Letters to the Editor
departments
Team System Debated
Taney Town, Md.
The members of the New York Fire Department deserve a large thank you for the research and background that went into the recent article on residential fire rescues (Fire Engineering, March 1980, “2-Team System Puts Maximum Effort Into Rescue Work at Residential Fires”). Without their help, the piece would not have been possible.
Anthony D. Manno
Smithtown, N.Y.
These comments pertain to your March article on Rescue Work at Residential Fires, by Mr. Manno, National Fire Academy.
Both as a member of the Academy’s adjunct faculty and on an individual basis, I have often presented the material on which the article is based. It is a key part of the Academy’s Operations Risk Analysis course. Mr. Manno, as program manager, sat in on the NYC Fire Department SOP for “Ladder Company Operations in Private Dwellings,” formalized, published, and utilized since July 1974. While not dwelled upon, this fact was known by staff and student alike. In his article, this is a fact that Mr. Manno chose to ignore. Aparently, our Department operations are good enough to copy but not good enough to acknowledge. Particularly considering his position with the Academy, the ethics involved are definitely questionable. Be that as it may, I would like to correct a few key points, emphasized to the students, but missed by Mr. Manno.
As he mentions, “Venting for Life” is given primary consideration, an integral part of Vent, Entry and Search. However, recognizing the approximate five minute limitation on reaching and reviving the overcome victim, we initiate the operation whether the Engine Company is on the scene or not. We will take a calculated risk of spreading the fire to save lives, rather than concentrating on saving the building and losing the occupants. Over the years, we have had no serious adverse experience based on this premise and people are alive because of it. The example is cited of the fire fighter visiting a neighbor’s house when smoke is spotted in his own home. The fire fighter’s child is home in the bedroom. I have yet to find one who stated he would wait for a line to be stretched before he moves to save the child. Can we seriously justify any lesser effort for someone else’s child?
As Mr. Manno mentions, you wouldn’t order the operation for a pot of food. In fact we don’t “order” it at all. It is an SOP (standard operating procedure) and, when we assume there is a threat to life, members initiate the operation on their own. Again, for the sake of time. This point is critical. Members are not standing around awaiting orders. Knowing what is required of them, they make their own size-up based on assignment, and go to work. However, it is the officer’s responsibility to put a “hold” on the operation when he feels it is not warranted. It is evident that considerable training is a pre-requisite. Post-fire, on site critiques, are invaluable in this regard.
Finally, and perhaps most important, Mr. Manno has failed to mention the importance of assignment of individual members based on fire fighting experience. Years of operational experience are necessary for the solo assignment as porch roofman. On the other hand, junior members are part of the inside team under immediate officer supervision, Given his own options, we know the young, inexperienced fire fighter, rescue conscious, often manages to place his own life in jeopardy. It is the officer’s responsibility to train, weigh qualifications, and judge the fire fighter’s talents, before specific assignments are made. Particularly in the volunteer service, with random arrival of members, this is a key consideration. Some members, based on experience, can qualify for any assignment. Others, particularly the inexperienced, must have their options restricted.
As Mr. Manno brings out in the article, we are making a mental committment to try to reach the victim. We are not encouraging daredevil operations, nor swapping fire fighter lives for civilian lives. Our department, over a period of years, has utilized this operation successfully, saving civilians without loss of our own members. The operation is adaptable to any department regardless of size or equipment, and has indeed been utilized by some neighboring fire departments.
The fact that Mr. Manno has done such a creditable job in outlining the F.D.N.Y. procedures proves the concept of “Training the Trainer” is valid. However, I think we all recognize the importance of actual fire fighting experience to back up any knowledge acquired in the classroom.
William P. Grimes
Battalion Chief
New York Fire Department
Hyde Park, N.Y.
I read the article dealing with rescue work at residential fires in the March 1980 issue of Fire Engineering with great interest. I wish to point out that the author was not completely honest with his audience. By omission, he allows the reader to assume that he played a major role in developing these rescue procedures. On the contrary, he had absolutely nothing to do with it.
The procedures described by Mr. Manno have been the standard procedures for truck companies at private dwelling fires in the City of New York for several years. Because of an alarming number of civilian fatalities in private dwelling fires in the city, a study of the problem was undertaken by Battalion Chief William Grimes and others. Their analysis indicated that although F.D.N.Y. truck company procedures were highly successful in tenement fires, they were less than efficient for fires in private dwellings. As a result of the efforts of Chief Grimes and his peers, new operating procedures were instituted for truck companies at private dwelling fires. Since these procedures became standard in F.D.N.Y., fire related deaths in private dwellings have been significantly reduced.
