antiquefirelt

I'm personally not a big fan of Metz aerials for most places, but from what I know of Spring Valley, it's as close to a perfect fit as any in a non-rural setting. The Metz excels at maneuverability due to it's size and weight. Couple this with an ALF MM tower down the street just a few blocks, some sort of aerial a few more blocks from that and at least another MM Peirce tower on the other end of town, and you have a truck that can get a position where the other can't. Nice to have that ability even if the actual functionality is somewhat limited.

Not to be the wet blanket, but it doesn't look like L4 got a very good spot to me? Looks like it's well off the incoming corner and the pics look as if the aerial wasn't able to place the FFer's where they needed to be to effect any real vent? Maybe there's some time missing in the pics where the aerial went closer to the ridge and the vent is part of what's burning in later shots?I'm not saying it wasn't a good job, and the ground laddering is a refreshing sight, but I'm skeptical on the aerial. No good deed goes unpunished. Sorry, I'm an ordained minister in the Church of the Painful Truth.

So you're committing between 6-8 firefighters to the first line? Huh, must be pretty important to get water on the fire!
I like to use you guys (FDNY) as an example when teaching/speaking about the importance of the first line. If FDNY uses the first two engines to ensure placement of the first line, why are much less staffed FD's stretching multiple lines before the first is even flowing? Far too often we see small career, combo or volunteer FD's assign two firefighters to the the first line. These guys beat themselves up in good shape if the fire is above the first floor and around ore than one corner from the entrance door, yet helping this line becomes secondary to the "all important" back-up line, who by now is more likely to be needed.

So you're committing between 6-8 firefighters to the first line? Huh, must be pretty important to get water on the fire!
I like to use you guys (FDNY) as an example when teaching/speaking about the importance of the first line. If FDNY uses the first two engines to ensure placement of the first line, why are much less staffed FD's stretching multiple lines before the first is even flowing? Far too often we see small career, combo or volunteer FD's assign two firefighters to the the first line. These guys beat themselves up in good shape if the fire is above the first floor and around ore than one corner from the entrance door, yet helping this line becomes secondary to the "all important" back-up line, who by now is more likely to be needed.

Two companies for each line is another thing you might have seen. First due, first line. Second due assists with the stretch of the 1st.

Helmet Cam Video: N.J. FF's Close Call
http://www.firehouse.com/topics/top-headlines/helmet-cam-video-nj-ffs-close-call
I don't even know where to start with this video. I'm usually the one saying it's easy to Monday morning qb and giving the benifit of the doubt but I think a good discussion on safety can be learned from this.
Right off the bat
1. We see the fire in and to the left. Yet there's a bunch of guys with a line and the nozzle on the little porch creating a traffic jam putting their regulators in. Get off to the side out of the venting smoke on a knee get your PPE squared away bleed the nozzle make entry and put out the fire.
2. A discussion is ongoing about who's inside how many? Obviously there are accountability issues. You must know who you have and a general idea where they are.
3. I hear a pass alarm going off as the guy is making his way to the back. Is anyone addressing it?
4. Why is a line operating from the exterior while interior operations are underway?
5. Obviously companies have been on scene at least a little while and a FAST and additional companies are being requested. This should have been requested quickly. We are more than 2 minutes into the video.
6. Differing people giving orders and they are contridictory. Honestly it looks to me as if the first and subsuquent lines should have gone through the front door. This is a basic concept. Protect the interior stairs and the escape route of the occupants. As the subsuquent lines come in they reinforce the first line, back it up, or go above for extension. This is a pretty fundamental concept of firefighting.
7. Now a member shows up in the window. They decide to move the ladder which under the circumstances is necessary.
8. Guy in the window has a haligan. He should have taken the window and the sash. I probably would have bought his some time by venting the heat and smoke a couple of feet above him while he waited for the ladder.
9. If you don't practice the basics like portable ladders it shows when the S* hits the fan. If you are going to ask the guy to come down head first the angle should have been decreased and footed. With all the people there with the ladder why didn't someone ascend to help the member down? You could have gone up and pinned the guy to the ladder for the descent. It wouldn't have been pretty but he probably wouldn't have fell.
10. Now the guy falls head first off the ladder. He is now out of the IDLH and immediate danger. I would have brought EMS back to him or had FF/EMTs board him. There was no good reason to handle him by dragging him to the front. It's a good idea at this point to question the downed FF about who was with him and their whereabouts.
11. Now the MAYDAY, first a roll call or PAR is needed a minute ago, assign a chief to supervise the mayday and give him resources and get him on another channel.
12. The practice of donning the facepiece without the regulator and walking around the fireground limits your field of vision greatly. Practice taking your knee and donning your facepiece and hood just prior to entering the IDLH. It allows you to see what your doing prior to entering, keeps your mask from fogging up, and limits your air consumption. At this fire its appears some firefighters may have used up their air prior to even operating inside.
My conclusions may not be entirely correct on all these items but this in no way seems like a smoothly run fire. No doubt these guys were faced with a working fire with entrappment and probably inadequete initial manpower. But if you train for the fundamental tasks you will be more efficent when adrenilin and emotions are high. Ever go to a fire when the fire department seems to be running the operation and not the fire running the fire department?

