Minimum staffing for rescue units

I am a Captain on a dept that has three shifts of six, with two stations. Responding a three man ladder, two man pumper and one man rescue squad.
My situation is that S.O.P. only allows us to respond a one man rescue unit to reported 10-48's and only when this unit arrives and gives size up and request extra personal or reports that an extrication is needed are we allowed to respond other units.
Is this a standard nation wide response for a rescue unit in citys of forty thousand or are we seriously putting ourselves in and our community at risk?

This is serious stuff for us please let us hear from you.

Cap Tom

Capt.Tom not sure what a 10-48 is but in my Dept. we have 4,11 person shifts with at least 4 FF/Paramedics assigned,rest FF/EMT.
At. HQ there can be 8 and at our Sta.2 has to have 3 on an ALS Engine. We staff the Rescues (Ambulances) with 1-EMT,1-Medic. If the call sounds like a ALS Run (Priority 1,2)
we run a third person usually a Medic. Hope this helps.

Capt. Tom
I work for a fairly new fire district. We run one captain & three firefighters per shift. We have a chief that works 8-5, and also responds to calls after 5 as needed. We also utilize reserve fire fighters and automatic aid. However 99% of the calls we handle with just four or five members. We have One engine, One quint, & one squad. We carry our rescue equipment on our engine. When we respond to an accident with injuries call we take our engine and our squad. We staff two people on the engine each shift. The other two people man the squad & the 105' quint. What the nature of the call is dictates which unit they respond. The only time that we respond one unit to a wreck is during icy road conditions. We do not like to respond any units to an emergency call with out two people for safety. Two sets of eyes are better than one.

Cap Tom,

Not too sure about what your running there but here we run two man staffed squads. Our Ambulance is not currently associated with our Dept. and are on their own. However, our squad will respond to any and all medical calls, and often one pumper will too. All ff are cross trained at the First responder level (min) but most are EMT-B. We currently do not staff any medics on our squad. The squad carrys a wide range of equipment. Including oxygen, splints, wide range of bandages, airway management equipment, oxygen masks, burn dressings, OB kits, oral glucose, stethascopes and BP cuffs, etc. Currently all the front line vehicles carry AEDs for use in conjunction with CPR. We have just added 3 additional firefighter positions and one full time Fire Inspector. We now have a total of 50 personnel. This is broken down into 3 battalions of 15 each, a Fire Chief, Secretary, Fire Marshal, Fire Inspector and Fire Mechanic.
The Population that we serve is 34544 people.
Hope this helps a little.

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Originally posted by Cap Tom:
I am a Captain on a dept that has three shifts of six, with two stations. Responding a three man ladder, two man pumper and one man rescue squad.

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CapTom, I am a volunteer with a Rescue Squad in a very unique situation, not one I would really recommend, but functional none the less. My county has 180,000 residents (cities included) and many more commuters on top of that. We have 3 Squads (all seperate agencies--each with one unit staffed by usually 2 volunteers--mine is responsible for about 120,000 people) that do all the extrication in the county and cities, but absolutely do no fire response. The county has volunteer FD's and the cities have paid FD's, but they only respond to fires, not extrication unless we call them for standby. The county also runs EMS (seperate agency as well) for the whole area.

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My situation is that S.O.P. only allows us to respond a one man rescue unit to reported 10-48's and only when this unit arrives and gives size up and request extra personal or reports that an extrication is needed are we allowed to respond other units.

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We operate in a similar way. An injury accident is reported. Immediately dispatched is an Ambulance and a Rescue Squad. It used to be, a long time ago, that Rescue wasn't dispatched until the Ambulance got on scene and requested Extrication, but our area to cover is large enough that response times (from initial call) were horrible and killed that "golden hour". Now we are both dispatched at once. A FD is only dispatched upon request from us or EMS, or if the vehicle is reported on fire.

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Is this a standard nation wide response for a rescue unit in citys of forty thousand or are we seriously putting ourselves in and our community at risk?

This is serious stuff for us please let us hear from you.

Cap Tom

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Serious stuff, indeed! My statement would be that the method both of our agencies use is not the standard across the country. I believe that standard would be to dispatch everything you would need immediately, and then cancel what you don't need once someone arrives and sizes up the scene.

What Good does it do to have a One or Two Man Rescue Company or A Two Man Engine Company ? I was always under the impression that the purpose of having staffed companies was just that to Staff them...A Company Officer, an Engineer, and a Minimum of Two Firefighters to affect the two in and two out rule....In my opinion anything less can be dangerous depending on the situation. A One man Rescue Squad is useless How many tasks can one person perform at the scene of a multi vehicle rescue until the next due arrives ? Again in my opinion a rescue company should be staffed the same as an engine or truck company....Minimum of Four