BY RAY MCCORMACK
Conducting live-burn training at acquired structures using Class A burn materials is serious business. The record of injuries that occur when certain safety measures aren’t followed is well documented. The standard for these training events is National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1403, Standard on Live-Fire Training Evolutions. When running a live burn, you should not only comply with the standard but also exceed it relative to overall safety. Safe training at a live-fire event necessitates many things-most importantly, instructors who are well-versed in numerous disciplines, including safety, accountability, water supply, fire behavior, NFPA 1403, and common sense. In addition to these disciplines, instructors must tailor the complexity of the fire attack to the level of the student firefighters.
The lead instructor must strictly control the live-fire training event. Like any command matrix, good communications move up and down and are vital to safe operations. The lead instructor must approve variations from the original training plan. Any unforeseen developments that occur must be brought to the lead’s attention no matter how insignificant they may appear on the surface. The lead will then inform and consult the instructor staff of any changes so that everyone is operating on the same page. Like scuba diving, plan your dive, and dive your plan. If you don’t have a plan for the burn, you should not be conducting one.
To avoid a future live-burn training mishap that results in injury to the participants and has come to be known as the “crescendo fire,” instructors must avoid a common pitfall.
What is the crescendo fire? Let’s look at an example. The day’s burn plan calls for six fires. Five of the six burns have been completed, and all have been injury free. However, some of the fires were not as good as others. That may raise the question, What should we do for the last fire of the day?
Unfortunately, some may fall into the trap of saying, “The last fire should be the best.” How would you make it the “best” fire of the day? What would you do differently? The most common answer to that question usually is, “We will make it bigger and really get the fire going.” For that last fire to be the best would probably require a breach of NFPA 1403 and your overall safety plan. You might use extra burn materials and exceed the fire load standard or you might add materials whose level of flammability is unknown under the guise of “Let’s just get rid of this stuff.” Don’t do it!
If your instructors are sharp, their advice should be just the opposite: The last fire should be just like the previous fires. A live-burn training event should not have a grand finale finish like a fireworks display. Live-burn training fires should never grow to such a magnitude that your efforts to extinguish them place you at extreme risk. If some of your students or instructors don’t respond correctly, take the time to educate them about proper live-burn training techniques.
If the last burn of the day turns out to be the least spectacular fire of the day, consider it and all the other burns a success, and go home knowing that you provided a valuable and safe fire training program.
RAY MCCORMACK is a 25-year veteran of the Fire Department City of New York and a lieutenant with Engine 69 in Harlem. He has written numerous articles for Fire Engineering and is also a contributor to WNYF. He lectures frequently on engine and ladder company operations and the role of the company officer. He has presented at FDIC and is a H.O.T. instructor. He is the founder of Liveburntraining.com, specializing in fire service training and benefit seminars.
IT’S TIME TO GET SERIOUS ABOUT THE WAY WE DRIVE
BY JEFF COTNER
Are you one of those firefighters driving with the attitude that you own the road? (“I’m driving the big red truck; get out of my way because here I come.”) Do you drive your personal vehicle 90 miles per hour (mph) on the way to the firehouse? Are you a company officer who knowingly lets the fire truck be operated unsafely-without everyone’s wearing a seat belt or the driver’s driving too fast or not stopping for a red light or stop sign? Are you a chief who doesn’t have the guts to tell the new boots they are not mature enough to have a red light and siren in their vehicles? And, Chief, do you neglect to wear a seat belt or drive too fast? Have you ever heard about leading by example? (If you do it, then it’s okay for others to do it.) Think about that one.
We know that 25 percent of the line-of-duty deaths (LODDs) each year involve some type of driving incident. It’s time for the fire service to wake up and not tolerate this type of behavior. As emergency responders, the public expects us to respond as quickly as possible. But, we are not expected to take someone’s life in the process.
We also know that a large number of these line-of-duty vehicle-associated deaths are volunteer firefighters responding in personal vehicles and tankers. In either case, the primary cause of accidents is driving too fast, followed by driving with inadequate experience and training. The department chief who has volunteers responding from home needs to take a serious look at this issue. It’s time to review your standard operating guidelines (SOGs) on the types of runs for which you will allow members to respond to the station or to the scene. It’s time to tell those firefighters they are not allowed to respond with red lights and siren because they can’t do so responsibly. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone can or should drive an emergency vehicle.
This is difficult for some people to understand. We must learn to operate differently. We have to stop responding to every call as if it were a life-or-death situation. Does your department use the Emergency Medical Dispatch (EMD) program. Is your dispatcher asking the right questions that will help you determine the seriousness of the call? We need to stop racing other engine houses to the scene. We need to rethink sending three and four units of fire equipment on an emergency response to fire alarms. The national trend is to send the closest unit on an emergency and the remainder of the assignment as nonemergency. Fewer than 1 percent of those alarms are actually going to be problems for us. The other 99 percent are not.
Do you really think responding with red lights and siren drastically reduces your response time? Studies show that it reduces your response time by less than a minute and that stopping at all red lights and stop signs adds less than a minute to the total response time.
We operate in a lawsuit-happy society with attorneys just waiting for us to mess up. Recently, a California firefighter was arraigned on vehicular manslaughter for killing another firefighter in a crash involving a fire truck. An Ohio firefighter is being charged with vehicular manslaughter for killing a civilian. You can read every day about fire departments being sued because of vehicle crashes in which someone was killed or injured. As a result, firefighters and EMS personnel are being criminally charged and, in some cases, sent to jail. This is not what our line of work is all about. Let’s get serious and act now to save lives.
JEFF COTNER is a 23-year veteran of the fire service. He has served the past 16 years with the Bloom Township (OH) Fire Department, where he is a lieutenant. He is vice president of the Ohio Society of Fire Service Instructors and a fire training officer II with the Ohio Fire Academy.
