Video: Alameda County Firefighter Rescues Family in Apartment Fire

[firedude 985]

Awesome helmet cam footage!

Video Description:

Initial attack and rescue attempts captured on HD quality video using a Contour Helemt Cam on the helmet of a Rescue Company Officer. Rescue was returning from another structure fire when they were dispatched to an apartment fire. What appeared as a routine fire changed when crews arrived on scene and excited family and neighbors reported as many as 5 people trapped. The footage is raw and unedited

[rescue40 30]

That Video Is Horrible Not awesome. No Agressive Primary Search, Taken Forever To Get Packed Up, One The worst Hose stretch on Youtube. Maybe If He didnt worry so much about his helmet cam more would have got done.

[firedude 985]

That Video Is Horrible Not awesome. No Agressive Primary Search, Taken Forever To Get Packed Up, One The worst Hose stretch on Youtube. Maybe If He didnt worry so much about his helmet cam more would have got done.

Awesome helmet cam footage!

I said the footage is awesome, didn't say anything about the tactics used.

[Bull McCaffrey 162]

I said the footage is awesome, didn't say anything about the tactics used.

What's so awesome about it?

[antiquefirelt 994]

Uh...nevermind, my mother told me if I had nothing good to say, I should keep it to myself.

[sfrd18 360]

I saw it earlier today. I thought at first it was just me, but it really wasn't all that awesome. Let's just say it wasn't a terrific example of the proper methods for firefighting.

[firedude 985]

What's so awesome about it?

I think it has Great Quality and it has a HD resolution. It shows a great firefighter point of view, whether he did his job corectly or not. Constructive criticism is always welcome, so you are welcome to discuss what he did wrong and what he should have done.

[rayrider 94]

I think it has Great Quality and it has a HD resolution. It shows a great firefighter point of view, whether he did his job corectly or not. Constructive criticism is always welcome, so you are welcome to discuss what he did wrong and what he should have done.

What is awesome is the response time and the outcome of the fire. The tactics not so great but i am sure they will learn something from watching the video. Great example how important response time and manpower really is.

[bigrig77 95]

I am guessing that their lack of hose stretching skills is one thing. Hope they like meatballs with that spaghetti. Also i don't think they understand that they did a bad job. At the end during the post incident chat, they are all like high fives and good jobs. Unlike alot of other helmet cam vids, there were people trapped inside! These guys are just tunnel visioned like you would not believe. Some great yard breathing, the guy gives away the TIC only to take it back like 4 sec later. Did he ever transfer command? At around the 6 min mark he runs outside says lets do a search, then runs back in. The foot stomp style was nice. could have used a can or the hose. Ignore the fire over there, no big deal. As one last WTF, at 16:30 mark he talks about not hearing the kid cause of "radio traffic", when you re-watch that part it is like crickets on the radio. That's tunnel vision right there.

On the upside no one was killed and "everyone goes home"

[antiquefirelt 994]

On the constructive side , maybe I'm not seeing the newest trends but are their SCBA's Euro styled with attach hoods or are they just wearing hoods over the masks and leaving them on the masks?

[cbfire25 9]

I am going to have to agree with firedude... This is an "awesome" video, but perhaps not for the reasons stated.

Lets face it, runs are up for all of us but fires are down. The vast majority of us will only see a fire or two a year, depending if we happen to be working a particular shift or happen to be able to respond to the firehouse that day. Most firefighters, especially the younger members in our ranks, simply do not and can not have the necessary fire experience to be effective, intellegent firefighters on the fireground today. I see a disturbing trend, especially among the volunteer fire service, of increasingly young junior and chief officers that do not have the benefit of heavy fire experience. Whenever we do have a fire, we need to allow the majority of our fellow firefighters from our own department to gain some of the benefit of the experience that the members on scene had. The helmet cam is a very powerful tool that we have at our disposal for training. Hear me out for a minute.

I lived at a firehouse while I was at college, and last year was a lieutenant for my last year of service. One of my fellow live-ins aquired a helmet cam and we made a pact among ourselves that we would use the footage for training and that none of it would find its way to the internet. We were trying to get as much experience out of each fire to benefit ourselves and to improve our quality of service to the community. We did, after all, join to provide professional, quality fire protection to the community. All firefighters share that common goal, and it is our duty to constantly improve ourselves throughout our careers. We managed to get several fires on video from the perspective of the backup man on the first due engine where I was the officer. This was a very important tool for my self evaluation to observe my actions from someone elses point of view so that I could improve my own effectiveness at crew managment and fire tactics. For the guys who missed the fire, these videos became a great tool for 'coffee break' training any time around the fire department, as they could see the conditions presented to the first arriving units and understand what they should be looking for, the decisions that were made, what worked, and what didn't work.

Before I go on, I will openly admit that the helmet cams do have some downfalls, especially when interior on a job. Helmet cams can't give you the experience of high heat, how to feel your way through a smokey job, or the pucker factor of having a floor sag on you. That is what good, quality hands on training and real fire experience give you. However, there are many little things that you can take from these videos.

Tactics aside, lets take a look at this video. It is from the perspective from the first arriving special service officer, who takes initial command. Now, hopefully, when the boys went home after this one, they weren't still patting themselves on the back. I think we all agree that this video was a cluster. Thats not my point though. Lets take the officer's control of his men under inspection. I am in no way a Monday morning quarterback, rather this is the way that I would evaulate myself if I was the officer in this video. Lets take for example his giving orders around 2:50. He gives the order to 'Go VES upstairs'. This order lacks specifity, we can all agree that is not an effectively communicated order. VES is a directed manuever, you are supposed to narrow your search down. Blindly VESing may or may not get the desired result of finding a victim. So this officer takes away from this video that he needs to more effectively communicate with his crew. They can sit down afterwards and go over what they need to improve on so that next time their customer service will be better. These are the sort of things that should be taken away from these videos.

The most effective members to have helmet cams are company officers and the IC. Heres an example of quick training that an instructor can make from helmet cam footage to help instruct future IC's on what to look for at a fire to help them develop their own strategy. Again, we have to face the fact that most of our officers, unless you run in a major city department, dont have a great deal of experience learning first hand how to be an effective IC

This sort of training can be run through quickly between runs, and can be very effective.

I will say, however, for all the firefighters who post these videos up so that they can feel like bada$e$, they are clearly missing the point. We are in this line of business for the good and protection of the general public, no matter what department we are employed by or volunteer at. Posting these videos on youtube is just asking for a kick in the rear, the rest of the world doesn't care how great of a firefighter you are or the things that you've done. We have all been there, keep it to yourself and learn from the footage. Help yourself and your brothers become better at what we do, don't post these for personal gain. And for all the internet firefighters who take their time to pick apart these videos for PPE violations, etc, please, the rest of us are not stupid, we see all see the same things. I feel that this is where helmet cams get a bad rap in the first place.

Thats just my 0.02. I'm young, and clearly invincible, so I would welcome if someone could knock me down to size on this issue. Am I missing something, or is this not a great tool to improve our customer service?

[PFDRes47cue 653]

If kept in the right hands and used appropriately, the footage caught on helmet cameras and other on-scene recording devices can be used as g training tool and provide firefighters with an opportunity to provide constructive criticism and to learn from past experiences. I know that in my department at school, firefighters are permitted to wear helmet cams if they wish, but this footage is for PERSONAL use only and department use if the videos owner allows. This footage does not leave the owners hand, which IMHO is the only way to go about it appropriately. As with mostly everything, there is an appropriate and inappropriate way to utilize it, it all boils down to being smart and thinking twice before making a careless decision.