Fully Involved
Really? Is it?
This is a Public Service Announcement...seriously, for the sake of the public who may be trapped inside...
Please take a breath and reevaluate the temptation to make the statement ‘FULLY INVOLVED’ over the radio.
When arriving to a well involved fire, please resist the urge to size it up as ‘fully involved’ when you’ve only had a view of one or two sides. How can you make that assessment without a global view of the building? Words have meaning and we should use these terms for their literal definitions.
Temper your size up and keep the window open for aggressive interior work as long as you can. How? Use the term ‘well involved on the A-side’ if that’s the only side you’ve seen.
We all know what the words ‘Fully involved’ do to the attitudes and mindsets of later arriving crews. It tends to kill any ‘since of urgency’ that most aggressive firefighters bring to the incident. This only minimizes the chance for rescue of any trapped civilians inside.
The two photos in this article are examples to compare.
The first one is of a truly ‘fully involved’ structure. A tire / repair shop in Las Vegas that spread so quickly it literally chased the employees out of the building.
The second is of a house fire that had heavy fire showing along the A-side upon arrival. A heads-up BC arrived and quickly assigned a company to the rear. This company identified several bedrooms on the C-side that were still uninvolved and fairly tenable. These rooms were prime candidates for a quick in-and-out VES operation. That is the take-away from this!
If we have done everything we can to ensure all |tenable| areas have been searched then we have honored our ethos and lived up to the expectation of the people we serve and protect. Start arriving to your fires looking for areas where a civilian could be and not where all of the fire is.
Arrive to the fire with a CAN-DO attitude, stop focusing on the bon-fire, and start training your eye to identify these areas of opportunity!
To do this, company officers need support! This starts with chief officers who haven’t lost sight of and still value this expectation. Those who have learned to balance their concern for the welfare and safety of their firefighters against the mandate of ‘risking a lot to save a lot’.
NOTE: This mantra should be applied for potential entrapment, not just confirmed.
This should begin with a conversation that makes this expectation clear. It should then be followed up with training your people to adapt their mindset and in turn, their on scene report, to limit the use of this term and to affirm aggressive interior work until the building will no longer allow it.
Teach them to adjust their eyes through table-top conversations and hands on training that looks for and identifies where we can go verses where we cant.
There is nothing wrong with a BC encouraging smart, aggressive work in their fire companies!
As a Company Officer, it is one of the best feelings to know your chief expects aggressive work and has your back in the execution of said work!
We must, however, build this trust in our chief officers through training, and making smart aggressive choices at the scenes of our fires.
Remember, we’re only as good as our last fire!
So make an on scene report that keeps our incoming crews hungry and in a can-do mindset.
Lastly, ensure you and your crew are ready for this fire and the aggressive, time limited assignments that need to be carried out to give the public the chance they deserve.