We’ve all been there and seen the fireground dominoes fall, one after another. Often, a good leader steps in and makes the necessary decisions to recover from a bad start and ultimately stop the dominoes. Sometimes it’s just plain fire service luck that leads to a tragedy-free conclusion. Unfortunately, if your operations are based on luck, eventually, your luck is going to run out.

We see it time and again, with statements like “suddenly and without warning the building collapsed.” Chief Vincent Dunn (retired deputy chief, FDNY) and the late Francis Brannigan (author of Building Construction for the Fire Service), in their attempt to educate the fire service, have told us time and again that the collapse of a burning building, especially one with a lightweight truss, should certainly not come as a surprise to any of us.

Arriving at the floor of alarm, opening the elevator doors, and encountering smoke and/or fire would certainly be a surprise to a couple of guys from the parks department, the city librarian, or even a couple of cops. Firefighters, however, work for the fire department. Our primary mission is to respond to and extinguish fires. The company officer who takes his crew members directly to the floor of alarm demonstrates a very weak mind-set and eventually will get someone injured or possibly even killed. Those members might like their officer in the short run because he makes their life easier by not having them stop the elevator two floors below and walk up. But believe me; they have little or no respect for him at all, simply based on the fact that he’s not protecting them. Surprised is the last thing firefighters should be upon encountering smoke or fire at the floor of alarm.

The primary responsibility of a company officer is to keep the members under his command as safe as possible. This is not an easy proposition, based on the fact that firefighters operate in very unsafe conditions. After all, we’re talking about going after a fire on the upper floors of a high-rise building. The firefighter safety and survival premise is based on the principles of developing, maintaining, and practicing good habits, plain and simple. Furthermore, those good habits are not just applied once in a while, but every time, and at every operation. I firmly believe that the actions firefighters usually take, good habits or bad, are the same actions they will take when it really counts. Those who normally take the elevator directly up to the floor of alarm will most likely do it the night that there’s really a fire on the other side of those elevator doors (figure 2).