By Roger Lunt
The first department representative on the scene is the incident commander (IC). From that moment forward, a response management system develops and is in place to account for our personnel and reduce the destructive nature of fire.
However, the label of “IC” is more than simply a title for who is likely a senior ranking member of the department on the response. You have not established the incident command system as effortlessly as assigning this label to one of your responders. The IC must be a strategic thinker, a member of the response roster capable of not getting caught up in the tasks at hand but rather seeing the existing and anticipated big picture as well as accurately assessing and deploying resources.
I have spoken to some ICs and observed a few that seem to send a message that they have some pretty amazing response powers. They mistakenly seem to think they can—better than anyone else—see all, know all, and do all at any moment. If, while in a conversation on these superhuman talents, they are tripped up with a return-to-earth question, the common response is usually, “I have some good people on the department and in the community” or “They always get it done.” Even though the topic here is share your fire scene duties, I find it difficult to stay focused on just one simple and helpful solution. I struggle with the possible assessment of this statement as just another attempt at saying what sounds good but ends up falling in the gutter of full and absolute irresponsibility for supporting our responders. It is my judgement that the IC who believes he can see all, knows all and can do all at any moment is an unqualified IC.
It is impossible to be an effective fire scene leader and manager in the IC position if you believe that you can account for your firefighters and effectively address the challenges of the scene and not delegate scene jobs and scene locations. although it is impossible at any moment to see all, know all, and do all, it is possible to stay informed as needed with pertinent information.
Although it is not possible to review in detail all of the techniques that enable the sharing of fire scene challenges with just this article, I hope you can find support here as you strive for the goal of effectively sharing fire scene challenges. I respectfully offer the following messages for the fire response that will offer a skill and experience level that is never the same and cannot be predetermined.
Reflect how the scene challenges are shared via the radio call signs. On most fire scenes, referring to a group of firefighters by the personal name of the group leader or by the name of the rig on which they responded will not aid in determining the location or job performance of the group. The safety of our personnel, the efficiency of the response, and the avoidance of chaos will benefit from labels that identify assignment location and/or the job. If the fire scene is shared geographically or by functional assignments, the respective call sign is easy to invoke.
Examples of common fire scene labels follow:
- Ventilation Group (Functional Assignment).
- Roof Division (Geographical Assignment).
- Attack Group (Functional Assignment).
- Water Supply (Functional Assignment).
- First Floor Division (Geographical Assignment).
- Staging Group (Functional Assignment).
- Rear Division (Geographical Assignment.)
Once on the scene, to best use resources, the crew that rode together may be held together or be separately assigned to other groups, or you may also use a new label better fitting the scene.
There may be times when the number on the side of a rig is used to label a working group that is no longer using the rig. For example, the Engine 12 crew or the Truck 14 crew on the roof are using ground ladders from another rig. The group may or may not be labeled Engine 12, Truck 14, or even my least preferred label, Truck. The fact for most scenes is that the rig only transported equipment and personnel. Neither of these labels, in this case, really help account for your personnel or the challenges being specifically addressed. The label given to a rig should never interfere with the proper labeling of our working groups or divisions.
(1) Three departments are represented on this training scene.
Don’t share your scene challenges and then micromanage the response. Although we typically point the finger of blame toward the group leader or officer, there are moments when the firefighter posing constant questions or being hesitant to act is, by default, requesting to be micromanaged.
Your response management relies on the LUKE (Leadership Using Keen Efficiency) approach at the tactical level. LUKE will be impacted by a supporting acronym GAS (Goal, Authority, Skill). In other words, your success to avoiding chaos will be influenced with leadership (LUKE) having GAS.
The IC can provide the Goal, i.e., “I want you to ventilate the rear of the structure.” The IC can grant the Authority, i.e., “Take three firefighters from staging, you will answer as ventilation.” However, if the tactical person possesses a low skill level for the techniques and results of ventilation, the IC cannot grant the required Skill or knowledge; only realistic training and fire scene experience can do that. The IC will have a tendency to initiate a micromanagement system at this point, with the inevitable result being a poorly managed fire scene and chaos.
Training and educating personnel for their respective fire scene challenges will produce desired job performance outcome and eliminate a need or pressure to micromanage.
Consider the following questions to be encompassed within your training schedule:
- What is the difference between the primary and secondary search, and to what benchmarks is either attached?
- What must you consider when choosing a rescue technique that would require a ground ladder rescue vs. using an interior route to safety?
- What hand tools should a two- or three-person search crew carry on a residential structure fire?
- Should the placement of the crew leader on the attack line be a department policy? Why?
- What is the criteria for a rapid intervention team (RIT)?
- Where is Level 1 staging and how is it established?
- What determines the type of ventilation that you will use?
- How does modern residential construction threaten the safety of firefighters during fire conditions?
- How well can you fold a salvage cover to move, catch, or control the movement of water and debris?
- What is the most current research results that impact firefighter safety?
- Have you practiced the proper carries, raises, and climbs for every type of ladder in your department within the last six months?
- Are your anticipated response personnel capable of performing the tasks contained within RECEO?
This is obviously a very short list of basic knowledge and skill required of firefighters and officers at the tactical or task levels of operation. Each of the questions on this list can quickly develop into the basic skill development or maintenance skill session.
Share duties that focus on safety and support of our firefighters. Positions such as incident command, incident staging officer, RIT officer, crew leaders, and division leaders have primary duties to the safety and support of our firefighters. There are too many excuses as to why these positions get compromised. With every excuse that I have heard, I recognize a fire scene safety issue.
