I always have believed that fire departments should prepare for, practice and commit to conducting interior searches at structural fires. This certainly applies more rigorously to residential buildings, but every structural fire should have a chief officer who weighs the decision to launch an interior search.
What should this decision be based on? What conditions or information can be used or examined to make this decision?
Should it be policy?
Many different conditions can be encountered at, let’s say, a house fire.
A person who is at the scene can inform the arriving fire crews that “There are people in there.”
- John J. Salka Jr. will present the pre-conference workshop, “Five Alarm Leadership” at Firehouse Expo 2023.
The dispatcher might receive information and relay it to the responding companies: “Now receiving reports of people trapped in the building.”
What about smoke and fire conditions? Are there situations where entry into a structure is impossible because of advanced fire conditions?
All of these situations are real, and all of them occurred somewhere at a structural fire. What does your fire department do?
One point in this vein: Should the decision to enter a burning building to conduct a rapid primary search be made on arrival at each fire scene or should it be policy that interior searches will be conducted unless conditions prevent it?
‘Survivability profiling’
Of course, an organization or department that has the words “Fire Department” on its apparatus should strive to act like one and make every effort to train search teams and to deploy them at every structural fire where conditions allow.
Yes, it should be “policy” that a search team will be designated, or even predesignated, to initiate an interior primary search at every structural fire. If firefighters must be assigned or if the chief or the incident commander (IC) needs to first evaluate conditions before the search team is given this important assignment, the search certainly will be dramatically delayed if not completely forgotten.
So, after all of these issues are discussed, exactly what is the deciding factor as to whether a search team will be assigned and deployed?
Some people in the fire service believe that we should evaluate whether the structure or building or house is a survivable area. The term “survivability profiling” has been used to describe a process by which the chief or IC looks at the involved structure and decides whether it’s “worth the risk” to enter any specific building or occupancy. I always have found that to be an invalid process. There are dozens of reasons why this makes no operational sense at all, including all of the unknowns.
I remember arriving at numerous structural fires as a battalion chief. At almost all of them, I knew only one thing: The building was on fire. From my position out front, and even after doing a 360, I still didn’t know where the fire started, what rooms or areas were involved, whether people were in the building, whether the doors to the involved rooms were open or closed, whether the fire was accidental or arson, what the fire load was and much more.
Without all of that information, one must return to the question of what is the deciding factor for ordering a search to be conducted? Actually, it’s quite simple, and I stumbled onto it on a social media site. An organization that’s named “Stretching, Flowing and Moving” posted this recently: “It’s not our job to decide if an area of the structure is survivable or not. Our job is to identify searchable space and occupy it.”
Well, I couldn’t have said it better myself. We must stop creating and promoting all of the reasons and conditions and hazards that exist when conducting interior searches at structural fires. We all know that firefighting is dangerous work and that conducting an aggressive, interior primary search under fire conditions is even more hazardous. However, we also know that there will be people inside many of these buildings who are in even greater danger, and they will be waiting for and depending on the fire department to come and find them and get them out of the burning building to safety.
Even if you put out the fire, any trapped or unconscious victims must be found and removed. Get in there!
