#fireground tactics

[scriptfirefighter]

Hello, I have my team of firefighters answering a normal emergency (a small fire in a house) but it ends up being a bigger fire than expected. They have to enter and inside, one of them falls through a wodden floor, hurts his ribs but gets out of the house in time. how would the rest of the team react? do you have first aid kits? would another team of firefighters be called? Lots of questions, sorry and thanks in advance

Hello there Anon, 

It sounds like your character has gotten themselves into a serious situation. 

Upon initially falling through the floor, your character would likely call a “Mayday” on the radio (typically in the form of “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!”). 

When a Mayday is called, everything on the fireground comes to a screeching halt. In many cases all personnel in the involved structure would be either evacuated or required to check-in with their location and status. In addition rescue operations would be immediately launched.

Luckily, there is someone out there just for situations like this one.

On the scene of any structure fire, there is a small team (typically 2-4 firefighters) known as a RIT or Rapid Intervention Team whose only job is the rescue and recovery of downed firefighters through the application of specialized tools and techniques.

A RIT would likely have been activated when the firefighter went through the floor, so it opens the potential for firefighter self-rescue or rescue by the RIT.

As for first aid kits, we usually carry medical bags with us, but there is also usually an ambulance on fire standby. Which, let’s be honest,  is the best kind of first aid kit, it comes with a paramedic!

As always thanks for asking, and I hope this helps!

~529

[scriptfirefighter]

Sorry if this has been answered: how is it handled when you show up to a scene where there are also human victims to worry about? Does an ambulance always follow a firetruck or something? And/or how much EMT training and supplies do you have yourselves?

Hi there, @scix-in-the-back-row

It all depends on the type of emergency, and to a large degree on the reporting person.

For example, if we were dispatched to a vehicle collision where the reporting person (RP) indicated the presence of injury to dispatch, they would roll EMS immediately. However, we are often the first on scene with car wrecks and we may have to indicate a need for EMS if the RP did not. 

For a fire, if the RP tells dispatch that there are victims trapped, EMS would be on fire stand-by at the scene until we cleared them. But once again, if the RP does not, we might have to call them out.

As far as our medical training, many of us are certified at one of the three or four levels of emergency medical training depending on your local/state protocols (Medical First Responder, EMT-Basic, EMT-Intermediate/Advanced, and Paramedic). Many of the people on my department are certified as EMT-Basics, while my captain and couple of others are paramedics. 

Also, any professional departments are staffed with/require fully trained and certified Firefighter/EMT’s or Firefighter/Paramedics while others maintain their own ambulance branch with its’ own chain of command (think FDNY/Chicago fire).

That being said, because my department is only certified to run as a first responder agency, we can only provide the first responder level of care. Meaning we are able to do our best to stabilize the patient and assist with the administration of their own, prescribed medication while we wait for the ambulance. 

If you want a more in-depth description of the various duties and capabilities of the various levels of training and certification, please feel free to visit ScriptMedic (a real-life paramedic and everything).

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps!

~529

[scriptfirefighter]

Hi! My MC is a firefighter and I was wondering if he'd wear dogtags or ID tags of some sort. Obviously he's not military, but do firefighters wear an equivalent in case they... IDK, get burned to an unrecognisable crisp, or need a blood transfusion (ie displaying blood-type) or anything?

Howdy Anon,

We don’t wear dog tags, however we do typically have several types of identification built into out PPE (Personal Protective Equipment. The first is on our helmets. On our helmets is typically a helmet number, which functions as an ID number, or our name. Additionally, on the back out our turnout coats (the coats we wear into fires) can be a name plate toward the bottom on the back of the coat. 

In order to keep track of which personnel are inside or outside of the structure in question, the incident commander or the safety officer will collect an accountability tag (velcro tag with name that attached to IC board) from everyone that enters a structure. This helps the IC to, at a glance, be able to tell who is or is not inside and who has or has not been accounted for. In the case of my own department, it’s as simple as removing a tag (we have more than one) from the underside of our helmet brim and giving it to the IC. 

Many departments also give their firefighters plastic ID cards, similar to a driver’s license. However, I haven’t heard of any department’s ID card including information about blood type. They can, such as in the case of my own department, include information on what privileges firefighters might hold such as the right to run ‘blue lights’ in a personal vehicle.

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps!