Every one of these positions will serve to support and guard your skilled or unskilled response team. Firefighters on structure fires need this support and attention. However, these positions will not exist if the challenges for the fire scene are not shared between responders.
(2) Roof operations on a two level apartment complex. (3) Sharing geographically and by function.
How you share your scene should be influenced by experience, training, and education levels. I have addressed the importance of training and education in a previous two-part article, “Train On the Basics to Reduce Fire Scene Chaos.” Chaos will surface from people not knowing how to handle different types of fires, thus trying to do what they think is best at the time without having had training, standard operating guidelines, experience, or direction from their officers as to what to do.
Fire department performance standards must never be determined by the member(s) holding the least amount of desire to train. All members must train to satisfy a department established high performance level.
At times, too much credit is given to a firefighter’s performance at a fire that occurred years earlier. Too little attention may be given to the expected performance on the next call. I felt that my performance on the last fire was of lesser value than what should be rightfully expected of me on the next call. In other words, the senior firefighter status held a respected view but had limited value if I could not do my job on the next structure fire.
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Everyone stays informed with formatted status reports. Status reports can be of two types: solicited (“Attack from command, give me a status”) or unsolicited (“Command from search, we are on the second floor with two. We have light smoke conditions and little heat. We are beginning our primary. Nothing needed at this time.”). With either report the goal is to keep those within the communication loop informed.
At times, we can hear over the radio, “How you doing?” or “How are conditions?” or “You need anything in there?” A great amount of time and attention is used for this cumbersome single-question/single-answer approach. If the person seeking answers to these questions would simply say, “Give me a status,” the single response would provide answers to four important questions:
A common status report format is:
What Is Your Location?
What Do You Have?
What Are You Doing?
What Do You Need?
(Some group leaders offer the number within their group as part of the answer to the second question on this list.)
No single firefighter/officer or assigned group of firefighters can see all, know all, and do all on the fire scene. By default, this will require a delegation of duty relative to the fire scene challenges vs. the response resource. Every firefighter or crew depends on the fulfillment of others completing their respective duties properly and timely.
If you have the “We Are the Best” or “I Am the Best” ego and you are not applying that pride to the entire response team, you are likely contributing to some level of chaos, and certainly may be increasing risk to yourself, your crew, or others on the scene. Share the fire scene challenges by responding as a Team, Working as a Team, then returning to the station as a Team.
Training Support Exercise: The IC Needs to….
The attending firefighters can be divided into small groups or work individually. The idea is to generate the greatest contribution to the following scenario:
You are the IC on the scene of a rural or municipal fire scene, a two-story balloon frame residential with a basement. Fire is blowing out of windows on the first floor at the rear of the building. Heavy smoke fills the second floor. It is 1400 hours.
Identify and create a list of responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of the IC:
- What must the IC observe?
- What must the IC consider?
- What must the IC accomplish?
The purpose of this tabletop exercise is to generate a considerable list that will lead to the discussion and proof that the IC can never see all, know all, and do all. This is a lead-in to a training session focused on why and how the IC must share the response scene and divide the response resources.
Training Support Exercises: The Common Goal
At the end of each exercise, have a discussion lead predominantly by the players and observers. Encourage all to contribute their experience as a participant of the exercise as well as what was noticed as an observer.
Repeat this discussion approach after the second exercise.
Following the two group discussions, students reach a common assessment; the clearly defined mutual goal with the second exercise and the training of the first exercise produced a more efficient, safer, less chaotic exercise than was experienced with exercise #1.
The instructor role will be to make the parallel between the value of training and clearly defined, mutual goal of exercise #2 with the value for the same on the fire scene.
For the below exercises, the objective for each is to have the following: A divided room with each half having the same set up of instructional equipment and furniture. Three end-to-end tables setting parallel to the projection screen, a personal computer projector, and an overhead projector directed toward the single projection screen. Extension cords will provide power to the electrical equipment. Each table will have two chairs sitting so the occupant will be facing the screen on that half of the room. Again, the organization of equipment and furniture is the same on both halves of the room.
Exercise #1: Set up the training room.
Divide those attending your training session into five groups. If you want to make it even more interesting, do not divide into groups. However, if you use groups, label each group as follows: chairs, tables, electrical, instructional aids and command.
Speak to each group separately. Tell them what you want that specific group to accomplish. Show them where to obtain the needed material resources.
Now, step completely out of the picture and hand it over to command. Some call what you are about to see “organized chaos,” but it is really just CHAOS. Every time I observe this exercise, I tell myself I am observing some good people capable of achieving the assigned duties, but yet they are ineffective and unorganized.
Exercise #2: Set up the training room.
Sometime later in the morning, repeat what you did in exercise #1, except this time, prior to handing the groups over to command, share a drawing of how the training room needs to be set up—the common goal. Show them where they can obtain the needed material resources.
The significant differences between these two exercises is lower stress levels within the groups as well as a heightened performance efficiency of all groups during exercise #2.
The only change you made with exercise #2 from exercise #1 was providing a common goal for all.
Roger Lunt is a retired fire chief who spent 38 years in the fire service. He is the retired deputy director of the Illinois Fire Service Institute and is a field instructor with that organization. He has a bachelors degree in law enforcement administration and an associate degree in fire science technology. He is a founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. As a member of FEMA Region V Disaster Mortuary Response Team [DMORT], he deployed to New York within 24 hours of the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, and deployed as a member of the United States Health and Human Services DMORT Weapons of Mass Destruction Team to the after math of Hurricane Katrina. He is the author of the self-published book, “Avoiding Fire Department Induced Chaos.” He can be contacted at rdlunt@gmail.com.