I can appreciate this sentiment, but I have found this same statement is usually made time and again in reference to ICS programs and NIMS. Anyone who's taught ICS in many areas will have heard,"We don't really need all this BS, because when the real Big Job" happens, we'll pull together and get it done. We always have."Time and again, far more areas all over the country run large scale incident drills only to have major holes found in their plans.Sadly, second and third exercises often reveal most of the previously identified issues have not been corrected. As BNECHIS pointed out, drills tend to show that it takes far longer to get the first critical patient to the appropriate facility that we'd ever consider. Time and again, unit to unit communication cannot take place off the main channels, many agencies fail to follow basic ICS principles and fail to understand them despite mandated training, and a failure of a true Unified Command system leading to multiple individual incident command systems. It seems all agencies have their hands out when the money and equipment is being passed out, but asking them to live up to the expectation that they can function in a 21st century IC system still alludes them.
This is not the case everywhere, but I know we see it in the Northeast corner. Maybe our forefathers set us up for this by imposing a strong sense of "home rule", but we're finding that in emergency services failure to work together well will cause problems. The best thing you folks have going for you there is that a healthy number of people are interacting many times a week, discussing problems. I could only wish the people in our area would even admit there are issues with covering calls, second and third tones, training deficiencies and the silly number of apparatus as compared to the number of incidents.

Not to toss a negative into an otherwise positive thread, but I feel this warrants a word of caution. I'd be highly skeptical of using a dog leash or anything "clipped" to another person. If something happens to the partner with the loop like falling into a hole the FF with the clipped on end will not be able to release it. Similarly if there was a localized collapse between the two of you. A similar tactic can be to use a piece of webbing/line that each of you holds the end of. I'd be very careful clipping anything that could not be immediately released, under emergency conditions. At 5-6 ft. I think I 'd prefer to verbally communicate, as anything of any weight, even a coffee table or kitchen chair, will slow you up as you are forced to come together and figure out how to pass. There are times when "buddy lines" should be used and others where they can be trouble.

I was teaching that to some probies when one of them said: "Im from the city, no rabbits, no trees but lots of pot holes"
So I said; "the drunk firefighter came out of the bar, staggered to the curb where he grabbed on to a street sign. He saw his wife driving up the road. He started to run, but forgot to let go of the sign, until he had spun around it and saw the bar. He let go of the sign and ran back into the bar......."
He no longer had a problem with the bowline.

