Join TrueGrit at the CSFFA Fire College live burn demonstration. What are the benchmarks for making entry and getting the job done? In this True Grit training session, firefighters break down the importance of setting clear benchmarks, communicating progress, and staying focused on the mission in challenging fire ground conditions.
Train with purpose. Work as a team. Get the job done.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:
Timing of the fire ground is paced by the fire, not by a command worksheet. You don’t, as an officer, any of you, need to be telling people to do this. This is something we should just know to do, right? But we fall into this, this complacency issue where it’s like, “I haven’t been told to do it, so I’m not allowed to do it.”
Frankly, bullshit. As much as a chief in command is keeping a big picture, the person who knows the most about what needs to happen is the person in the room who sees what’s going on. Because when I enter a building for search, before or behind a, an attack line, I’m searching, but I’m searching for fire first, and then ultimately victims along the way.
As soon as I hear water in fire, my tactics for search completely change, right? I’m ch- I’m looking for victims in the victim zone. As soon as I hear primary or you run into that other crew and go like, “Hey, how, what have you searched so far,” right? Have that communication, but know that like, “Hey, we’ve searched to here.
We came in to search this room. Cool. We’re gonna search back and start our secondary right now.” It’s all those things. We know the next benchmarks that have to happen. Feel free to go ahead and do it. Obviously, engine company is the same regard. Like, if, if you’re being… you get water in the fire, what do we wanna do next, right?
Like, if you have the manpower, start the search if you haven’t already, and/or start opening it up and looking for that extension. So when you’re going through that secondary and because you’ve heard, like, water in the fire, we’re good to go, everyone, engine and truck, should be opening up windows, right?
Get this thing ventilated because that’s gonna make your secondary more confirmed and more secure. I will gladly go to any chief and explain, “Hey, Chief, yeah, I actually had to break that window on the way out. We had heavy, uh, conditions in there. I needed the ventilation. I started to open. I heard waters in the fire.”
Right? Plenty good. As long as I can justify and tell them what I’m doing, that should be enough of a reason. We don’t need necessarily to wait for permission when we know what needs to happen, especially when we talk about that communication. So keep your officers and chiefs informed, but don’t necessarily be hindered by that communication back and forth.
* The training views expressed in this video are those of the training instructors, and not Fire Spotlight. The actions in this video are inherently dangerous and could result in death; should the viewers choose to adopt any views expressed in this video, he/she is doing so at his/her own risk. Fire Spotlight encourages viewers to review his/her department’s Standard Operating Procedures when adopting any new training views.