By Mark Cotter
We did our grandfathers proud at a fire last week. An early morning incident in a Victorian home of balloon construction presented hazards and challenges identical to those firefighters would have faced a hundred years ago. Originating in the kitchen of the two-and-a-half story wood-frame dwelling, fire was venting from the rear of sides B, C, and D on the arrival of the first engine, igniting the cedar shake siding and autoexposing the second floor.
The duty chief, having performed a size-up on his arrival, was positioned at the A/D corner to direct the attack. A five-inch supply line was laid from a hydrant as the first-in engine responded; two 1¾-inch-attack lines were deployed. Forcible entry was made through the front door (which had been sealed by the owners in a remodel), and the smoke and heat were blown back out the rear of the structure as the fire was extinguished. One attack line was stretched upstairs for a search (the occupants were away on vacation) while the second engine and truck provided additional personnel and support, ventilating and opening voids. The firefight was over in about 15 minutes.
Except for better windows and more electricity, the construction and contents of the dwelling had changed little over its lifetime. The fire’s rapid extinguishment, though, would have been unlikely in the old days. This demonstrates just how much the fire service has improved over the years. Those of us who have been around for awhile can remember a time when a fire like this–in fact, most any working fire–would have taken hours to bring under control.
When I was growing up, our hometown fire department was notified by pulling an alarm box that punched out a three-digit code, which in turn was blasted out by the fog horn on the central firehouse. This alerted volunteer and off-duty firefighters of the incident’s location. Even the occasional fire that was phoned in (callers had to dial “O” and ask the operator to connect them to our department–no small feat when the operator was located across the state) were signaled in this way, with the fire dispatcher tapping out the appropriate location code on the station’s telegraph system.
Riding on my bicycle with my brother, who had “discovered” the alarm signal system and secured a copy of the box locations and numbers, many a structure fire was still heavily involved when we arrived. Hoses would be snaked down the street and lines operated in multiple-window openings with thick smoke still pushing from within. Our well-equipped and well-staffed combination department would need most of a day or night to fully extinguish even a single-family dwelling fire, and pretty much everyone involved believed that that was the best that could be done.
武装现在与培训和经验”progressive” form of firefighting, and with the benefit of hindsight, the problems with the old approach can be clearly identified. Delays were caused by arriving without gear donned, firefighters waited to be repelled by smoke before even considering the use of breathing protection, and giving little, if any, consideration to proper task sequences–to mention a few. Also, fires were routinely fought from the exterior; firefighters rarely reached the seat of a fire and created clouds of steam and smoke that filled the fire building and further slowed any interior attack.
如今,如果消防队员花几个小时在一个occupancy fire, it’s usually waiting for investigators to arrive. The fire service has seen tremendous improvements in equipment and technology–our personal protective equipment (PPE) provides better protection, and apparatus design (thanks in no small part to my favorite attribute, the jumpseat) allows us to arrive with gear in place and tools in hand. Still, the most significant improvements in efficiency (read: speed of extinguishment) have come from the application of better firefightingtechniques.
We save time by requiring PPE be donned prior to response; wearing SCBA whenever an immediately dangerous to life and health environment is evenpossiblypresent; preparing for, and practicing, standard assignments; maintaining crew integrity; attacking from the unburned side when possible; coordinating teams with a unified command; and any of the other, (now) standard, proven practices that describe an ideal fire attack.
In my opinion, though, the real sea change in efficiency occurred when fireground management approaches such as these were integrated with the aggressive interior fire attack techniques being practiced for the most part by urban fire departments. I recall a fire in an old wooden barracks on a remote military installation nearly 30 years ago. The post fire department had arrived and was preparing for a defensive attack, resigned to allowing yet another of its old, wooden structures to burn to the ground.
Drilling at the base that week, however, was a contingent of reservists from Philadelphia; most were also career firefighters. They instinctively made an interior attack and quickly controlled the fire, using much less water and time than any exterior approach would have taken. Command integrity notwithstanding, the base firefighters had been shown a lesson in the efficiency of aggressive fire control tactics.
Similar techniques espoused by fire service leaders eventually caught on in departments of all sizes and makeup, and these tactics revolutionized structural firefighting. Occasionally still, some departments, for reasons particular to their setting (lack of trained personnel, inexperience, or plain old habit) will operate in a defensive mode at fires that many of us would deem worthy of at least an offensive attempt.
A recent incident demonstrated to me, yet again, the lengths that the fire service has come in developing a culture of aggressive, offensive fire attacks. A group of some of my department’s younger firefighters, returning from an out-of-town training session, came upon a fire in a rural area. The local department was on-scene, and its members were directing several hose streams through the home’s doors and windows, with resultant plumes of smoke and steam, but no real progress toward complete extinguishment.
Our firefighters offered their assistance to the incident commander (IC) to perform the tactics they saw were not being addressed (ventilation, search, interior fire attack); they were rebuffed with the statement, “The structure is too unstable.” Although the IC’s responsibility to safeguard firefighters is paramount, and his authority was not questioned in this situation, it was obvious to even our relatively inexperienced firefighters that the building was still structurally sound. They were completely baffled by the concept of a fire company that would choose such an inefficient approach.
The changes that have led to offensive becoming the default mode for most fire departments have been slow in coming, and such a mindset requires constant vigilance to ensure that it remains appropriate for the incident at hand (more on that in“From The Jumpseat: The Hazards of Aggression.”). Viewed from the perspective of a veteran of many years and departments, though, the almost universal acceptance of this strategy by fire companies big and small has been nothing short of incredible. The bravery of our forbearers in the fire service cannot be questioned, operating as they did with primitive extinguishment tools and virtually nonexistent safety equipment, but they would scarcely recognize and not easily adapt to the aggressive fireground milieu found in most jurisdictions today. Still, I think they’d be proud of us.
Mark Cotter joined the fire service more than 30 years ago and is a volunteer firefighter/EMT-B with the Salisbury (MD) Fire Department. Previously, he served with departments in New Jersey and Pennsylvania as an EMT-paramedic, an emergency services consultant, and a fire chief. He can be reached atfromthejumpseat@comcast.net.
