Fireground Communications: Technology and Building Identification

March 1, 2015
Mike Lombardo explains the challenges with providing accurate and clear communications on the fireground.

Accurate and clear communications are vital to the positive outcome of an incident and the safety of members operating at an emergency. Providing accurate and clear communications on the fireground can offer serious challenges that can be dangerous for firefighters and those we are sworn to protect.

These challenges can involve equipment as well as procedures and the human interaction with the entire communications process. Some will disagree with certain points in this article; that’s fine, but remember our emergency communications are not the end, but the means to help us protect the public and ourselves.

Technology: The good & the bad

A plethora of equipment is at our disposal today to aid us on the fireground in accomplishing our core mission. Certain equipment is a tremendous help and other items can end up being a burden. GPS systems are available on apparatus that can give us detailed routing instructions and show the location of other responding units. These systems can provide accurate response and arrival information as well as information down to hydrant location

When I started as firefighter, information about a dangerous building was passed along (hopefully) by writing the address up on the chalk board at the watch desk in quarters. Today, very specific building data can be relayed via radio and written and visual information can be passed along via mobile data terminals available in many fire department units. This is just a small example of what new technology can provide; however, not all technological advances are positive.

When dealing with new technology, we must make sure it works for us. I have mentioned the fireground a couple times now. When we respond to emergencies other than fires, most of our communications equipment is not an issue; it is when we operate on the fireground that it is most critical and often causes us issues. Operating inside a burning building is probably the most difficult and dangerous work environment on the planet Earth. Don’t make it worse with equipment that is not user friendly.

Is your portable radio firefighter friendly? In Buffalo, NY, we have radios that contain 16 channels. For firefighters and company officers four channels are used. Dispatch 1, Fireground 2, Fireground 3 and Fireground 4 are on channels 1, 2, 3 and 4. They are also on channels 16, 15, 14 and 13. This way a firefighter can turn the dial in either direction and communicate. The radio also talks to you each time you turn the dial and tells you what channel you are on: “Buffalo Fire Channel 1,” “Buffalo Fire Channel 2,” etc. Meanwhile, I have seen systems where the main channel is “Tac-3,” but it is on Channel 1. Can’t we just rename it “Tac-1?” Make stuff easy; fires are hard enough.

In 2008, the Buffalo Fire Department was involved in testing a radio system that was going to be purchased for the entire State of New York. This State Wide Wireless System (SWWN) did not work very well for us; we had tremendous coverage problems on the west side of our city and other areas.

The radios themselves were an issue for me. They contained a number of banks, zones and talk groups to be able to provide over 500 individual channels. At a meeting that involved members from numerous Western New York public safety departments and representatives of the company supplying the equipment, I expressed my concern regarding a firefighter going off an operating channel in a fire and not being able to find their way back. One company representative told me, “Commissioner, this radio will allow you to communicate with a snowplow driver in Poughkeepsie” (350 miles southeast). I explained that that capability was not important (nothing against Poughkeepsie snowplow drivers), but being able to talk to a trapped firefighter in a basement in Buffalo was.

The vice president of the company then said, “Of course, we have to make it idiot proof for the firemen.” At that time, I became slightly upset and explained that the gentleman should go back to his hotel room, turn the heat up all the way, climb under his bed, blindfolded, with real big gloves on and operate his laptop. That would be maybe a 1/100th% as difficult as what we operate in at a fire. Firefighters are not idiots, I said; we just operate in some of the most hellacious conditions on Earth. Many radios we send our crews into fires with are simply computers with antennas attached. When you are burning or suffocating, the ease or difficulty of your radio operation should not be a concern. The SWWN system was not approved by us in the Buffalo Fire Department and consequently was canceled by the state.

Wearing your radio

Simple communications are difficult in our work environment. One thing that may aid you is keeping the portable radio under your coat on a radio strap. This protects it from water to some degree and makes it less likely to accidentally go off channel. More importantly, we have found in line-of-duty-death situations that the weakest link in our communications system is the lapel microphone cord. They have been found to fail at very low and survivable (to us) temperatures. Having your radio under your coat will provide some protection for the mic cord. The issue you can run into with a radio strap under your coat versus in a radio pocket is when you operate with a very complex radio system where changing channels is common, it can be nearly impossible to change zones, banks and channels

Another issue that can affect our communication is voice amplifiers. They are quite common on self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) facepieces; although they are helpful when talking face to face, they play havoc with radio communication, especially digital systems.

