Take It Back

By Mark vonAppen
from www.fireengineering.com

This will be the year that the rogues come home.

Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth. Our professional plan, when the dollars flowed freely and operations mattered, used to include slack in the system to absorb the unforeseen and unthinkable.

Not anymore. 

Do we have a plan for a fight gone bad?  At street level, where it really matters, we have to because often the organization, mired in bureaucracy and catch phrases, does not.  We have to create our own plan because no one else will. Is operating without a plan and hoping things will work out for the best any way to do business?  

No.  

So, let's dispense with the pleasantries and talk honestly about what is going down.   

We're not waiting anymore.  We won't accept average.  We won't be shackled by fear and ignorance.  We won't ask for permission to to carve time from the day in order to train and make ourselves better and safer.  We will do as we see fit to uphold our obligation to our brothers and sisters in the firehouse and in the community.  

"The insiders are counting on us to be passive.  They're counting wrong.  We're not being polite anymore.  We're at the door and we're taking the craft back for ourselves."  

Aggressive, educated, proactive firefighting that starts with the mindset that every run is the real deal, every structure is occupied, and that we will extend risk (our lives) to effect the rescue of our neighbors.  It is the foundation of a movement to put the fight back in firefighter and bring strong leadership back to the fireground and firehouse.  

Our best insurance policy is a strong base of education and the ability to practically apply knowledge to the appropriate situation.  We have to be functionally intelligent and possess the ability to think on our feet. We must invest in ourselves and be willing to fight for what we believe in.  In order to win the fight, we have to be in the fight.  Being in the fight means doing it on your own and leading from everywhere.

This is not a threat, it's a promise to do our job.  We're not being polite anymore.  We're at the door and we're taking the craft back for ourselves.  The insiders are counting on us to be passive.  They're counting wrong.  If owning our responsibility makes us rogues, then so be it.  

We're the outsiders.  Ready or not, here we come.

Transitional Attack vs. Interior Attack

Since the recent NIST and UL studies in Spartanburg, SC there has been a lot of talk about transitional attack. Everyone from tailboard firefighters to the most well known national instructors seem to have a strong opinion on this "new" tactic. Opinions range from stark defiance to adopting a "less aggressive" firefighting tactic, to those who champion transitional attack as the "holy grail" of the fire service, sure to all but eliminate line of duty deaths and injuries. As with most debates, I tend to believe the answer is somewhere in the middle.

First off, transitional attack is not new. It is simply a new buzz word attached to a tactic that firefighters have used since the days of the bucket brigade. Before the advent of fully encapsulating turnout gear and self-contained breathing apparatus, firefighters had no choice but to make conditions more tenable from the exterior before being able to make entry to perform search and complete fire extinguishment. As protective gear became more advanced, we were able to push further into hostile environments. Unfortunately, as the level of protection from our PPE increased, so did the heat release rates (HRR) of the materials found in structures. We are finally starting to realize that the increase in the HRR of fuels has surpassed the advances in PPE. Also, the high level of thermal protection that our PPE affords us masks the rapid increase in heat prior to flashover until it is too late. This fact coupled with poor tactics, lack of communication, lack of situational awareness, and failure at the task level have put many firefighters in a position to be caught in a flashover.

Another thing that tends to lead to trouble is when firefighters with small town staffing attempt to use big city tactics in situations where they just won't work. Let's face it, there are just some things that a three-man engine company cannot do with a reasonable margin of safety that a six-man FDNY engine company can. This is where transitional attack is a viable option for us. When faced with fire showing from the structure with insufficient staffing to make an interior attack, or where conditions are too severe to engage in an interior attack without backup, getting water on the fire as quickly as possible is our best alternative. Once water reaches the fire, overall conditions will improve and buy us some time to gather enough personnel to mount an interior attack.