First and foremost I am against the idea of a special team within a department as your FAST/RIT. I believe that this important aspect of training should be started at the basic level, and built on from there right along side of other firefighting skills. Every single member of your department needs to be able to function as the FAST/RIT.
This is for two main reasons, as Izzy pointed out, statistics have shown that a crew member involved in Firefighter removal WILL get hurt, which will require an additional crew. In both the basic and advanced RIT classes I took at the CT Academy, each evolution required MULTIPLE crews to complete. In a career department, at least in theory, all crews have an equal chance of being assigned as the FAST/RIT. In a volunteer department, manpower is so much of a variable that there is no promise of your special team getting to the scene at all, let alone together and at the same time. The very concept of saying we have 50 guys on scene but only 6 of them are RIT qualified goes against the very principle of saving ones own.
Most if not all of the skills normally associated with FAST/RIT are built upon the basics of firefighting. Search and rescue skills are part of FF1, as are ropes & knots. They are a simple but obvious progression of FF1 anyway, and really do not add that much time onto a class. The basics can be covered in 8-16 hours. That is two days or four nights. In the general scheme of training, that is not a long time at all. As for ongoing training, there are two ways to maintain proficiency, first is to add some FAST/RIT drills into the schedule in frequent enough rotation. The second is to include FAST/RIT evolutions into existing drills. Both methods can be used in concert with each other, also.
I agree with basic EMS training but for a different reason. One aspect of EMS training is patient lifting and moving. While I am not suggesting that the same time is taken with patient packaging inside a fire environment that is taken at other times, knowing his information from the EMS perspective and not just from the lifting and carrying chapter of FF1 can be helpful. Anything we can do to minimize the injuries to the Firefighter being rescued is a good thing. As for the CPR aspect, I would hope that in that scenario, the patient is being handed off to someone else, either an EMS crew or another fire crew. Remember that in basic CPR training, we can stop performing under physical exhaustion. I would bet that after being the FAST/RIT one is physically exhausted or at least closer to being there than they otherwise would have been. As long as manpower allows for it, handing off to a fresh crew, is all part of providing the best care possible.
Seniority can be a mixed factor. While experience is beneficial, so is training. Very often (although not always), the newer younger members are the ones who seek out and attend formal training, while senior members are the one who have seen and done more. I am of the opinion that neither is better or worse. Look at all the recent health and wellness initiatives that have come up in the fire service. Someone starting off in the fire service will see this as the norm, while those who have been in the service for a while will see this as an innovation and possibly a hurdle to be overcome. I know members of departments that don't see the value of FAST/RIT and think of it as some new fad. Those members would make a poor FAST/RIT to some but also probably have performed more searches and/or rescues than the so called FAST/RIT specialists.

When we replaced our aging straight stick we knew we were going to get a tower. Hands down, no question we felt that the bucket offered increased safety on numerous operations. The next question was MM or RM. We looked very hard and found the MM to be better for our application for a few reasons:
1. We have a narrow downtown district that requires the aerial length to be as short as possible to out it on the sidewalk or for use on lower floors. Maybe not the end of the world, but the ability to use the aerial master stream on lower floors at an upward angle was a big plus for our aging district where attached ordinary construction with considerable breaches between buildings rules the day. An aggressive knockdown could be the difference between one building and the block. MM's have 4 or 5 sections whereas RM often are only 3, sometimes 4, making the off the side distance far greater.
2. While you only need the lower 2/3's of the windshield for most of the driving time, the RM bucket obstructs your vision for viewing the fire building and slows positioning. Also, on crowded streets with lighted intersections seeing the color of the light can be handy to say the least. BTW, these observation are not just ours, we talked to tons of FD's about their aerials, likes and dislikes.
3. Station size issues: We couldn't fit most RM's in our 12 foot doors due to a slight grade on the apron. This in fact keeps our MM out of two bays on one end now and it's only 9'10" tall. (IIRC)
4. We didn't like having to climb up the rear and walk the length of the aerial with tools to access the bucket. With the MM, one guy climbs up and directly into the bucket and the second passes the saws and tools from the compartment adjacent to the access ladder. Small detail, but nonetheless was discussed.
5. Scrub area. While a RM can work of the rear at a greater length, it must be close to 90 degrees to the body before it can be brought to the ground forward of the turntable itself. This reduces scrub area. Short of being in an open lot where you can back in, most of our downtown requires a set close to perpendicular to the building face. The MM with the shorter aerial length excels at close in sweeping of the lower floors. Most of the time turning the cab just 20 degrees off the centerline on arrival allows us to either get two sides of the building or one long face from sidewalk to roof line.
This is not a knock of RM's merely pointing out the strengths we saw to the MM that effected our decision top buy one. Of course it helped that our hired consultant also suggested the aerial stick be replaced with a MM tower. But that was only the final nail in the coffin on other designs.

