Train on the Basics To Reduce Fire Scene Chaos

Part II: Basic Tactical Skills and Knowledge

By Roger Lunt

In last month’s column, we touched on getting back to firefighting basics in your training program. Specifically, we looked at how this emphasis on the basics applies to scene management.

Now let’s turn our attention to basic firefighting skills.This is how we get it done. The response goals should be reached in the most efficient and safest means possible. Training that helps firefighters maintain fireground basic and advanced skills and knowledge levels is essential to the success of the efforts to organize and support the troops.

An organized response will assign firefighters to groups and divisions with specific jobs and job goals. It should enable troops to think and use the skills that were developed through training. For example, how would your firefighters answer the following questions?

1] Do you ever shoot a stream into a structure from a door or window when firefighters are within range of the stream?

2] When your small department is on a working structure fire, do you always send all of your people to the scene, or do you leave a few in the station?

3] Does every member of your department know what the acronym RECEO represents?

4] Has your department given greater attention to an organized local fire department response than to NIMS or unified command training?

If you answered No to any of the above, you may need to assess your training sessions. Your training program may not provide knowledge and encourage thinking and skill use from your troops. Of course, you would shoot water into a structure if your troops are in the structure and are unprotected as a fire exposure.

I recall a fire when my captain, another firefighter, and I prepared to enter a burning structure through a broken window. My captain was first to enter, and in doing so, fell through a hole into a partially burning basement. With a number of uniquely personal expletives, he clearly expressed a very strong desire for a stream to be aimed in his direction. The only line immediately available was at the outside of the window that the captain had just used to enter the structure. We initially directed the stream from outside of the structure and through the window in the area of the captain, and then advanced the line to him.

Above, the hole referenced.

Years ago, I responded to a two-story, single-family residential with fire in the basement. I had the misfortune of falling through a hole into the basement. Staging had not been established and the thought of a rapid intervention team was relatively new, so that group was not established. Personnel in our station heard, “Command, this is 204, I am in a hole. Need help!” The station officer radioed an offer to send three personnel to the scene to assist in my rescue. However, he was not offering every firefighter in the station. The station officer was conditioned to keep personnel in the station in the event that we had another call. The younger troops did not understand the logic, and the future brought a change in this policy. The younger troops were doing the thinking. The younger troops knew how to split rules vs. responsibility-based common sense.

Every member of your department should know that RECEO is the acronym for Rescue, Exposure, Confinement, Extinguish and Overhaul. If you are to avoid fire department-induced chaos; every member of your department, relative to the duties they may be assigned, must understand how each of these basic skill areas apply to the fire scene. They must also be capable of engaging each of these aspects using their own initiative. The department response can be structured. Everyone is in their assigned place and communicating very effectively. However, if within this response structure the personnel assigned to a functional duty of search/rescue are not aware of and skilled in the three basic types of Searches or subsequent rescue techniques, then chaos is about to appear. If the group assigned the responsibility of the geographical location “second floor” does not realize or hold the skills to perform RECEO, then chaos will very quickly extend to this elevated level of your structure fire.

Over recent years, has your department given more attention to the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and unified command training sessions than how to organize your response, which may mean fewer than 15 firefighters, an engine, and two tenders on a mobile home fire? The training on which you have focused is important. Departmental participation should be encouraged. However, if the training is challenging the ability to develop or maintain basic fir ground skills and organizational practices within the department, you should reassess your training schedule. An understanding of NIMS is a responsibility for every community. The sooner every community leader accepts this fact, the better. However, it is doubtful that the authors of NIMS discussed in any grand detail, if at all, the requirements of an organized response to a single-family residential fire in your community. Keep your training room objectives in context when you apply them in the field.

The incident commander’s (IC) primary resource to putting out most fires is supporting and directing the well-trained troops to implement the proper basic tactics. There will always be a necessity of strategic and tactical levels of operation, and giving directives to response members. However, the issuance of directives from the IC will be reduced, and the safety and efficiency of the response will be enhanced when the troops are trained at their jobs and the response management system does not get in the way.