One thing that has been conspicuously absent from much of the transitional attack debate is the actual skill of using it. Transitional attack is not just randomly lobbing water through a window and hoping for the best; it is a tactic which must be understood and performed properly to be successful. While the studies may have proved that applying water from the exterior cannot push fire, it is an undeniable fact that a hose stream can push the hell out smoke, heat, steam, and gases; and those are what kill unprotected occupants. The following video is from the Los Angeles County Fire Department and does a very good job of explaining and showing how to properly use transitional attack. For some reason it won't let me embed the video so follow this link:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lkM2AsZqlM

While transitional attack is a great tactic in certain situations, it is not always a feasible or correct option. It is also not the "magic bullet" that will eliminate firefighter deaths and injuries. Transitional attack only works when you have fire venting to the outside. It will not work when you have only smoke showing and it won't work on deep seated fires in large buildings. Even when it does work, after the fire is knocked down from the exterior we still have to go inside to search and complete extinguishment. The external knockdown does not extinguish the fire, it simply takes some of the energy out of it to buy us some time. Fire is never static; it is either growing or it is dying. Once we knock it down from the outside, it begins growing again until we reach the seat and extinguish it. Transitional attack does not make our job safe, it makes it somewhat safer. "Safe" is a relative term in our business.

When there is the potential for savable lives inside the fire building, transitional attack is less likely to be the best tactic. Often the best tactic is to place a hoseline between the fire and the occupant's means of egress. In a ventilated fire, the environment becomes much more tenable behind the nozzle team as they advance toward the fire and push the smoke, heat, steam, and fire gases out the ventilation point. The following video shows this very well. Notice the improvement in conditions behind the nozzle team as they make the push.

The keys to making this type of attack successful are having a ventilation opening opposite of the fire and being able to "push". A "push" means flowing water while advancing the hoseline simultaneously. Unfortunately this is a skill that most firefighters don't have but once you acquire it, it can be a game-changer. Flowing water while advancing pushes all of the products of combustion ahead of the nozzle team and out the ventilation opening. It also allows the nozzle team to advance behind the protection of the hose stream, cooling the gases and fuels along the way. The chance of being caught in a flashover during a push is virtually eliminated. Sadly, most firefighters who are killed or injured in flashovers never open the nozzle. In the following video watch how quickly the ceiling temperature drops from over 1000 degrees to less than 200 degrees in a few seconds by sweeping the walls, ceiling, and floor while advancing the hoseline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOtgY7as4x8


As I said earlier, I believe the answer to the debate lies somewhere in the middle. There are many different tactics and most have a place in the fire service. If we jump on the band wagon for the newest hot topic and forget all other options then we become a one trick pony. Good firefighters are not one trick ponies, but rather  have several options at their disposal to handle different situations. This is only accomplished by studying our job and relentlessly training on the basics. There is no tool, tactic, trick, gadget, or gimmick that will improve safety on the fireground more than an educated, skilled, aggressive engine company that makes the right decisions and gets water on the fire quickly.

Into Combat

by Dave Werner
from www.fireengineering.com

I was eating supper at work yesterday, reading a book at the same time, and as it does so often a random thought popped into my mind. In order to provide some context for what follows, this thought was inspired by several sources. First was the book "About Face" by Col. David Hackworth. If you haven't read it, do it soon. It is inspiring and thought provoking. My mindset is still reeling from that book. Number two was a blog from leatherhead109.com titled "Know What Your Doing: It's Expected", a powerful post on the importance of competence and proficiency in leaders. The third source for my random thought was the book I was reading at the time, "Outlaw Platoon" by Lt. Sean Parnell detailing the hellish fighting he saw serving with the 10th Mountain Division. Again, if you haven't yet read this book get to it!

I was reading a section of the book detailing a particularly hairy encounter Lt. Parnell's platoon had with Taliban fighters. Things were going to hell in a handbasket, and options had run out. The Lt. had suffered injuries, as had several of his men and it took every ounce of physical and mental willpower for Lt. Parnell to gather himself, assess the situation, determine priorities, and act. It was an enthralling scene to imagine. We will never be able to repay the debt we owe to those men.