I know that quite often the "tailslap" of the MM can make driving them in tight streets a little tougher. The amount of body behind the rear wheels can be very long and it's not hard to smack a car or street signs as you make a tight turn. Having the majority of the excess in front of you at least lets you see where your putting it. I know other RM proponents like the ability to nose in and set up with little rotational movement, where a MM might require 90 degree or greater rotation if you can't pull past or take the time to back in. Also I think the OAL is shorter on RM's in general as the length of the cab is used to eat up some aerial length, whereas the MM starts behind the cab? Of course most MM's have one to two more sections than standard three section RM's.
It would be easier for me to say what I don't like about RM's but of course I am biased, having a MM as my first due aerial.

Again my issue is if a member does not have FAST training then they are not an interior qualified firefighter.
Yes it is part of the career academy. Just because it is not included does not mean a department can't or should not require it.
When we talk about the different training standards, I find it amazing that any chief would consider sending a member (his "brother") into a working fire without having been trained in survival. And not requiring them to know what to do if a "brother" gets in trouble.
So based on previous postings and OFPC's discription of FAST, we have departments that are willing to send members into burning buildings that do not know how do the above listed skills. Why bother having a fire department at all, it is clear that these departments do not care about there members or the public if they are so willing to put themselves at risk, because 16 hours is way to much time to invest in ones brother.
PLEASE THINK LONG AND HARD ABOUT THIS....IF YOUR DEPARTMENT ALLOWS THIS, IT NEEDS TO CHANGE TODAY.

I think 16fire 5 said it well that if you are using your RIT or FAST for other assignments, your first alarm is inadequate. That being said, some many tasks a on the fireground demand immediate action that having a crew doing a secondary task, while a primary one fails to be completed may create the need for the RIT.
BNECHIS, again shines some light on the real issue. At some point FAST and RIT cannot be specialty duties. These things must be part of our basic training. In the above scenario, it sounds like the FD determined it did not have enough trained FAST FFer's to deploy. That means that potentially no one was readily standing by for rescue? What is worse, interior qualified guys with no RIT certs standing by or no one at all? Are we letting these non-RIT certified guys lead off a fire attack or perform search?
Are some dept's keeping their best guys outside to rescue their own, while sending in the second string to look for citizens? WTF! Time for a check of priorities, training and reality. If I keep my best outside for RIT, I increase the chances they'll be needed. If I send them in, my RIT will be those firefighters who still are trained and qualified to rescue citizens which we are, except we have handles to grab on (SCBA harness).
As my boss says,"Don't let perfect be the enemy of good". In other words something today is better than taking years to develop the perfect FAST that requires proper celestial alignment.

What exactly are these FAST skills so many of you are talking about? I'd like to see a list of the types of skills required to be a FAST member. And should the lack of these skills prevent firefighters from attempting to assist other firefighters in need?
Many years ago I attended a fireground survival/RIT program in Providence, RI. One of the rotations was a small group discussion about functional RIT with John Norman and Butch Cobb. They specifically asked what each persons' FD was doing about RIT. Of course being over 10 years ago the answers were all over the board and less than favorable. One career firefighter froma small FD noted his FD had no trust that the local VFD's could provide them with RIT trained personnel and therefore had no RIT program as career staff was too limited to have crews standing fast. Both Norman and Cobb, jumped in and asked if maybe any SCBA certified firefighter would be better than no one? A decent discussion followed to which most of us agreed that any firefighter with basic interior training would be far better than no one. Hard to disagree with. This should not be an excuse not to conduct more training, but instead should establish a baseline to build from.
You need people ready to react, but requiring advanced training to the point that you cannot field a RIT in a reasonable amount of time is asking for trouble. So while you have highly certified and equipped FAST it does little good in the station or only on drill nights.
For those of you with LE background, think of this as the "active shooter" scenario. Far too few PD's could field a SWAT team in time so procedures have changed to ensure routine LEO's can react rapidly to dynamic incidents.

