Searching Off of the Line

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Permalink Reply by Michael Bricault (ret) on June 7, 2011 at 1:30pm

-Your comments. "The initial crew can stretch a line and search at the same time. Is it a little slower? Sure, but they can perform both functions effectively if they train properly."

-I understand that this technique is born out of staffing shortages. I get that. But, there is no way that one crew of three firefighters can perform fire attack and perform a search simultaneously. The crucial time component is lost. Period.

-How many members are we talking about in this hypothetical company? 6? 4? 3? Less? How many do we really have inside? Who's running the pumps? 3 is the number you use in the example. What about 2 In/2 Out? The only excusing exception to which is a know trapped occupant and in that case rescue is the full priority.

-What you describe here is an overburdened, slow moving attack crew looking for fire that will remove a body should it be encountered while they search for fire. That is not a primary search for life, any "rescue" is accidentally performed by an attack team that has stumbled on to a body. Neither is this even remotely a thorough, effective search for life.

-Firefighters advancing a hand line are slowed by the hose to such a point as to loose any component of a search for life, reducing the outcome to nothing more than a body recovery. A true searching compony is not encumbered by a hose and therefore has the ability of very fluid, very rapid movement throughout the occupancy.

-I too learned this webbing technique and have found it to be an idea that works well in training and absolutely does not translate to real life. The lack of visibility, coupled with the lose of tactile sense and fine motor skill related to gloves, gear, obstructions, debris and basic biological reactions make the girth hitch almost agonizingly permanent once applied to the line.

-The webbing idea, though seemingly conceptually basically sound in theory, actually slows the dual "attack/search" team even further so as to unnecessarily complicate the operations exponentially. So how do we address this situation?

-Lets look at a few of John Norman's principles. 

1. When sufficient manpower is not available to perform rescue and suppression simultaneously then RESCUE must be given priority. Rereading this section eve has a perfect example that is very close to your hypothetical scenario. Chief Norman's logical solution dispels the idea of dual function tasks.

2. When sufficient manpower is not available to perform all necessary tasks then first perform those tasks that protect the greatest number of human lives.

-Jason, your scenario is interesting in that it deliberately presents distractors, like a test. The distractors are potential victims, hose lines and webbing techniques. The key to the riddle is in the limited manpower who can only physically do so much.

-If there is an Urgent or High Rescue Profile in the scenario then search and rescue operations must be given priority. Period. See Norman's principles above. If attacking the fire will protect the greatest number of lives then attack the fire. But again the rub lies in the ability of being able to knock down the fire while simultaneously protecting those that are trapped from everything. While the fire is knocked down will the victims continue to be exposed to heat, smoke, searing steam and thermal inversions from suppression and all the poisons byproducts already in the atmosphere? There is no success in suppressing the fire only to find out the victims died from the byproducts of the fire and suppression efforts. The simple truth is that the fire may have to be ignored for a few precious minutes... that's reality.

-Limited manpower arriving at a working fire with trapped victims? That's an easy solution given Norman's 5 principles. It will take disciplined firefighters and a competent officer to follow the principles and avoid knee jerk reactionary firefighting and the temptation to overload the two or three members with additional time consuming tasks like the webbing technique but that is true professionalism. 

-When I first read the blog I thought of something I heard a while ago about interesting ideas and reality.  "Looks good on paper but then again so did communism".

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Permalink Reply by Brian Jones on June 9, 2011 at 7:14am

I have always read Normans teachings and have several of his books.

I agree, if you have limited manpower and a confirmed threat to life, than that manpower should be used for search and rescue.  Its a tough call to make for an officer arriving first on scene with no reports of anyone inside, and you only have 3 firefighters and a pump operator.  What do you do?  Use the crew to stretch a line and attack the fire or do a quick search first and hope more manpower gets there fast?  Like mentioned though, sometimes the best thing for any trapped victims is extinguishing the fire and venting for life, if the fire is small enough.  But if you have a large working fire in multiple rooms than I would probably have the crew do a search just to be sure.  By then the building is probably a loss to the insurance companies anyway so look for the vics and feel better knowing that you looked and made sure. 

Buildings can be rebuilt, but lives can not be replaced, theirs or ours.  Sometimes a good officer needs to say "We lossed this one and Im not loosing any life to save the building". 

Good points and a good discussion to have.

Stay Safe.

 

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Permalink Reply by Michael Bricault (ret) on June 9, 2011 at 2:40pm

-One of the things many people overlook when advocating knocking the fire down first is that the victim continues to be exposed to the heat, smoke, poisonous gases and superheated air, not to mention the resulting thermal inversions and searing steam production that results from suppression. 

-Put the fire out and generally, as a general rule, things generally tend to get better... until the victim dies.  Put the fire out and things get better only if you can protect the trapped victims from the fire and the byproducts of combustion, the suppression efforts and their resulting byproducts.

-When there is an Urgent or High Rescue Profile on scene all actions on scene must further the rescue of those that are trapped. 

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