My thought goes as follows:

We send ourselves and our coworkers into combat every time we arrive on the fireground. We expect people to operate skillfully and efficiently in a combat environment. We hold these expectations while in the meantime we deliver and receive completely inadequate training and weak if not completely absent mission support from our leaders. Why on earth are we surprised when we lose firefighters to LODD events? Why on earth are we surprised when we see videos of, and witness firsthand absolute incompetence on the fireground? We continue to send lightly trained public employees into combat zones expecting them to operate with the speed, proficiency, and foresight which we would expect from a special forces unit.

That was what I jotted down on my note pad. Harsh, indeed. I typically try to avoid becoming dramatic when it comes to pleading my case. Unfortunately I believe ambiguity is no longer advised. All around us people are fighting to get the message out. Mark VonAppens post, "Rogues", has over 12,000 hits. Not on Facebook, on Fire Engineering's Training Community. There is no telling how many hits it has on Facebook. The messages are getting out there, but it seems to get lost along the way.

Maybe I am searching for another way to get the message across. I feel like the combat example is one that is powerful enough and easy enough to grasp. Please understand when I say combat I am not implying that our role as firefighters is synonymous to that of a soldier. Far from it. Fire may be a living, breathing animal, but it usually doesn't have AK-47's and RPG's. I am arguing a point which has been previously made by myself and other individuals; that the "characteristics" of the fireground are matched by those seen on the battleground. Realizing this fact, we are undoubtedly tasked with going into combat.

The fireground is a violent, unpredictable, mind numbing, and sense robbing environment. Why do we continue to operate as if we have it all figured out? For fear of abusing the military examples, look at Vietnam. We fought that war just as we fought every other war up to that point. We continued to apply the same tactics which hadn't even worked in the previous war. The armed forces failed to realize the implications of fighting a guerrilla style battle. By guerrilla I mean unconventional, and more specifically a battle of maneuver.

This is where we come back to the fire service. Most of us don't have the resources to wage a war of attrition on the fireground. We can't throw endless resources at the fire until it is obliterated. Most of us operate understaffed and undergunned. Enter maneuver warfare. This is the world of relative superiority. This term may sound familiar from one of Chris Brennans recent posts. It means we have to be so good that despite our disadvantage in resources we still manage to kick ass. How do we do this?
We get really good at what we do. We discard the mindsets of safety and complacency and replace them with a mindset of combat. What kept Lt. Parnell's crew from being overrun and beheaded by Taliban in the battle I was reading about? Number one they were the best of the best. No one knew their job better than they did. They were so good they didn't have to think about it. Number two, and arguably more important, they had a mindset of survival. They knew they were not going to be displaced by the enemy. They fought as a collective group, many hearts beating as one. How does a group of individuals attain this level of performance?
They work their tails off! They train together every opportunity they get. They critique every action and incident to glean every valuable tidbit of improvement. This is where it happens. Nothing else will bring about a bond such as this. This is what brings survival. I dare you to ask Lt. Parnell where his Safety Officer was positioned during the battle.
This message is two pronged. The first is to the individual in the trenches. I am talking about the back seat, tailboard, jumpseat riders. If we don't take this to heart none of it will matter. When the airbrakes are pulled it is time for us to go to work. We need to stop passing the buck and shoulder the responsibility of our role. This means building stock in not just physical courage, but the moral courage to do what we know is right. Cut the excuses, and get your mindset right.

The other prong of this message is for those in the formal leadership roles. You have one responsibility at the end of the day: make absolutely sure that your men and women are ready for combat. This can only be accomplished in one way: set the example you want to see in your people. Model the mindset of the warrior. Provide them the opportunities to build the cohesion and skill sets they will need in combat. Do not under any circumstances sell your people short on training. Stop looking at your people as lightly trained public servants and instead start treating them as warriors. Make them feel like warriors. Expect from them what you expect from a warrior.

Stop tossing around the term "combat ready" like it doesn't mean anything. You either live it or you don't. Saying it will not bring you any closer. Living it will allow you to say it with pride. Again, this is a mindset. Empty routines and mindless administrative nonsense has no bearing on combat readiness. Shed the white noise that encompasses so many of our organizations. It won't be a popular move, but it will never happen if we don't start. Remember, we are going into combat. It is time that we start acting like it. As always, stay smart, and stay combat ready.