It seems form IAs that westchester departments are calling FAST teams on a regular basis. Continually I point out that the FAST is put to work for non FAST duties. If this is happening its probably points to the fact that the first alarm assignment is not adequete. The IC should plan to have crews in reserve on scene to perfom the tasks needed to avoid using the FAST. Depending on the department in addition to calling for a FAST on the working fire simulataeously requesting an extra engine and truck would provide this reserve. If you operating at a working fire and all hands are working and no one is there in reserve you are not prepared. I could understand the arguement of limited resources or mutual aid being too far away if this was Wyoming but we are talking about Westchester County. The NFPA 1710 recomendations are the minimum resources needed to combat a fire I think adding an extra engine and truck to that is being adequetly prepared for the realities of the fireground. There are many added benifits like giving the first due guys a blow and think of the experince the the probies from mutual aid get doing the washdown and getting to find out how first due handled the fire they were confronted with. I am continually impressed with our chief officers abilities to stay ahead of a fire and request resources before the need arises. That is the benifit of and experienced incident commander and why one is invaluable.

In my experience the one thing that gives pump operators the hardest time is actually flowing lines or devices at the proper flow. Many whether it be in training or on the street tend to be underflowed which can be dangerous. Any issues with foam tends to be a training issue which lends itself to operators forgetting what to do. Which is just as much on their shoulders as the departments.
If anything having an understanding of whatever system you are going to flow foam through is important. How hard is it to get foam? How is it the apparatus? Or the eductor? Any of the questions I just asked again in my experiences come down to the following answers....
1. Its not hard to get foam particularly with an eductor if you know what your doing. Put the eductor right on a discharge and give it the 200 psi most need. Ensure that the nozzle GPM that you are using matches the GPM on the eductor. Wanna put 50' of hose off the panel..whatever flips your boat but remember you can only have 150' in the system and the nozzle can not be more then 6' above the eductor. I prefer and recommend putting the eductor right on the discharge as it is easier to get your 200 psi accurately with a minimal friction loss coming right to the discharge.
2. The apparatus? Or again I don't know what I'm doing or I forgot so lets dismiss something else as being the problem. With the exception of some glitches I've seen in earlier CAFS systems I've never had an issue with an apparatus that wasn't maintenance issue.
3. The eductor? Again most problems encountered are maintenance issues, particularly not cleaning them properly or thoroughly after last use, not getting the right inlet Psi to achieve a venturi, or air leaks in the eductor. Around the pump proportioners are a different beast but again, there is foam tank that can coagulate or the opening where the foam gravity feeds into the pump casing could be clogged.
A couple of other pointers:
To maintain un-interrupted foam delivery, get a bucket and keep pouring the foam from the buckets into it. That way you don't have to lift the siphon tube every time you run low.
If you are serious about foam delivery issues...2 buckets isn't going to do much of anything.

I have lived my entire life in the nyc area and I have never seen a "Tefillin" in my life. If a guy like me who grew up in an area with more Jews than anywhere outside Israel doesn't know what they are, how is a 25 year old stewardess from Kansas with a junior college degree and an 8 hour course in diversity gonna know what they are?

Our newest pumper has an enclosed side mount panel. It is also a rearmount pump and the pump enclosure does have a floor in it. This obviously cuts down on the amount of dirt and grit that coats the actuation controls (yes their all manual valves). It also features a 40,000 btu auxiliary heater in the pump enclosure. The operators have been praising it this winter as it is very warm in the pump compartment so they're fairly happy standing there when it's cold.
All of our previous pumpers and two current top mounts have had removable "trays" under the pump for winter operations. This allowed a little more that retention in the pump enclosure and cut down on the dirt, slush and salt that got into the actuation mechanicals of the pump. In the spring these trays are removed too allow the pump to cool.
ALS: Don't you love the wind chill factor? We seem to need to re-educate people a few times every winter that the windchill is not making their car start harder. It's great when you tell someone that the windchill only effects living creatures and they give you the "dog hearing a high pitched whistle" look! Joking aside, the wind has some limited effect on objects as it carries away the warmer air faster allowing the object to reach the ambient air temp quicker, but the object will never go below the actual temperature no matter how hard the wind blows.

