November-December 2008

Most firefighters have seen the movie Saving Private Ryan. I believe that every American should watch at least the first and last 15 minutes of this movie to understand the concept of what many of our soldiers have sacrificed for this country and what our duty is to honor those who fell in the protection of our freedoms and the spread of liberty to other areas of the world. There are many classic scenes in Saving Private Ryan,but one scene in particular describes the concept of closing with the enemy. The Army unit, led by Tom Hanks, encounters an enemy machine-gun nest guarding some sort of radar instillation. The Captain (Tom Hanks) knows that they must eliminate the enemy fortification to help avoid any further allied deaths. Most of his crew members argue to bypass the enemy emplacement, but the captain’s leadership gets them to undertake this dangerous assignment because it needs to be done. The only way to do it is to close with the enemy and be within range to effectively throw hand grenades. They perform a well-trained and choreographed maneuver that has the American unit attacking from multiple locations to confuse the enemy and keep them busy trying to engage multiple targets. Fire and maneuver techniques are used, and the enemy emplacement is taken out even though there is an American casualty. The only way that Tom Hank’s crew was able to accomplish this mission was by being able to close with the enemy through a well-thought-out procedure that had been discussed and trained prior to the situation. It was well coordinated, with multiple people supporting one another’s actions; and, by being flexible to any change in the situation, the crew was able to react and take advantage of any opportunity that the enemy gave them.

 This is the final article that will carry us through the last set of skills that the engine company operations class taught me those years ago in Sacramento. We will discuss some tips to properly advance charged hose lines into structures in a safe and effective manner. They will help you to accomplish your objective which is to find, confine, and extinguish the fire. This article will give you some time honored concepts of closing with the enemy.

#1. KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING

 In the last article (“Take Time To Make Time”), we discussed a concept called the entry procedure. It wasn’t a hard and fast set of rules, but it was a sort of checklist that helped you to gather some quick information about the situation that you are descending into; and it helped you to ensure that your equipment and your crew was ready to go to work. It is not always possible to know precisely where the fire is located, but there are vital pieces of the current situational puzzle that will make your advance faster and safer if you take a brief moment to gather the facts, ensure that what your seeing is what is actually happening, and communicate this information to your crew members and the incident commander.

In many departments, a truck company assists the engine company in locating the fire. This serves the purpose of not laying in and advancing hose blindly. It gives the fire attack crew a destination and thus allows for a rapid advance and extinguishment. This method is not always possible, and there are many fire departments that will not allow crews into a structure ahead of a hoseline. If you find yourself in the situation where you are the first to enter the structure, be it a truck searching for victims and the fire location or an engine company with a charged line, take the time to rapidly assess the situation and read the signals of where the fire might be located to help your crew advance effectively to the fire area. The point here is that it is always helpful to have a destination, instead of blindly groping in the dark, especially when you are dragging a cylindrical tube full of water. How can the smoke condition clue you into the location of the fire? Can the occupants tell you where the fire is or the layout of the house? Can you read the building and understand the layout so that you can navigate through the smoke? Did you let the building “breathe” when you opened the door giving you an opportunity to see the smoke, what it might do, and potentially the layout of the occupancy or the location of the fire visible under the thermal layer? Is this fire acting like any other fires you have been on and are there important clues to help you find the fire? All of this information can be rapidly taken in and passed on so that everyone on the fireground is benefiting from the knowledge of the fire location. This is not always the case, and sometimes we have to scramble through the occupancy frustratingly looking for the fire. However, many times the location of the fire is known and or suspected allowing the initial attack company to make a beeline to the fire area. It is a poor practice to not ensure that your crew knows where they are going and what the overall strategy is if that information is known.

#2. "TAKE WHAT THE BUILDING GIVES YOU"

