your troops gain from that one excercise? My bet...not much. So then what.

NYS is also an OSHA (PESH) state but it does not require annual burns.

At one point (about a dozen years ago) they cancelled all live burns in the volunteer training (they still existed in the career training) because they were unsafe for the Instructors.

As the instructors employer, OFPC did not meet the OSHA standards for protecting its instructors.

In NYS it is possible to go 50 years and never experience a live burn, but you can still be a "great" firefighter because your "I fight what you fear" T-shirt.

[Guest alsfirefighter]

Don't forget the stickers on the helmets and vehicles.

[newsbuff 286]

Don't forget the stickers on the helmets and vehicles.

Your even forgot the "courtesy" lights so you can drive like an a$$, and enough antennas to open a mobile radioshack.

[FFPCogs 863]

NYS is also an OSHA (PESH) state but it does not require annual burns.

At one point (about a dozen years ago) they cancelled all live burns in the volunteer training (they still existed in the career training) because they were unsafe for the Instructors.

As the instructors employer, OFPC did not meet the OSHA standards for protecting its instructors.

In NYS it is possible to go 50 years and never experience a live burn, but you can still be a "great" firefighter because your "I fight what you fear" T-shirt.

Although limited at best, thankfully to the best of my knowledge what State standards we do have in CT apply across the board. There is no distiction made between career and volunteer.

Edited January 27, 2012 by FFPCogs

[firemoose827 324]

NYS is also an OSHA (PESH) state but it does not require annual burns.

At one point (about a dozen years ago) they cancelled all live burns in the volunteer training (they still existed in the career training) because they were unsafe for the Instructors.

As the instructors employer, OFPC did not meet the OSHA standards for protecting its instructors.

In NYS it is possible to go 50 years and never experience a live burn, but you can still be a "great" firefighter because your "I fight what you fear" T-shirt.

I am proud to say that our county finally got a training tower built with grant money, and has been spending the past year or two training the instructors and officers (the ones that showed for the training anyway) in live burn training safety. We will start to have all Firefighter I classes in the tower, and individual departments are starting to have drills on saturdays now so we can use live fire for training. Its been a long time in coming, but its finally happening and officers like me, who had to get their training out-of-county in order to get decent training, are happy to see it. This will allow the younger firefighters to get the "hands on" experience they need in a controlled environment with trained experienced officers and instructors. Hopefully this will breed better firefighters for our county.

Not everyone has stickers on their helmets and cars...

Stay Safe.