~529

[scriptfirefighter]

If the actual source of a fire was a person (think supervillain with superpowers), and they were still inside the burning building, how would firefighters deal with it? Would they try to go in regardless if there were people trapped there?

The decision to fight a building from the interior is often based on a number of factors: environmental (what’s the temperature like, how is the wind behaving, etc.), manpower available, building construction, and building materials as well as the structural integrity of the building itself. 

When a building is occupied, some of those considerations carry less weight as our primary mission is to protect life, then property. Ultimately on arrival a team would probably be sent in to conduct a primary search, and if a victim was located attempt rescue, and such operations would continue until command staff (usually known as the incident commander or IC) made the call that it was unreasonably unsafe to do so. 

At that point fire suppression operations would often become defensive in nature, in an attempt to a) stop or control the spread of fire and b) to protect surrounding structures.

~529

[scriptfirefighter]

An anti-villain of mine can secrete oil from his skin, and he has a job as an arsonist. He likes to hang out in the buildings he's set on fire to freak out the locals and annoy the fire department. At least twice a week, the local fire department gets a call about a building fire caused by "the Burning Man". It's always an oil fire, and it's always an empty warehouse or factory. How would the responders try to stop the fire from spreading and snuff it out?

Howdy Anon,

To snuff out a fire of that nature, we would more than likely just apply water until there was no more fire. It may sound snarky, but in this case it’s just a simple fix. 

For large structures like warehouses and factories, the city department would likely involve what are known as “aerials.” An aerial is essentially a ladder truck with a “master stream” device attached at the en of the boom. (Sidenote: Master streams are essentially high flow nozzles that cannot be operated by hand because of the high amount of pressure and flow rate, as such they are anchored to the apparatus or have a stand that can be set on the ground for additional stabilization).

 Also, if authorities were aware of who is setting these fires, and the fact that these fires were, in fact, arson “the Burning Man” would more than likely be arrested without delay. (That IS, if that tack hasn’t been tried and found to be untenable).

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps!

~529

[scriptfirefighter]

How are firefighters prepared and act upon a biological emergency like a disease?

Howdy @askthescp-4050-instances,

Firefighters are prepared for biological emergencies to a limited degree, in that we are trained to essentially quarantine and ‘kick it upstairs’ so to speak. We (i.e. those trained in HazMat) seal the area, and those inside of it until more appropriate personnel, summoned from their response centers, labs, and so on (more than likely FEMA, Homeland Security, and the CDC), can respond and dictate the best course of action. 

The scale of the response, of course, depends on the scale of the emergency. If the incident is contained to one person, it might well take until they’ve been taken to the hospital for quarantine protocols to be enacted rather than if the incident has a broader scope and scale.

Well, as always thanks for asking and I hope this helps!

~529

[scriptfirefighter]

Hello! This is a little too long for the ask box, so here i am. I am writing and constructing a post-apocalyptic world. The surface is not safe, so everybody is living underground. There are eight major towns, and the most important one is based in Paris necropolis (catacomb? undercity thing? English is not my forte…) They let some tunnels be and modified others to have more space.

The thing is, i have absolutely no idea of how they would react to a fire. I mean, there IS a firefighter team, but how would they react to a fight here? Knowing it’s all underground and enclosed ? And would the fire comport itself differently? Thanks in advance!

Hello There,  Ayahne!

First, thanks for your question.

Second, to be honest with you, I’m not entirely certain what that response would look like. I’m just too unfamiliar with Paris and how the fire service there operates. I would imagine that they have protocols in place to deal with an emergency in the catacombs.

Sidenote: You would need to place something in the catacombs to burn because human bone is INCREDIBLY hard to burn. Like thousands of degrees to “burn” human bone. and even when bone is burned, a substance called hydroxyapatite is left behind. @forenscripts would be a good person to consult on that front. 

On to something I can confidently answer, fire behaves VERY differently in an enclosed space. As it occurrs to me, because of the nature of the catacombs being underground it seems the easiest way to battle a blaze there would be to seal them and let it smother out. Firefighters in a subterranean area fighing fire is a recipe for disaster, especially if it was to get out of hand.

And one final point, for you and anyone else who might be reading this. I will never be upset, vexed, or even annoyed by someone not having a super firm grasp on English. I’m here to help you, and if that means that I have to run a thing or two through a translator then that is exactly what I’ll do. 

Again, thanks for asking and I hope this helps.

~529