This is a time honored phrase from one of the American firefighter’s best friends, Chief Tom Brennan. There is a rising trend in the fire service to move towards a “safety culture” that is saying that because our fires are more dangerous and lightweight buildings have the potential of collapsing so quickly, we need to fight more fires from outside the structure initially if there are no civilian lives at risk. Although I will always applaud anyone who wants to be serious about being safe as a firefighter, I wish more people would go back to Chief Brennan’s wisdom found within this phrase. Each and every building has characteristic strengths and weaknesses when being consumed by fire. Each fire is attacking that structure in a particular way. Each situation has numerous factors to consider, including the priorities for the incident like life safety or limiting fire growth. Let’s also try to agree that with all things being equal in a room-and-contents or rooms-and-contents fire, the best way to extinguish the fire is with an interior attack as opposed to an exterior attack. Why? Because interior (or even exterior fires) are best extinguished from directly above, like a sprinkler in a structure or a thunderstorm outside would provide. It’s not just putting the “wet stuff on the red stuff that counts,” it is getting that wet stuff where it counts and in a sufficient quantity and droplet size to perform the work of cooling fuels below their ignition temperature. Dispersing the water in the fire area so that it is applied throughout the area gives the best chance for rapid extinguishment. It is unlikely that a stream applied to an interior fire from the exterior will be distributed as well as an interior stream. It is all about angles. The concept of “taking what the building gives you” gives on-scene crews the flexibility to perform any manner and combination of strategic and tactical actions including making a safe entry into the structure. Our object or mindset should be to go interior until the building, the situation, and our on-scene resources prevent it.

For example, the building in the photo above leaves no room for an interior attack until this fire is controlled. The situation in this building literally has no entry point that isn’t full of fire. The building therefore gives you nothing but a defensive option. Play a game with diminishing amounts of fire in this “burn to learn” building. You can see how the fire having less possession of the structure allows for interior options.

The building may give you only 10 feet inside the front door, but this might give you a better angle at water distribution into the fire area; and it could protect the sleeping area of the house so that a rapid primary search can be performed. Even less fire might allow a crew to penetrate deeper into the structure to limit fire growth even more. All of these decisions are based on the building type and condition, the fire situation, the overall strategy, and the on-scene resources that can help a “building behave” (another Tommy “Brennanism”) to give the attack crew more time and safety to complete a desired objective by having other crews perform other tactical priorities like ventilation and forcible entry. How does taking what the building gives you assist you in advancing charged hose lines? Advancing charged hoselines is all about closing on the enemy and the quicker that the fire goes out the less handling of hose has to take place. Taking what the building gives us helps us to have a more direct line to our objective, extinguishing the fire. We are thus working smarter not harder.

#3. FIND/CONFINE/EXTINGUISH

Firefighting is not very complex, and here is the evidence. I don’t care what kind of fire you respond to, your objective will always be to find, confine, and extinguish the fire. Part of helping you to be better at advancing charged hose is simplifying your objective. Moving hose is hard work. It always will be hard work. Making the objective simple helps you to focus on that hard work. There is not a lot of guess work in this objective. Don’t get me wrong, you need to be watchful and aware of your surroundings and the changing conditions that are going on around you whether they are worsening or improving. This will allow your officer or you to adjust the basic objective in terms of tactical application of water or the speed of the advance. Finding, confining, and extinguishing the fire can happen all at once or in stages, but it will always happen in that order. No matter what, limiting fire growth by finding, confining, and extinguishing the fire is always a priority because most of your problems go away when the fire is being controlled. The first step is always to find the fire. As the photo below illustrates, this fire officer has found the location of the combustion process. Now the proper application of tactics and tasks to complete the stated strategy and objectives can take place.

Even if the rescue of a known occupant is the immediate priority, the first hoseline must be placed to support that rescue operation and protect both the civilian and the rescue crew from further harm. The location of the fire is vital to complete this objective. Confining the fire prevents extension. It is always our intent to limit fire growth because our job in emergency services is to mitigate problems and prevent any problem from getting worse. How any fire is to be confined and for what purpose can vary and most of the time, confining and extinguishment go hand in hand. But there are times when a fire will be confined to an area, for example, so that another part of the structure can be rapidly searched. It is allowed to consume more of an area and confined to a more defendable section of the structure. No matter how large the fire is, it will be confined to the area, room, structure, or as Chief Brunacini says, “the zip code of origin.” Extinguishing the fire will be discussed in a later tip. For now, knowing that the mission of the nozzle team will never vary helps the attack team to focus on conditions and advancing toward the fire area where it will be confined and extinguished.