The rescue procedures described by Mr. Manno are taught by Chief Grimes in the National Fire Academy’s Operational Risk Analysis course. Coincidently, Anthony Manno is the NFA program manager for Operational Risk Analysis. You can draw your own conclusion. As a matter of personal integrity, Mr. Manno should have given credit to Chief Grimes and the New York City Fire Department. He did not. I hope Fire Engineering will do so by way of a printed notice in a forthcoming issue.
In the future, I hope that the policy of Fire Engineering will ensure that authors properly acknowledge the efforts of those who deserve it.
Kenneth W. Martin, Jr.
New York State Fire Instructor
Building Construction
Washington, D.C.
With regard to the problems addressed by Dick Sylvia in his article on new types of construction (March 1980), it seems that an important aspect has been almost totally overlooked. The use of proper fire and draftstopping in most of the situations described can mitigate, if not eliminate, the hazards associated with wood frame and lightweight truss construction.
To this end, the National Forest Products Association has developed appropriate recommendations to address this need. Many of the problems highlighted by Mr. Sylvia would be controlled if these recommendations were followed. Studies have shown that the predominant means of fire spread in wood frame buildings has been along concealed passages inadequately blocked. Other problems mentioned in the article, such as those associated with pipe and conduit penetrations, are presently violations of existing codes.
The problem isn’t as much the lack of a code or code enforcement as it is one of educating builders, designers, and code enforcement officials to the importance of fire and draftstopping. Architects haven’t, as stated, “designed these buildings to burn and collapse.” They have planned buildings using imaginative designs not realizing their overall impact on fire safety. Our job should not be to criticize their work but to assist and educate so that proper fire safety measures can be incorporated into building design.
Given the present economic situation and the cost of construction, efforts should be expanded to promote the proper use of wood construction rather than to show how it can be improperly used.
Robert W. Glowinski
National Forest Products Association
Fire Technology
Dick Sylvia replies: Unfortunately for the fire service, the use of proper firestopping and draftstopping was not overlooked by me. It has been overlooked by architects, building contractors and, sad to say, building inspectors.
I have received letters from fire officers saying in essence, “Yes, we have the same structural problems you cited in our community.”
As a local fire marshal in years past, I have ordered firestopping installed at the sill of old balloon frame rooming houses covered by the state fire safety code.
You are right on mark when you say that the problem should be addressed by “educating builders, designers, and code enforcement officials. ” I would add architects to this group. The United States Fire Administration has taken steps to make both architects and schools of architecture aware of the need to design fire safety into buildings—and also to avoid inadvertently designing fire problems into buildings.
Development of adequate code provisions for fire safety and stringent enforcement of such codes also are needed.
However, we live in the reality of the present, and we in the fire service find that the lumber (and other materials) in buildings is stacked against us.
March Editorial Comments
Phoenix, Ariz.
I was distressed to read your negative editorial reference (March issue) to fire ground management and control as being “a sexy subject developed for the trainers.” You express your concern that impressive sounding management words and phrases seem to work against basic, simple fire ground skills. I feel you sell both fires and firefighters short.
Fires represent complex situations that absolutely require the execution and management of basics on the task (company), tactical (sector) and strategic (command) level. Only the integrated operation of each level will produce effective fire ground outcomes. The basic command objective is to coordinate and support hard-hitting task level activity (where the work is generally being done)—such command mobilizes and maximizes the efforts of firefighters. Anyone who thinks (or writes) that independent “free enterprise” companies operating without over-all command and control can consistently achieve effective results should refine that confused perception by visiting the fire ground and viewing the mass chaos those leaderless operations consistently produce.
You also sell firefighters short. Many fire ground commanders are able to sort out the “impressive sounding management words and phrases” and effectively apply practical management principles to real world situations. These practical principles and techniques adapted and applied to the fire ground are the basic tools of the effective fire ground commander.
You write in glowing terms of a chief who is loaded with common sense “who feared a bunch of educated idiots who won’t know how to stretch a line.” I wonder if your chief is one of those promoted hosemen who is typically found hanging onto the end of a nozzle when he should be operating a command post.
Successful fire ground operations require the functions of an effective fire ground commander (much the same as the successful operation of a magazine requires the functions of an effective editorial commander). Effective fire ground commanders (like editorial commanders) require a high level of basic skills. To describe, their functions as “sexy subjects” does a disservice to people performing a critically important job.
Alan V. Brunacini, Chief
City of Phoenix Fire Department
Rockville, Md.
I read with interest and concern your March editorial, “Basic Skills Mark the Pro.” Although you cloud the issue by including remarks about “educated idiots . . . who won’t know how to stretch a line!”, what you really seem to be searching for is an answer to the age old question of how do we deliver improved performance on the fire ground after we have taught the techniques on the drill ground.
