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November-December 2008 |
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Is Our BB Stuck?
I am not sure if all departments use this expression or not. It’s used when one is so set on accomplishing his task that he thinks of nothing else. His BB gets stuck in his brain and it just bounces round and round in the same area of the brain. It’s a great term to use to explain your own errors in a fire critique. “I had my BB so stuck that the fire was in the cockloft that I didn’t even think about it being in the basement.”
I am entering into my 30th year in the fire service, and one thing I have seen for sure is that individuals, chiefs, fire departments, and the fire service have a tendency to get their BB’s stuck on one particular topic.
In the mid- to late-'80’s it was stuck on incident command. Every class, training, book and promotion was based on incident command. Alan Brunacini swept the nation with incident command, and it was basically shoved down everyone’s throats. In the early '90’s it was Haz Mat. I must have gone to ten straight in-service training sessions about Haz Mat. We had trainings where we actually practiced scrubbing our bunker gear off with long-handled brushes. We had a shorter shelf life of BB’s with confined space, and, of course, our BB has been stuck for a very long time on EMS.
For several recent years, our BB has been stuck on RIT and saving our own. I haven’t been to an in-service in the last three years that hasn’t involved some type of trapped or entangled exercise. I have crawled through more wires in the last three years than I did in the first 27.
I am just as guilty, because my own personal BB has been stuck on water supply and fire streams. BB’s are created from passion, interest and personal initiative, which certainly is not a bad thing.
The problem with BB’s is that they have a tendency to overwhelm our industry.
This may prevent us from training and focusing on several other topics that sometimes are more critical and prevalent to our overall job performance.
Take RIT for and example. Please save the hate mail. I am very aware that it is extremely important and was not considered for a very long time. However sometimes I fear we might be putting the cart before the horse. If we spend every waking moment, training on RIT, this will lead to a lack of training on basic engine and truck operations. Often times the need for RIT would have been unwarranted if good fire tactics would have been performed in the first place. I am also concerned that while we deploy technical RIT functions we sometimes forget that a simple handline placed in the right place would alleviate the need for the RIT functions. The safest fire ground is one in which the fire is extinguished quickly, efficiently and effectively. I fear that sometimes this is jeopardized by our desire to keep a RIT company in reserve.
I am and have been frustrated for a very long time in terms of one aspect of IC. That is, the BB that says someone must be in command at the very onset of an incident. First-arriving officers should give a brief and accurate description of their incident. This however, doesn’t mean they need to jump out of the rig with nothing on more than a vest, stand in the street and run a radio. When this happens, it takes one person away from initial tactical firefighting that is critical for the successful and safe termination of the incident. I can’t tell you how many people I have heard say that the most important thing that a first-arriving officer can do is a "360" of the building. I guess my BB is stuck on the ideology that the first thing that should be done is get water on the fire. In this day and age of depleting staffing shortages taking one person away to do "360," delays the need to put water on the fire.
I think a lot of people are starting to recognize this is a problem, and a new BB is starting to roll. It is this new term “mobile command.” I am confused about how a first arriving engine officer at a structure fire needs to be telling other company officers what to do when they arrive. What if the first-arriving officer has only been in the seat for a few months? Doesn’t he have his hands full stretching that first, most important line? Should that officer be telling that first-due truck, with an officer who has ten years in the seat, what to do with his truck company?
In conclusion, I like to think of fire department training in terms of a gumball machine. If the pink gumballs represent EMS, the blue RIT, the white IC and the red fire tactics and you fill the machine with all white gum, when you chew it you’re going to be good at IC but not so good at the others. We need to make sure we don’t get our BB’s stuck by filling the machine with all the same gum.
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