#4 GET THE FIRST LINE IN SERVICE

Here is the age old adage, “as the first line goes, so goes the fire.” What has happened in many departments to change this? Are most departments clued in to helping that first attack team find, confine, and extinguish the fire, or are they performing their assignment in isolation or competition to that first crew? I think that we have sold the “life safety” issue to the point where crews forget about assisting the fire attack team into place. Everybody wants to make a grab so bad that they forget that supporting the placement of that first line and getting it into service rapidly, with a competent nozzle team, will always make your conditions better, at least more under control. This will allow the other crews to more rapidly search the structure for victims or fire extension. The real question here, or tip, is how to assist that first-in crew (generally a two-person crew in most fire departments due to three-person engine company staffing as a standard) in advancing the handline. There are two ways that this can be accomplished. The first is to hire freaks of nature, like the firefighter in the photo below, who doesn’t need any help.

Yes, that is a 2½-inch (photo above) that they are advancing and will shortly put into service. Not all of us have this option. The best answer is to utilize teamwork. At my department, I came back from the FDIC Conference and gave my training officer a video tape by Andy Fredericks about advancing the first handline. The training officer digested the principles and came up with the teaching program to help our department learn how to help that first crew advance charged handlines to confine and extinguish the fire. The phrase “HUMP, BUMP, AND BOW” was created. I can’t claim anywhere near a 100 percent compliance with this concept, but it is adopted by our department; and more and more crew members are realizing the benefit of working as a team to move charged lines. My first article (“Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks”) talks about the concept of handline positions. There is a job for everyone to perform when advancing a line. There is a person on the nozzle, a back-up person to the nozzle operator, and a person at the door. Actually there should be many people at the “doors,” places where the advance can get cobbed up due to 90-degree bends, openings such as doors, or other obstacles that catch couplings or provide friction on the hose. This slows the advance. How many of you have been inside a structure and needed more line? The officer will use his radio to call for more line or you will yell to someone inside the structure who, like you, is performing another task to help with the line. This rarely helps and you most likely have had to crawl back along your hard-fought-for territory to get more line to continue the now delayed advance. This is not efficient, but this happens a lot. This is one of those mindset shifts that needs to take place. For my department, the HUMP, BUMP, AND BOW tries to create that new mindset. We teach the concept of having enough people to place at friction points to keep that first line moving to the fire area. The person in the photo below has picked the entry door. Note how he has a back-up line ready to use to protect the egress if needed and how he have braced his foot against the door jamb to provide leverage in pulling the hose. Also note how they have left the door open for other crews to enter.

How are these terms HUMP, BUMP, AND BOW applied? "Humping" means to pull hose and supply it to the nozzle team that is moving toward the fire area. The individual firefighter above will occupy this place until another firefighter “bumps” him. The new firefighter will now occupy this door area and the firefighter in the photo above will move up the hoseline to the next friction point. The “bow” means that each individual supplies a bow in the line when it stops advancing so that there is slack in the line when the nozzle team needs to move forward. How does a department fill out these positions? This is the change in mindset. How long will your search be delayed if you help hump, bump, and bow that first line toward the fire area? I would suggest that that answer is “not long.” Besides, having that first line in place will help your cause immeasurably. A back-up crew is the ideal crew to staff these friction points. The point is that getting that first line into service needs to be supported, and every fire department that I know has a lot of people going in the structure to perform many tasks. Usually, we bump into each other. Change the mindset, and have them help that understaffed attack crew (nozzle team) get to the fire area; then we are truly supporting the cause with little effect to our other assignments. This will help to get that first line into service rapidly and help in closing on the enemy.

#5. FIGHT FIRE FROM PROTECTED LOCATIONS

Tip # 5 brings us to the start of some safety-oriented concepts. Moving charged hoselines has a lot to do with teamwork and technique. We have dealt with some of those ideas. Now we will turn to some ideas related to situational awareness, safe practices, and plain common sense. What does “fighting fire from protected locations mean”? Most of us have been taught that we need to get water “at the seat of the fire.” This concept seems to have caused us all to think that we need to be up close and personal with all fires. As we discussed earlier, the best way to extinguish a fire is to act like a sprinkler and disperse the water throughout the fire area, unless the fire is localized and just starting to develop. Once the fire is rolling over, we must confine it by distributing water correctly. Fire behavior has changed due to the use of synthetics, causing hotter heat release rates and more incomplete combustion. This leads to a greater danger of unburned fuel surrounding us. It is why approaching the enemy, closing in on the fire as we advance our hoseline, calls for increased vigilance and awareness of changing conditions. One way to help be more effective and safe as we advance is to fight fire from protected locations. What does this look like?

