The clock at an incident is a very important thing to monitor. The company officer can perform several critical safety observations relating to time. Use of a dispatch-based time-tracking announcement may be helpful in making everyone at the incident more aware of their surroundings. Air management, length of time a fire has been burning, and progress indicators inside a building can all be measured against an elapsed time clock.
The major variable, however, is always the time the fire was burning before the fire department was notified. This is a major safety point that needs to be estimated and may indicate how long companies can safely operate in the building. Always side with crew safety and allow extra margins of escape time during unstable incidents.
Download this week’s firefighter training drill as a PDF HERE.
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