I forgot to mention that in our system we do no data entry during the call. All reports are generated on desktops using a web based program. The EMS crew has access to computers at the ER for this as well as all the desktops in the station. Our people use notepads or photocopies of the old paper reports to record data until they get to a desktop.
Most EMS agencies around us (vol. or per diem) have laptops in their ambulances for generating reports, but after a few short months, most use the desktops in the ED or at their bases.
I attribute the failure of the laptops use to a few things:
First, the laptops are difficult to disinfect properly and are handled by persons wearing gloves used on multiple patients all day (gross)
Second, the State in their infinite wisdom uses a different version of the software which is far less user friendly, though neither is all that easy to manipulate well.
Third, people realized they were far less likely to pay proper attention to their pateints while struggling with data entry.

From the admin side of things I'd offer that EPCR's are not a good idea. Our dept. went to all EPCR's about three years ago, one year ahead of the rest of our state, who now all must submit electronically.
The issue is that with our EPCR program there are drop downs and boxes that don't always fit the situation, with no way to edit. So the reporting gets a little less accurate. Next, as we all know (I hope) if you don't document it, it didn't happen. In the case of the EPCR, if there isn't a box or drop down, it must not be worth mentioning, so things go undocumented. Lastly, the narratives suffer greatly as you need only add things you did not already document, but that makes the narratives far harder to follow with accuracy.
We require our personnel to do the same narrative they used on the paper reports and have not allowed the use of the "Narrative Generator". But in general we have found that the reports suffer overall in the accuracy of documenting the actual situations and patient.
One my be inclined to think it's our personnel and lack of oversight, but I assure you we QA/QI 100% of our reports well above the state mandate hold regular training on documentation and discipline personnel for poor reporting. The same procedures that made our people excellent report writers on paper, have continued, but in all the "auto, easy, menu system" leads to degradation of documentation.

I forgot to mention that in our system we do no data entry during the call. All reports are generated on desktops using a web based program. The EMS crew has access to computers at the ER for this as well as all the desktops in the station. Our people use notepads or photocopies of the old paper reports to record data until they get to a desktop.
Most EMS agencies around us (vol. or per diem) have laptops in their ambulances for generating reports, but after a few short months, most use the desktops in the ED or at their bases.
I attribute the failure of the laptops use to a few things:
First, the laptops are difficult to disinfect properly and are handled by persons wearing gloves used on multiple patients all day (gross)
Second, the State in their infinite wisdom uses a different version of the software which is far less user friendly, though neither is all that easy to manipulate well.
Third, people realized they were far less likely to pay proper attention to their pateints while struggling with data entry.

Response times are often an accurate barometer of what the community has collectively decided to pay for. It doesn't take knowing this job to understand that it will take volunteers longer to respond when they have to come from home. Now that that is understood, it's no stretch to understand that the longer the emergency goes without intervention, the greater the chance of serious injury, deaths and greater property loss. The problem is when "we" confuse what we are capable of with the resources we've been given. Not all of us can fulfill every aspect of emergency work 100%, yet we seem to falsely act as if we can, giving a flase sense of security to the citizens.

Response times are often an accurate barometer of what the community has collectively decided to pay for. It doesn't take knowing this job to understand that it will take volunteers longer to respond when they have to come from home. Now that that is understood, it's no stretch to understand that the longer the emergency goes without intervention, the greater the chance of serious injury, deaths and greater property loss. The problem is when "we" confuse what we are capable of with the resources we've been given. Not all of us can fulfill every aspect of emergency work 100%, yet we seem to falsely act as if we can, giving a flase sense of security to the citizens.

I've been to a fair share of chimney fires and we still find zip lock baggies of dry chem work best in most cases. We will put out the fire in the stove/fireplace, then drop the bags. We have a chimney chain we also use once the fire is extinguished. We also often use snowballs when available and find they work as well as dry chem bombs without being too much and cracking the liner like the booster reels. Last trick is the use of a cast iron pan of water in the stove: snuffs both the fire in the stove and the chimney. Thankfully our chimney runs have been way down in the last few years.
I must say I've never stretched or seen a line stretched to the roof and would be slightly concerned with charging the line while being up there, and pushing guys off? We do carry a piece of 1.75" six feet long with a fog tip in the Tower bucket for whatever need that arises, but never seen it used or asked for it on a chimney. Really just there for clearing up eaves/soffit issues.