As the thermal image illustrates in the photo above, controlling the door and attacking the fire from a correct position at the doorway is one idea. The wall not only provides protection from the fire and products of combustion venting out of the doorway, it also supplies a strongpoint to lean up against and resist the nozzle reaction forces. While we are near the doorway, remember to stay out of areas that are ventilation channels. I’ve heard someone say quite well, “stay out of the vent.” This firefighter asked a class if they ever looked down a vertical ventilation hole to see if it was venting correctly. Why, he asked, would you do the same thing in a door? We try and teach our firefighters to either be in the room or out, never staying in the doorway.

This crew (photo above) needs to make a decision and seek some protection from the possibility of being in a vent channel. What about the granddaddy of all protected locations, staying low below the thermal layer. This is a poorly reinforced concept. Watch your own department members and see how low they stay when attacking fires. The benefits to staying low, better visibility and better tenability, should be well known. Are they well practiced? Finally, teach your fire crews about a concept that I call “fire and maneuver.” Our nozzles project water a long way under force. Use this concept for your protection and the protection of the interior crews by hitting a fire from a distance away to force it back into the area of origin. Rarely are we at firefights where a nozzle needs to be open and flowing for a long period of time. Most of us operate in residential environments that take very little water to extinguish fires. The real danger in these occupancies is letting a fairly confined fire extend out of a room and ignite the smoke layer that is over our heads. This can potentially become a game of Russian Roulette if you decide to race the growing fire by charging from your entry point to the fire area without trying to control the expanding fire. This takes experience, but it pays to practice the concept of fire and maneuver. If a fire is rolling out of a doorway, hit it with the stream and stop its extension. Experience will tell you if you need to keep the nozzle open and continue to hit the fire while you advance from the entry point to the fire area or if a short application of water will knock back the fire and allow a rapid move to the fire area with the nozzle closed. Most of the time, a fire will be blackened out quickly and the nozzle operator will shut down to watch and listen for any other signs that the fire is kicking up again or not extinguished after your first attempt to knock it down. The concept of fire and maneuver allows you the opportunity to attempt extinguishment from a more protected location, a ways away from the main fire area, and it gives you more of a chance to reassess the situation before over committing yourself and your crew members.

#6. KNOW YOUR ENEMY

Again, this is a safety issue. What do you know about the chemistry and physics of fire? How and why does a fire grow and expand? Why do some fires fully develop and others dampen down and smolder? What is it about synthetics that make them so dangerous to the modern firefighter? Knowing the enemy is essential, but so is knowing how your weapon (a nozzle) is used to adequately combat the enemy. Being able to read the smoke condition, knowing the location of the fire and the likely avenues of extension, listening to the sounds of the fire, and understanding what they mean are all vital skills. How well versed are your crews in these concepts? We know that it takes teamwork and technique to advanced charged hoselines into structures. It also takes sound decision-making, based on experience, to know when to advance, when to hold your ground, and when to withdraw or retreat to a more defensible space.

Knowing your enemy allows you to understand the environment that you are operating in. Combined with the mission, the main priority or objectives, decisions are made about the advance and where the position is that the main body of fire will be engaged. We have talked already about the dangers of modern contents that create a very flammable and unstable gas cloud over our heads and surrounding us. It is vital that the nozzle crew be ready to attack this gas cloud if any question exists as to its potential to ignite and surround the attack crew. I’m not sure why this seems to be occurring at a more alarming rate, but fire crews across the country are seemingly forgetting that passing up fire puts them in an “untenable” position. I was taught from day one never to allow any fire to cut off your egress route. It matters that you know if a fire is burning above you, below you, behind you, or in front of you. The problem with the unburned fuel (smoke) today is that it is basically fire ready to trap you if you are not ready to cool it down. I was always taught to put water at the “seat” of the fire. The question to ask now is: “Where is the seat of the fire today?” It is potentially all around you. Knowing your enemy allows the fire attack crew to avoid being ambushed as they advance. This is fundamental knowledge to have as a firefighter in the year 2008.

