Companies Fight Fires in Classroom
A simulator put together by the San Jose, Calif., Fire Department provides realistic, multicompany fireground training in the classroom. After a year and a half of experience with it, the department’s training staff has high praise for the simulator’s value in several respects.
Said Battalion Chief Bill Murray, presently heading that staff, “The greatest thing has been the discussions following a simulator exercise. We all know there’s more than one way to fight a fire. The engineers and fire fighters of the various companies sit in on the action while their officers conduct the exercise. Afterward, everybody exchanges ideas. This keeps everybody thinking, realizing their ideas are just as valuable as the next man’s. There is no right and wrong here.”
A second benefit is the practice of proper radio procedures. Participants are “on the air” during the exercise, as all orders and responses flow back and forth via industrial mike/earphone sets. A “dispatcher” receives and transmits. If messages are spoken into a mike weakly, or garbled, they won’t get through any better in the classroom than on the fireground. These procedures also become subjects for discussion afterward.
Can test different ideas
A third value of the simulator is as a means of testing out new ways of doing things.
“If you want to try a procedure that isn’t regulation, do it here,” Murray has told the men. “Let’s see how it works.”
What does San Jose’s simulator consist of? There are three main elements:
- Two large screens at the front of the classroom. The fire building is projected on one screen and a plot plan on the other.
- An earphone headset and lip microphone apiece for 27 participants.
- A master controller desk with microphone, tape recorders, and other electronic gear for directing the exercise.
Operation of simulator
As many as six or eight fire companies, depending on the exercise, report to the simulator room. Officers of one group (usually a first-alarm assignment) take part in the exercise, while the others operate the simulator, assisted if necessary by the training center staff.
“At first,” Murray pointed out, “our school people had to run every exercise, and this was such a work load we couldn’t get other things done. But now, just about all officers in the department can easily do the job themselves.”
To brief the men on the particular incident to be studied, a Kodak AF-2 Carousel projector in the back of the room throws on screen 1 one or more slides of the building involved, highlighting the area of fire origin. This is usually a target hazard in the first-alarm district of the participating units.
On screen 2, a Bell & Howell 362 wide-angle overhead projector displays a large-scale map of the fire area, showing buildings, streets, hydrants, sprinkler valves, etc. A small blackboard between the screens is marked with such background details as company manning, time of day, weather and nature of the life hazard.
Arrival on fireground
Officers of the first-alarm assignment (normally two engines, one aerial, one battalion chief) are then sent out of the room to the vestibule, where two-way intercom contact is established between those officers and the master controller at his desk in the classroom. When everyone is ready, the controller (usually a battalion chief) “dispatches” the assignment and company officers are sent into the classroom in sequence as their normal response would bring them to the actual fireground.
As each arrives “on the scene,” he sits down at tine of the 27 operating positions at the long tables facing the screens. Companies report their arrival, size up the situation, decide on their tactics, then issue orders and reports to each other and to the controller via the mike/headset. at each position.
Meantime, the “fire” has appeared on screen 1. As companies go into action, its intensity grows. This effect is created by two more overhead projectors, both focussed on the same screen. Both have been equipped (for about $12 each) with small motor-driven disks of perforated metal screening, mounted inside the projector housing. In one projector, the disk is covered with an orange filter. In the other, the filter is gray. As the filter disks rotate slowly, a rippling image of either flame (the orange projector) or smoke (the gray one) appears on screen 1 against the background of the fire building.
Fire size controlled
The projector operator controls relative size and shape of the fire/smoke image with a sheet of transparent film having an opaque black coating, which he scratches away to allow the projected image to shine through. The size of the image is reduced again, as the fire darkens down, by sliding cardboard masks over the edges of the scratchedaway area.
As company operations develop from the orders given by the participants, another operator uses felt pens (different color for each company) to overlay on the projection of screen 2 the positions of lines, ladder placement, hydrants in use, and the extent of the fire itself, so all participants can visualize operations in their entirety.
Time, of course, is as important as space. Ordering a line laid can have no effect on the fire until enough actual time has elapsed for the stream to be in operation. So operators and participants cannot expect or show results from company activities until at least 30 seconds has passed for a preconnected line; 2 minutes for a 2 ½-inch line, straight lay; on up to 3½ minutes for two large lines, reverse lay. Observance of these time values is called for on the 11-item master controller check list for monitoring the exercise.
Background sounds played
While companies are arriving, the master controller can produce background sounds of sirens or fire itself with tape recordings patched into the earphone circuits. During the exercise, all the participants’ voices are recorded for playback during the critique afterwards. Electronic equipment includes a CT-35 Bogen 35-watt solid-state amplifier, a Wollensak 1520 AV recorder, and a set of six-channel J. W. Davis No. 666 mixers, which feed all the individual headset circuits into the controller’s console.
A typical simulator exercise takes half an hour. Extra help up to a full second-alarm assignment can be brought in. In the critique, emphasis is on tactics and communications.
According to Murray, “Tactics is the opinion of the senior man present. While there are really only a few possible courses of action in a given situation, we aren’t here to say which is best. The question is, if a particular course of action was chosen, was it properly carried out? Did officers give contradictory orders? Did someone give an order, then forget he’d done it?”
Surprises introduced
To make sure officers stay on their guard and remain flexible in their thinking, unexpected emergencies may be introduced without warning by the master controller—flying brand extension of fire to other buildings, equipment failure, injuries or accidents, etc. Decisive response to such incidents is a real test of fireground leadership.
“There are some things we can’t do with this equipment yet that we would like,” Murray commented. “We can’t handle night operations realistically. Our map overlays can’t show everything about the surroundings. For instance, when he sees a space around behind the building, the officer wonders, can he get back there? Can a heavy vehicle be driven there? Is the surface paved, dirt, lawn, or what? On the scene, he could tell quickly, but it’s hard to get this from a map.
“Also, there is an idea being used in simulation by the City of Sacramento that we’d like to try here. That is to visually start outside the building with an exterior slide to set the scene and then, with successive slides, actually move inside, down the hall and into an office, just the way companies would work into a building to attack a fire.”
Built in spare time
San Jose’s simulator was built in spare time by Captain R. D. Wattenbarger, assisted by Fire Fighter Ed Hart, during three months of 1975. The total cost, including tables and all wiring, was about $4000.
“There are a lot of simulators in California now,” Murray said. “Before we started, we corresponded with other departments and went to see some of their equipment.”
For some time in 1976, simulator exercises were being run five days a week, but this proved more than the school staff could handle. Currently, the simulator is used fully about seven days each month. Any one company generally participates quarterly.