Dispatch protocols

I will often ask classes I teach what their department sends to a fire. They will often relay that they send different responses to different occupancies. As a common example, two engines, one ladder and one chief will respond to a residential fire and four engines, two ladders, a heavy rescue and two chiefs will respond to a commercial occupancy.

Get upset with me if you will, but I think this is flawed. I would send the larger response to all reported “structure” fires. A commercial occupancy may get the large response while closed at 3 A.M. and the smaller response will go to the single-family dwelling at 3 A.M. This may be extreme, but not uncommon, and the buildings themselves aren’t the only factor for me. Over 80% of Americans who die in fires as well as the same percentage of firefighters lost operating on the fireground die in our homes. These residential fires are really where we as firefighters can have the most positive impact. Send the larger response if you have it; they can always be returned.

Identifying buildings and exposures

Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) states that all emergency response organizations use a single, comprehensive national incident management system. Part and parcel to this National Incident Management System (NIMS) is the use of plain language by emergency responders. Let’s all remember what it says...plain language!

The horizontal identification of a fire building and its exposures is decided by the fire department. Many standard operating procedures (SOPs) say that the address side of the building will be side A. I think a better SOP is that the incident commander identifies side A and communicates to all. Where we get in trouble is when the entrance of a building is not on the street, but rather in a parking lot or courtyard. I know of one department that strictly adheres to the address side being side A. One major street in their district has addresses that face the ocean; consequently, on every response, firefighters must remember they are entering the C side of the building and adjust from there. This makes things more difficult than they have to be. Even a simple variation to a building entrance can cause confusion on the fireground.

Townhouses and rowhouses can offer the same confusion, especially if you are responding in as a later unit. You may be unsure what the original fire building was, so along with exposure designation, use the address of the occupancy you are operating in. Also, how well would your system and your firefighters do with a fire in a 165-store mall?

Vertical identification of buildings

Why do we have to change the names of things? I have called the second floor the second floor since I learned to talk. Is it really plain language to call it Division 2?

I recently taught a hands-on class at an acquired structure. It was a 2½-story brick corner building on an incline going from back to front. This created a walkout from the basement of the rear. The chief at the drill at one point assigned an engine company the task to “stretch a line to the rear of Division 1.” The crew promptly stretched into the basement, the chief said, “No, the first floor.” I asked why the chief did not say that in the first place. Many have told me that the crew should have known that they went to the “basement division.” Isn’t it simpler and shorter to just say basement, attic or first floor?

Horizontal identification of a building is up to the fire department; vertical identification is really up to the building. This becomes critical at high-rise buildings. Let me explain: let’s say as incident commander you are looking at a building with 12 distinct floors. When crews go in, they look at the directory or elevator panel and see the floor designation as 1 through 12. What happens when a 12-story building has designations that say ground, mezzanine, 1-10? We may want to call that fifth floor from the ground the fifth floor, but if the building designation says third floor, we have to go with that. Civilians and firefighters alike, if they are in trouble or trapped, are going to use designations that are present in the building, not what we want to call them.

Stairwells offer the same issue. You certainly can assign one stairwell to be the attack stairs and one to be the egress stairs, but this has to be in conjunction with what the building stair designations are; i.e., north, south, center, A, B, etc.

Next: Fireground communications from arrival and status reports, plus Maydays.

MIKE LOMBARDO is a 38-year veteran of the fire service and was the Commissioner/Chief of Department of the Buffalo Fire Department from Jan 2006 to Jan 2010. He is a New York State fire instructor and was a member of the development team for the New York State Firefighter Survival and Rapid Intervention programs. He was a lead instructor for FDIC live fire training. He is a two-time Firehouse Magazine Heroism Award recipient (1988 and 1994) and the recipient of the FDIC 1999 Training Achievement Award. Lombardo is a faculty member of the Fire Department Training Institute at Harrison College and the Fire Department Training Network where he presents and developed the Fire Command program. He currently operates with the Christiana and Rehoboth Beach Fire Departments in Delaware. He is a consultant and instructor on fire tactics, live fire attack, firefighter survival, and command and fire department operations throughout the United States.

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