Brennan Q&A January 2002

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TOM BRENNAN has more than 35 years of fire service experience having responded to 33,000 fire alarms. His career spans more than 20 years with the Fire Department of New York as well as four years as chief of the Waterbury (Conn.) Fire Department. He has a bachelor of science degree, summa cum laude, John Jay College; Alumnus of the Year Award, John Jay College; chairman of the Connecticut Fire Chiefs Association and a charter member of the National Fire Protection Association, Fire Service Section. He has delivered courses and seminars throughout the United States and has instructed at the National Fire Academy. He was the editor of Fire Engineering Magazine for eight years, is currently a technical editor, and his column “Random Thoughts,” is a regular monthly feature. He is co-editor of The Fire Chief’s Handbook, Fifth Edition. He is the recipient of the 1998 Fire Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award.

JANUARY 2002

Question: What about quints and mid-size pumpers? (These are actually pick-up trucks with a pump on it.) Our city (major size in New York State) believes that it can reduce manning on the fireground and save money and have the same service levels available to the public with no increase in public risk/hazard. I would like your personal opinion on this, as I am a first line officer in a major city of more than 300,000 with a significant frame fire load.

Answer: Whew, brother! The only thing good about what you say is that you are letting me off the hook by asking me for only my personal opinion and not testimony. To begin with, I have just finished answering a firefighter in a forum who asked what is the importance of truck work and where can he learn it.

It is almost a lost art in this business and this loss is responsible for the tremendous array of equipment such as you describe and also the early use of positive pressure and explosive atmospheres in structures on fire. As a result, our firefighters are operating at unknown additional risk because the building is not behaving; ergo, our increase in flashover records, burned firefighters, smoke explosions and now cold-smoke explosions.

Once our city people get our fire chiefs and other leaders to “go along” with ignoring the tactics necessary to control the interior atmosphere of the fire structure and begin to forget the importance of truck work, why should not the positive pressure show up, along with the nozzle, at the fire door or unprepared teams of “too few” stand by to enter an out-of-control situation that has trapped firefighters in situations that they didn’t understand nor begin to be able to control? And now two to four more of the same background must intercede in an out-of-control situation that now has the urgency of trapped firefighters to contend with.

In short, we have whittled down the knowledge of the fire service in being able to manage America’s most dangerous and stressful profession and are ignoring our effectiveness and efficiency by not getting to our “customers” in time or in a timely manner. We are burning and injuring our firefighters at a greater rate than ever in our history going to fewer structural fire experiences.

Those are only some of the facts.

Now my question, “Why should it not follow that decision-makers who have lost the firefighting knowledge to defend proper manning on the proper number of fire vehicles positioned and operating in a proper manner for the accomplishment of our mission give it all up for reductions in manning fronted by unrealistic assessment?”

In the old days, we began to use lighter and smaller hose! The old cotton two-and-one-half-inch, double-jacketed, rubber-lined, 105-pound stuff was replaced! Lighter . . . faster in place . . not too much sacrifice of water . . . except in unusual situations that could be recovered by quick-thinking decision-makers.

But . . . nitwitted thinking began to show. “Why do we need five firefighters to stretch this smaller hose, not to mention the pump operator? The officer? Oh well, he can help in the stretch; he has nothing else to do. And so we can do it with four total and then three.” (Never mind the criminal disgrace of less).

No one marketed, “Where was the Chief? Where was his staff? You did not need firefighters to stretch hose! You could do it with two or three sanitation employees, lawyers, politicians, welfare clients for sure.”

You need the firefighters when the damn door opens!!! To the first level of fire compartments! Wake up!

So now we have the thinking! Next: the natural tendency for flawed thinking to continue with dumb assessment. “Why have firefighters enough to ventilate roofs? Too dangerous! Why at the rear of the fire? No one ever goes there. Why vent at all? We are now self-contained, positive-pressure TPP 35 balls. Why not blow into the fire like a blacksmith and push everything ahead of us and out the rear of the structure?

We can put a vest on an early arrival who can make all the interior decisions necessary.

Now alternate access, vertical ventilation, followed by horizontal ventilation, depending on whether for fire or for life is ignored. What value is a properly positioned truck? What need is there for the nearby portable ladders? Why not put a pump on a truck? We need the hose lines all the time and not the truck work — whatever that was.

So now we have a truck that pumps and carries hose and can do everything under the command of an officer (maybe) who makes all the right decisions with one other person — worker/slave. The thing about the unit that has the pump on it is that it is responsible for alternate entry and for a myriad of things on the structure fireground and is never going to be in position because the hydrant it needs for water supply is now the main concern.

“Too much thinking — let’s stretch!” becomes the Latin motto on the company patch.

Oh well, I tried another way to answer your question. There are excellent answers on quints in a study in Virginia printed in a fall edition of Fire Engineering magazine. All other attempts have failed to impress anyone, so I thought I would be a little sarcastic with (hopefully) some wit.

Until someone supports the leaders of this business so that municipalities cannot fire them at will for expounding professional opinions when they impact hysterical economic slashes to an unexpected deficit in a unplanned budget-planning process we will have less and less leadership that is professional and responsible.

So now let’s get simple! At simple structure fires (row frames, taxpayers, hotels, office buildings are not simple!), the key to success in fire confinement and extinguishment — with a professional and responsible result to the people and to the community — is to put a minimum of six firefighters in truck assignments (extinguishment support functions) immediately. Then you have to find six more to cover the assignments that were left until “NEXT,” based on excellent size-up, and to beef up those assignments that need help!

Interior search of a multi-story, combustible building with fire on the lower floor, rear of the structure (where no textbook puts it!)
Extended roof operations when fire is under the flat roof: top floor fires and strip stores
Portable ladders for ENTER, SEARCH, REMOVE, & VENT when necessary
More

Oh well, I guess I rambled here long enough. In short, the key to success in maintaining manning levels is to market the amount of firefighters on the truck and not the department on duty — and to know truck work, its results, and the negative impacts of not being able to accomplish it.

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