#7. COORDINATE WITH OTHER CREWS AND TACTICS

This tip may seem simple and out of place among professional firefighters, but I have found that coordination among crews is not well practiced. This is an important question to ask as it relates to firefighter line-of-duty deaths and injuries. How many times have you heard it explained by NIOSH reports or at conferences or in magazine articles that on-scene crews attacked a defensive fire offensively? Or a fire extended up a stairwell to kill or injure firefighters when a crew was in place at the level of the fire but they were not allowed to engage the fire because the IC wanted to avoid opposing hosestreams. How many times at your fires do you feel like ventilation was timely and coordinated with the attack crew? Are your crews disciplined enough to avoid competing with the attack crew to get first water on the fire? Everyone has a job to perform, and assignments to be completed at each and every fire. Since we are talking about advancing charged hoselines, it is vital that we grasp how to support that first hoseline by helping the nozzle team carry out a smooth advance. Ensure that the building behaves by clearing the path to the fire area with timely ventilation. Force entry so that the advance is not delayed, allowing the fire to build and extend. If these support functions do not occur, or worse, are not coordinated, the advance of that first-in crew will be difficult. I mentioned discipline earlier, and I would like to back up this point with some photos. The firefighter below does not have the most righteous job, but how important is it for crew members to keep track of hoselines and keep them from being entangled? I’m sure that this firefighter would much rather be on the nozzle getting the glory, but his job at this moment allows the nozzle operator to extinguish the fire and be the center of attention later around the kitchen table.

How about the firefighter below who is at the door in a back-up line position? Do you think that it is torturing him not being inside in the thick of the battle?

This firefighter's job is to protect the interior crews egress. Should the fire extend, who is available to keep the escape route open for the interior crews? It is imperative that we teach and pass on the lessons of how a firefight is a coordinated team event. Everybody has a job and each job contributes to the success of the mission.

#8. DON’T JUST PUT THE FIRE OUT, OVERWHELM IT

Finally, we are at the fire area. We have deployed our line well. We have surveyed the situation and gathered information ensuring that it is shared with the other members of the attack team. Equipment is in place, and the weapon system is loaded and ready for action (the hose has been charged and the nozzle is bled of air). We enter the structure and advance. Other crews have jumped to those friction points, and the advance is smooth. The conditions are monitored, and the attack crew is closing on the enemy. It is showtime. It is no time to be timid. Blacken it, extinguish it, and OVERWHELM it!

We in the fire service suffer from the ups and downs of the latest and greatest concept. It doesn’t matter if it is fog nozzles for droplet distribution, foam for quicker knockdown, 3D firefighting for the control of flashovers, or pistol grips (or worse yet, check out the “zero torque” nozzle) that help us control nozzle reaction. All of these concepts have some merit and “scientific” backing, BUT they all get in the way of teaching the simple concept of putting the fire out in a controlled, aggressive, and overwhelming manner. Overwhelming does not mean flooding a small developing fire. Experience needs to dictate the necessary amount of water and the intensity of the attack. The bottom line is to distribute the water throughout the fire area in an aggressive, controlled, and intense manner. Water is one thing that we generally have a lot of. Don’t be afraid to use it. The quicker fire is controlled, the more our problems diminish. I have heard of a book called Flawless Execution in which Marine Corps fighter pilots talk about how task overload can cause people to forget about the basics. For these pilots, these tasks can get in the way of remembering the basics, like taking off and landing. Are too many tasks or too many concepts or too much “silver bullet” technology (equipment) getting in the way of our take-offs and landings, like simply putting out the fire? In the end, we are called firefighters; so teach your folks how to “fight” fire. Enough said.

CONCLUSIONS

I want to thank Fire Nuggets for the opportunity to have presented this series of articles on knowing your weapons (nozzles and hoselines), deploying your weapons (deployment of handlines), and closing on the enemy (advancing an attack line). All of these ideas have come from a contingent of dedicated firefighters and fire officers who have taught for the Fire Nuggets staff at conferences around the country. We are all ambassadors of Andy Fredericks who simply wanted to keep the tradition going of sound and common sense firefighting. To all of those instructors, thank you and keep up the good work.

Finally, remember the basics. I don’t care how you choose to do it, ultimately accomplish the mission and bring your people back home safe and sound. There are always better ways to perform certain actions. I have often told firefighters (actually anybody that I meet) that there are good ways to do things, better ways to do things, and ways in which you are headed down the wrong road. These articles have been an attempt to give you time-honored lessons of better ways to use nozzles and handlines, deploy them for success, and move in on a fire with purpose, knowledge, and overwhelming force. Thanks for your time and don’t forget the basics.

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