I don’t think we deliver it by damning training for senior officers in “fire ground management and control.” The widows and orphans of the men kept on that New York supermarket roof (presumably by order of practical, seasoned, senior officers) until its trusses let go and dropped them into the inferno beneath their feet, might wish that somebody had effectively trained those senior officers on “fire ground management and control.”
Nor do we help deliver improved performance on the fire ground by damning “instructors” when the line troops and their officers fail to deliver on the fire ground. It simply is not true that “if the students haven’t learned, the teachers haven’t taught.” In the end, we all teach (and learn) ourselves, from all the real-world “teachers” and “learning resources” around us, good and bad.
A too pervasive attitude exists that evidences itself to every recruit fresh out of drill school who is told to “forget all that bull from the training officers because in this company we do it this way!” Far too many members of our trade/craft/profession view study and learning as something one does to pass exams, rather than to fight, extinguish and survive the fire!
Why don’t you refocus on the key question of how do we get the troops who have been trained in the basics (whatever that means), to delvier those basics when the crunch comes? I have never seen an “educated idiot,” but I have seen far too many “certified firefighters” and far too many “school-of-hard-knocks” smokeaters fail to deliver the basics when delivering desperately counted.
Richard L. Ulrich
Assistant Professor and Fire Science Coordinator Montgomery College
Belton, Texas:
I read with interest your editorial in Fire Engineering entitled “Basic Skills Mark the Pro.” It seems to me you have really hit the nail on the head about all of this higher education when, as you put it, some will never know how to stretch a line at the scene of the fire.
Inexperience is experienced every day at the scene of a fire when so many fire fighters still don’t know which end of the nozzle to get on. I had one chief tell me the other day that at the scene of a certain fire I was not following “technical procedures.” My answer was that I got the fire out and that’s what mattered. I hope that some day the NFPCA will amount to something and begin teaching fire fighters what they need to know.
Vernon B. Rucker
Fire Marshal Bell County
Madison, Wis.
I have read, with dismay, your editorial in March 1980, “Basic Skills Mark the Pro.” The piece is riddled with assumptions, plays on words and a hint of some underlying reason for the biased editorial.
As a “Pro” who has earned his living as a fire fighter, officer and commander, I think that you have done a great disservice to Fire Department managers who are trying to teach the advanced aspects of fire fighting. You are apparently using pictures, rather than on the scene evidence, to fortify the point that your editorial is trying to prove. The 1 ½-inch lines could have been cooling a records office to reduce the warehouse company’s down time after the fire. They may have been trying to preserve arson evidence without scattering into the blaze. The aerial pipe could have been flooding out a chemical hazard that was causing the great quantities of smoke and fire that was portrayed.
If you consider the writings of William Shakespeare to be understandable English, the fire fighters that you contact are certainly different than the men that I have worked 24-hours a day with for the last 33 years.
The phrase “educated idiots” has been used many times in the past to assert that a fully educated fire fighter or officer is unnecessary. It is unfortunate that a person in your position would find it so attractive.
I have gained much of my advanced knowledge of fire fighting and management techniques from Eire Engineering. I do not wish to alter my opinion of your fine publication at this late date.
Robert L. Albright
Clifton. N.J.
As a faithful and enthusiastic reader/subscriber of Eire Engineering and the Eire Chiefs Handbook, it saddens me to write a critical letter to you. I direct my criticism to your most recent editorial, where a “chief loaded with common sense” felt the fire service was being directed by “educated idiots.”
Clearly, the terms contradict one another. An idiot is an “imbecile; blockhead; one incapable of learning.” Obviously this person is deprived of the capacity of being educated. A chief who doesn’t stretch a line properly or when he should is guilty of poor tactics. He is neither an idiot or an over-educated person. These characterizations are unwarranted.
Surely, the fire service has individuals who learn an inordinate amount of theory. In the interim they may forget (temporarily) the basic tenets of confine, control, and extinguish. But these individuals are more often found among the uneducated rather than the educated. An educated person is usually the first to recognize how little he really knows, and how much there is to learn!
A fire fighter lacking proficiency in a basic evolution is a victim of a poor training policy. This could be corrected by better application of the principles of management. These principles are learned most thoroughly in the classroom. Common sense should tell us that. Common sense is an asset in everyday life. We need it to preserve our sense of priorities. But to apply it to intricasies is incorrect. Hydraulics is a prime example. Common sense should tell us that a four-inch pipe would carry as much water as a two-inch pipe. We know this is not so because we have proven it in the classroom using theorems. The list of examples is endless. The point is obvious. Common sense has its place. Ed -ucation has its place also.
I feel your editorial did a disservice to the thousands of fire fighters pursuing higher education. You stigmatized these conscientious individuals who deserve praise, not condemnation, for their efforts to professionalize the fire service. The fire service in the eighties needs more education, not less. We deserved better than you chose to give us.
Leonard Swan
Lieutenant
Clifton Fire Department
