As a company officer responding to an emergency, upon arrival you are generally the ranking officer of the fire department and therefore “in command.” This responsibility should not be taken lightly, as it requires experience, exceptional job knowledge and sound decision-making skills. The company officer may initially just command his or her company or they may command several companies in a multi-company response situation. Regardless, the method of command is dictated by a variety of circumstances and should never be set to “concrete” standards, as we all know that no two responses are the same.
“Routine” responses
Responses to incidents involving one or two companies are most common for the company officer to face day in and day out. These responses involve medical runs, auto accidents, gas odors, car fires, alarm activations, investigations and the like. A majority of time, these responses don’t escalate beyond the initially dispatched companies; however, when they do, you need to ensure that the decisions and actions taken upon arrival set the tone for the outcome of the incident.
Let’s consider a simple dispatch for an auto accident with injuries. Due to either poor caller information or dispatching errors, you don’t discover until your arrival that there are actually multiple vehicles involved, with patients trapped. The immediate action for you as “command” is to survey the incident and request assistance immediately. You must then assign the personnel you have with you to initiate tasks based on the needs of the incident. This could be simple reconnaissance/triage of victims, separating the walking wounded from the more serious victims, providing stabilization to vehicles, providing fire control or protection, beginning extrication and/or initiating patient care. This simple, escalating response needs a strong command presence, just like any other incident.
Upon the arrival of other resources, direct rescue personnel to the most important extrication needs. Direct other firefighters and EMS personnel to the patients in most need of help, and ensure someone is stabilizing vehicles, providing fire protection, securing batteries and protecting the scene. You may be doing all of these tasks while engaging at some level of assistance (based on staffing and incident needs).
Lastly, you must always be able to relay information to subsequent commanders so they can ensure completion of your plan or adjust tactics as they see fit.
Fire calls
When responding to a fire on an engine or truck company, as the company officer, you must survey the scene (size-up), request additional resources, identify the fire location and extent, order actions (stretching of fire lines and where to stretch them, removal of victims, etc.). Typically, as the first-arriving company, you take action with your crew to ensure successful operations and safety of your personnel.
Too often fire departments get stuck in the “someone-has-to-be-in-command” mode because they don’t have adequate resources or command staff responding, or because it “sounds good in a book.” On a building fire, it is nonsense for the company officer to stand in the yard in “Command Mode” while they send in the personnel whom they are supposed to supervise. Your responsibilities, while simple to perform if prepared, place firefighters in extreme peril, and as the company officer, you are supposed to be their supervisor, be the watch out with your head on a swivel, identify hazards, direct movement of the line and fire stream, identify when things are getting better or worse and, ideally, not leave firefighters unsupervised.
Traditional command philosophies/systems call for differing levels of initial command: “Nothing Showing,” “Fast Attack” or “Stationary Command.” We use this system religiously, and when properly executed, we have had great success in managing fires and personnel at those fires.
On fire calls, the initial company should put the line into service, contain and extinguish the fire and start searching. This can be done in a “Fast Attack” command mode, either with steadfast procedures or with no procedures where the first-due indicates task assignments of other responding companies based on situations encountered (second engine backup line, truck search, second truck vent, etc.).
One of the ways we manage the incident from the onset of the first-arriving company officer (who becomes the incident commander) is through comprehensive and functional task assignments for various types of fire incidents. The companies on an initial alarm assignment have specific tactical assignments and usually carry out those assignments without the need for a direct order to complete their tasks.
As an initial company officer, I can use my radio to notify other resources of the need to modify their actions to something different than their standard tactical assignment, provide updates to later-arriving companies or command officers and still be with my crew, supervising the movement and operation of the fire line or the search for victims. For example: “Engine 1 on scene, two-story wood frame, fire showing from second floor “C” side, offensive attack.” While lines are getting stretched, you can always add orders: “Engine 1 to Engine 2, stretch a backup line,” “Truck 1, begin search on the second floor,” etc.
In order to be effective, procedures should be developed that work for your organizations and the resources available. Blindly taking procedures from another organization and not changing them to meet your own apparatus, equipment, personnel and secondary assistance companies will not lead to success on the fireground. Solid and time-tested procedures that are understood and always followed will lead to success on the fireground and eliminate the need for the first-due company officer to stand outside and direct arriving companies as a stationary IC.
Stationary command
When arriving at large-scale incidents (e.g., hazmat, major defensive fire), you might have to assume a stationary command role and start assigning resources based on your procedures because it’s not as clear cut as a one- or two-room fire in a residence with tasks such as stretch a line to the fire, deploy a backup line, cover exposures, search and ventilate. Generally speaking, while engaged in this role at these types of incidents, the personnel assigned to your company aren’t engaged in hostile forward positions where your supervision is directly needed. Operating master streams, defensive fire lines, isolating an area, evacuating civilians and other similar tasks aren’t usually immediately dangerous to life or health.
Constant supervision
Company officers on fire companies must ensure the safety of their crew. Accountability starts with the officer being accountable for their actions and personnel while watching their backs. Too many times in the past 20 years, firefighters have died in rapidly developing fire events or operating in somewhat “routine” fire situations with a hoseline in their hand. This is nonsense! In my system, we had had two line-of-duty deaths (LODDs) in the past 15 years, and one of the contributing factors in both of those deaths was the “supervisory” phase of operations, specifically the company officer becoming distracted.
There have been many articles published and good commentary about the need to supervise operations in our “modern” fire environment. Company officers have personnel reporting to them who are usually inexperienced or were trained in a manner that only called for quick burst of water to allow the training fire to be “re-lit” easier by lazy instructors. So if you are standing on the outside “commanding” a one- or two-room fire and your firefighter with 1–5 years of experience (or even more) is on the inside and doesn’t fully appreciate the need to cool the environment or fully flow the fire line because they have limited fire experience or revert to the limited “live fire training” they have had, we will continue to have firefighters severely burned or worse yet, burned alive by rapid fire progression.
The rules
If your department has steadfast rules mandating that the company officer initiate a “Stationary Command” role, you must find a way to work with those rules. If your rules allow for “Fast Attack” command, the decision is easy. If your department doesn't advocate for constant and repetitive basic firefighting training and live-fire training so firefighters will properly execute tasks without the need for direct supervision, then the company officer needs to be there to provide the required supervision. Teach firefighters to recognize high-heat, signs of rapid-fire progression and how to properly flow lines. In addition, be able to recognize the need to isolate fires using existing resources (i.e., doors) and know areas of refuge in a building. Lastly, modify or advocate that more command officers respond to fire incidents! It’s their job!
The modern fireground demands that a number of critical tasks be performed quickly and efficiently. Don’t handcuff yourself and don’t jeopardize the safety of your firefighters—get in there and go to work. Ditch the rules mandating that the initial-arriving commanding officer assume command outside at routine fire incidents, trust the other companies to perform their assigned tasks (either dictated by procedures or ordered by you), and put another set of hands on the line, get it to the proper location, open it when needed and make sure someone is inside watching the backs of your firefighters. Don’t stand around and hope it all works out! Do what needs to be done to put water on the fire and rescue civilians!
