Chief Ray Hoff's B.A.G. It

Copied out the Fire Engineering article Remembering Chief Ray Hoff...

Ray translated his lifetime of experience on the fireground to practical common sense instruction for all firefighters . In his own words, he said:

“I have used my experiences as a training tool to make impact in our classes of officer and firefighter training. The size-up process is a process which you take a look at the structure, the fire condition, smoke conditions, the type of the construction of the building, the type of fire behavior in that construction, and you pick a plan and go to work. And you commit personnel and equipment to closeness and interior operations based on that knowledge.

What we stress is that, in your size-up, that you read the building, read the smoke, read the fire. That you “B.A.G.” it: which is an acronym for figuring out where the fire’s Been, where it’s At, and where it’s Going. Then you set your strategy and tactics in place. Then you start that whole evaluation process over again. And you train the company officers and firefighters to be more aware of their surroundings, and when they discover things as they open up walls and ceilings, to feed that new information back into the system, so that reevaluations and judgments can be updated.”