When the firefighter realizes that he or she is to think and use their acquired skills, the micromanagement of the wandering IC is reduced. The skilled firefighter and officer simply relies on the IC to exercise organizational skills and provide support immediately upon request from the trained working crews. The joining of experience-based basic training and skills gained from real world response will result in a response system that organizes and directs skilled troops.

The Illinois Fire Service Institute on the University of Illinois Campus is one of the largest fire and emergency training and research institutions in the country. They are host to the longest continuously offered fire college in the nation and have a respected and successful history of training firefighters from the most rural community of Illinois to largest municipal fire departments around the world.

Their five-step training model is based upon national best-practices.

Training and education of our firefighters can eliminate CHAOS on the fire scene. Thus, it is critical that we recognize a successful training model and apply the steps of that model to our training program. If not, it is possible that the attainment of desired training goals will never be achieved because training was never completed.

1. Pre-class self study. What the training firefighters can do to prepare for the training. It is a pretraining self-study step, using the resources that are available. This inables the training firefighter to be better prepared to ask questions, relate the topic to his department, and contribute to the benefit of others attending.

2. Classroom presentation, discussion, and simulation.The training firefighter is introduced to new skills and ideas through an instructor-led process. This process will provide the opportunity for objective based discussion and practice through tabletop exercises. Too many training programs fail because they begin and end on a topic at this step.

3. Walk-through and field simulation. Go to actual locations or the training field to conduct full-scale walk-throughs with the instructor, leading a discussion and demonstration of the concepts discussed in the classroom and simulated through tabletop exercises.  This step builds upon the instructor-led-classroom and simulation but moves away from the traditional classroom lecture and tabletop exercises to the training ground. Building upon your abilities and confidence, the training environment adds the many influences of the real-world response, such as team work, strategic, tactical and/or task-level thinking, time restraints, physical limitations, and “what-if” scenarios.

This step asks you to role-play fireground decision-making positions while the instructor shadows and provides direct support to you. An example is walking through the steps of a first-arriving engine at a working fire, the use of theatrical smoke to reduce visibility yet maintaining the direct interaction between you and the instructor.

4. Live-fire training. The training firefighter is ready to take full advantage of a live-fire training exercise, whether in a burn building or acquired structure. He or she should be saying that “I am ready.” if not, repeat steps 1, 2, and 3.  The instructor has informed you what you need to know and do. The instructor has led you through a discussion of the theory of a live-fire response and walked through simulations of a live-fire response, including “what-if” drills when all does not go as expected. You have developed a picture in your head of what the response should look and sound like and practiced it without fire.  You are confident and have demonstrated your ability to fight a fire, under close supervision and controlled training environments.

Now you are ready, but not without the sustained watchful eyes and ears of the instructor.  Live-fire training is inherently dangerous and must be done with respect for the real-world risks and challenges it presents.  You will be demonstrating and exercising structural firefighting and rescue techniques under real fire, heat and smoke conditions.

5. Validation. This happens when the bell strikes and you are called to respond. It removes the instructor-led training environment. You will be observed by a third party, either a citizen-in-need at a real emergency or your chief as he or she reviews a drill. You will be expected to perform at full speed under high-risk conditions.  An after-action review should follow every validation event, whether it is real or just a drill.  This review should identify what you and your department do well and identify weaknesses and plan for correction…leading back to Step 1.

The fire service holds a responsibility that encompasses more than restricting the definition of a good response to keeping people out of harm’s way, or knowing where all troops are located. You may hear upon returning to the station, “Good run, we all returned safely.” However, many of us think our duties encompass a list longer than this single primary statement.

Training on the basics must develop and maintain necessary fire service skills and education. This will be the foundation for advanced and specialized skill and knowledge development. Filling the correct positions at the right time with the right personnel is necessary to avoid chaos. This desired result begins with basic training.

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.

MORE ULTIMATE STRUCTURAL FIREFIGHTER