BY TOM BRENNAN
An excited woman runs to the fire station door opening and gets the firefighters’ attention with her screams in somewhat broken English. Every seven words create an emergency: ” … fire … house … trapped … screams ….”
“Oh, my God! It’s just around the corner!”
The firefighters have come to a high attention level. They run to the apparatus and don their protective clothing. The officer, fire clothing and portable radio donned, signals the driver to go and picks up the speakerphone of the department console radio. He notifies the dispatcher that he is responding to a verbal alarm for a structure fire and requests full assignment with an extra truck and engine.
“What is the location?” is the question coming out of the crackling radio.
“Duh,” is the word that comes to the lieutenant’s mind. No smoke, no smell, no nothing, and the sounds of emergency response vehicles are wailing in the night.
What is the lesson? Well, there are actually two lessons. The second lesson is, Don’t escalate the assignment in excitement until you first see the location in question. I have witnessed very experienced first-line supervisors (and some of the other kind, too) panic-call everyone available only to make the top of the hill to a fully involved convertible automobile.
The first lesson is trickier, and probably many of you won’t agree with it. But it (like many other lessons) comes from messing up more often than most. It is simple: Take the verbal alarm reporter with you! The vital information may be garbled and mistaken and incomplete in fine points, such as the block of the emergency, while you are “rushing the apron.” Your calm manner and time will help to improve the situation. The dispatcher has to know only that you are responding to an investigation, period-at least for a little while.
Along with that line of thought, what about the person on the near-scene of a structure fire? Do you take the time to find out what he is really shouting about and pointing to? Or, do you just give lip service out of comprehensive hearing range, wave an arm, and stumble on, never learning what they knew? You cannot believe the amount of time and data that can be gained by taking the time to gently and calmly understand what the witness is saying.
Many times, that screaming person is on a sidewalk or in the staircase of the fire apartment announcing that his or her child (any other word for small person) is trapped. “Get him, Mr. Firefighter.”
As you dash from the immediate vicinity of the screamer, it will help if you can get one other piece of information, the name of the “child.” If you get “George” or “Marilyn” or “Gwenn” or “Steve,” you have an additional search tool-being able to call a personal name as you perform your primary search with a more heightened commitment and risk factor.
But if the name comes back as “Spot,” “Feathers,” “Tabby,” or “Simba,” you can shake your head and be comfortable in the new knowledge that you will now be more orderly in your tactical maneuvers.
“Hey kid,” shouts the old-timer with four and three-quarters years on the job, “never carry your hook (pike pole) with the point up!”
“Oops,” you think, “how dumb!” Well, you have two things on your side for doing this now. One is never trust the information that begins with “Never!” The second thing is me! When must you carry the tip of your hook pointing up?
When going up a staircase or fire escape or when climbing portable or aerial ladders-and again, in the room that you plan to overhaul or enter to help another with overhaul. But always in an elevator. If it is needed, you will never have it in the working position unless you first stop before entering the car and reverse the carry with the hook upright.
Another time to carry the pole with the hook pointing up is when you use it to complete the roof cut. You must push the top-floor ceiling down and out of the vertical flue you just created. Hook up, handle down is the way to do that-that is, if you want to get your hook back out of the hole and not have it jerked out of your hand.
TOM BRENNAN has more than 35 years of fire service experience. His career spans more than 20 years with the Fire Department of New York as well as four years as chief of the Waterbury (CT) Fire Department. He was the editor of Fire Engineering for eight years and currently is a technical editor. He is co-editor of The Fire Chief’s Handbook, Fifth Edition (Fire Engineering Books, 1995). He is the recipient of the 1998 Fire Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award. Brennan is featured in the video Brennan and Bruno Unplugged (Fire Engineering/FDIC, 1999).
