Having an understanding of why we carry out the strategies and tactics we do on the fireground is a vital component of success in our operations.

With that said, an understanding of what everyone else is doing on the fireground and why, is also vital in our success.

It’s quite easy to focus in on your part of the operations, only to find out later about other ‘things’ that took place at the fire.

If you are paying attention to what’s going on during a fire, you sometimes wonder why some of the strategies or tactics are being applied.

Not being able to see the rest of the fireground, or not being privy to face to face conversations that are taking place remote from your location, can lead to confusion or misunderstanding.

Much of this can be curtailed or at least minimized through education and training. But it can take

some time to move the slow turning bureaucracy of many departments or to effect change in the many members who are happy to just look through the ‘we’ve always done it this way glasses.

Departmental or personnel-based issues can make it challenging for anyone to effectively develop and conduct a training program that will address these areas.

In future articles we’ll take a look at addressing this challenge from the bottom up. In the meantime, however, I’d like to share a simple drill or training session that can be the starting point for some good conversations with your crews.

These discussions can be conducted as a simple company level drill or on a larger battalion or platoon level.

I call this drill ‘The Incident Exercise Sheet’. It’s an easy way to take a look at an incident and have
a discussion on how strategy and tactics are applied at every level.

The exercise is based on a form that is populated with a brief description of an incident and with one or two photos of the same. Its main point is to develop and drive a discussion on the incident presented.

There are two basic ways that you can approach it. First is from the current position of the firefighter completing the sheet. Take a look at the incident, from your perspective, and fill in the sheet with your thoughts on what should be the answers to each section. (We’ll get to those shortly).

Secondly, you can complete the sheet in the same way but change your perspective to that of how someone else in another position or level of the operation would be looking at it. For example, if you’re an engine firefighter, look at the incident from the perspective of a truck firefighter, or as the company officer.

So, more about the sheet.

After the incident information and photos section of the sheet it asks you to consider what you
see in the images and complete the rest of the sheet bases upon your perspective using the departments SOP’s as a guide. Obviously, this can be modified to do the same from different perspectives than your own.

Initial Size Up

In this section the form looks for the initial size up information that you will be basing your operational choices on. Hopefully, this is something that members are warm and fuzzy with already. If not, stop and spend some time getting everyone up

to speed with what a size up is for, what it should incorporate and how to verbalize that succinctly and in a way that can be easily understood. This is critical as it paints a picture of the battle ground incoming units are about to face.

Conducting an effective initial and then ongoing size ups are based upon knowledge of building

construction, response districts, fire and human behaviors, departmental SOP’s and the capabilities of your crews and department. This exercise assumes you’re already working on that stuff. If you’re not, this can be utilized as a tool to evaluate where you are with some of that so you can create some additional training on your areas of need.

Once your initial size up is complete move on to the next section.

Strategic Considerations

Strategy is most often defined as ‘the plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim,’ or ‘the art and science of command exercised to meet the enemy in combat in advantageous conditions.’

Applied to the fire service we look at strategy as utilizing our available intelligence to create overall goals and aims for our developing plan on combating the incident that lies before us.

Pre incident intelligence, departmental policy, available resources and personnel, combined with incident size up, will drive the decisions we make and the overall strategy that we will employ to conduct our operation.

In this section, we look for the firefighter to outline the factors present that will drive the overall strategy they will chose to utilize on the incident presented. They should also include what that strategy will be.

Tactical Objectives

If strategy is the overall plan, tactics are the actions that are required to carry that plan out. They are the deployments of companies in an organized way with the expectation that they will carry out individual actions that will cumulatively drive the operation toward achieving the overall goals outlined in the incident strategy.

Applied to the fire service, if our overall strategy is offensive fire attack based on rescuing trapped occupants, holding the fire to its current location, and extinguishment, we might see tactics like vent enter search, aggressive interior attack and vertical ventilation.

If our overall strategy is defensive based on preventing spread to exposures and overall extinguishment of a well-advanced fire, we might see tactics like utilization of aerial and engine company master streams and flowing from ground-based monitors.

Our tactical objectives should outline the tactics to be use by the companies to collectively carry out the mission laid out by the overall incident strategy.

Company Level Tasks

After establishing the overall strategy and the tactics needed to carry out that strategy, the sheet begins to focus in on the company level tasks needed to bring this plan to life. It looks at what tasks and skills the firefighters on each company are expected to carry out as part of this operation.

The instructions in this section are simple, explain the specific actions of the companies / positions listed.

Because our initial tactical box is made up of two engine and two truck companies, the form that I use lists the companies as first in engine, first in truck, second in engine and second in truck. Obviously, you can modify this to fit your individual department’s response model.

The expectation here is that the firefighter lists the actions and task level skills that the company must carry out to meet their assigned tactical objectives.

Command Considerations

This is the last section on the form and is really designed to get the firefighter completing the sheet to think about the things that the incident commander is considering during the operations.

As I mentioned previously, you can complete
this form from your perspective or from the perspective of someone in another position. Either way, this section asks the firefighter or company officer to think about the incident from the perspective of the incident commander.

Hopefully, it will begin to spur some thought on the strategic and tactical decisions leading up to the assignment of the task level skills that they carry out during an operation.

Conclusion

The design of this exercise and sheet sets out to address two basic concepts for those who are completing it. First is the consideration of how we arrive at the plan for a particular incident and secondly to create an opportunity for thought and discussion on what others are doing on the fire ground.

My hope here is that we start to think about the incident from different perspectives and levels, and in turn further develop and hone our personal incident clocks and tactical discipline models we chose to employ.

It’s designed to be a basic tool to start the process, get people thinking and a discussion going, and be a tool that can be expanded upon with a variety of other training opportunities.

Hopefully, you find it helpful and will adapt it to best benefit your situation, department and personnel.