Hump Day SOS - Prevent RIT

KThis week is another retro-SOS from my original first few months. These were pictures only so now that we are broadcasting out to the FE community and in full blog mode I will add some commentary. Again, if you already saw this one I hope you get another laugh or affirmation that you are not alone in your thinking.

How many people are needed outside the building while a company is struggling to make the second or third floor with the 1^st hose line? My late friend Tom Brennan said it best, “You know what we used to call RIT in my day? Having enough guys on the scene to do what we needed to do. We always had a couple units that were back up, we just didn’t call them RIT.”  The RIT concept is supposed to ensure that enough members are on the scene to initiate the rescue of a firefighter if one becomes trapped or in distress. Great concept totally carried to the extreme to early by some. When some members are assigned to RIT its like a switch is turned off and eternal flame is extinguished. You can hear it in the acknowledgement of their assignment on the radio………. The frustration is often carried over because overzealous instructor or maybe overreaching policy demands that once that assignment is given you are required to stand and wait until something bad happens. Have you ever seen a company calling for someone to help with a line and a RIT is standing right beside it and never touches it? We don’t need to do away with RIT but some need to use some common sense and remove the switch. RIT needs to help the incident commander prevent firefighters from becoming trapped and sometimes that might include humping a little hose for just a few seconds in the initial few minutes so the inside crew can apply the liquid safety (water) to the fire and prevent the need of their rescue.

RIT should build up with the incident but you can’t expect to have everything in place in the initial minutes of a fire. Please don’t let a one room fire turn into a raging inferno while you are waiting to assemble a 4 company RIT. Remember RIT doesn’t make things “safe” sound fundamentals and skilled crews operating efficiently make things safe. RIT is a backup in case something goes wrong.

“Lay down thy hooks ye yard Sheppard’s and pull some hose!”