7-Sided Searches and UCAN

Some recent calls, drills, and follow-up conversations in which I was a participant have brought out how well a couple of basic tactics can be adapted for multiple purposes.

The first is the 7-Sided Search.

7-Sided Searches should be conducted on every incident in which we have a potential victim.
The seven sides to be searched are:

Structures

1. Side A/Division A
2. Side B/Division B
3. Side C/Division C
4. Side D/Division D
5. Roof
6. Basement/Crawl Space
7. the Inside (including the Inside of each interior compartment)

Vehicles

1. Front
2. Driver's Side
3. Passenger Side
4. Rear
5. Top
6. Underneath the Vehicle
7. the Inside, including the passenger compartment, trunk, and hatchback areas

The rule for searching these is:

7-Sided Search

• Every Vehicle



• Every Structure



• Every Time

The other helpful tactic is the UCAN mneumonic. Originally developed for MAYDAY applications, UCAN has applications to basic search tactics. UCAN was designed for a firefighter giving a MAYDAY report to COMMAND the following information;

• Unit



• Conditions



• Actions
  


• Needs

The MAYDAY firefighter should tell COMMAND the unit to which he/she is assigned, the conditions that required calling a MAYDAY, what actions the lost/trapped/disoriented firefighter is taking, and what the lost/trapped/disoriented firefighter needs.

These same four considerations work well when a search team moves through a building, particuarly when moving vertically.

For example, Truck 3 is assigned to conduct a primary search of Divisions 3 and 4 of an apartment building with a fire on Division 2. Truck 3 should give COMMAND a UCAN update each time they move one vertical floor upwards. An example:

"COMMAND, Truck 3"

"Truck 3"

"COMMAND, Truck 3 is on Division 3, we have a heavy smoke condition with moderate heat, no fire visible, we are starting our primary search, and we need ventilation support and secondary egress."

"Truck 3, COMMAND recieves that you are on Division 3, you have a heavy smoke condition with moderate heat and no visible fire, and that you need ventilation support and secondary egress. Repeat your Actions report."

"COMMAND, Truck 3, we are starting our primary search of Division 3."

"Truck 3, recieved, you are starting your primary search of Division 3."

There are five distinct advantages to using UCAN reports for reporting tactical movement through a fire building in the absence of a MAYDAY.

• Firefighters become familiar with the UCAN methodology in routine situations and will not struggle to remember the mneumonic in the event they need to call a MAYDAY in the future


• Firefighters become practiced at using the UCAN terminology and reporting location changes to COMMAND


• COMMAND knows where the units are and what they are doing


• Status changes are reported in a standard forma


• Status reports are transmitted in a standard format. If one part is missed, COMMAND can just ask for the missing piece of information without wasting the air time for a complete UCAN rehash from the unit giving the report

The "A" step can be modified to include "AIR" levels. If a company has a member that is low on air, the company can give a UCAN report that includes the air reading for the member with the lowest air level, particularly in big-box structures where the company needs to exit with 2/3 of their air available.

Candlemoth Syndrome

How many firefighters have ever experienced Candlemoth Syndrome? I know I have, particularly when I was younger and less experienced. Candlemoth Syndrome is a firefighting cousin of Target Fixation, where firefighters are drawn closely to the fire in disregard for proper firefighting tactics and for firefighter safety.

The definition of "Moth to a Flame" is to be "Irresistibly and dangerously attracted to something or someone." The term relates to moth behavior around open candle flames at night. Moths are drawn to the light given off by the flame, but they often get too close, resulting in badly burned or dead moths. Firefighters can indeed be irresistably and dangerously attracted to be in close proximity to a fire. Candlemoth Syndrome is dangerous, it can easily result in firefighter injury or death, and it is all-too-common. Candlemoth Syndrome is generally avoidable if you recognize the symptoms.

Candlemoth Syndrome includes the following:

1) Waiting to attack interior fires until the hose team is very close to the fire in situations where the water stream could be used to safely and effectively attack the fire from farther away.

An example is using a direct attack with a solid stream or straight stream from very close to the fire instead of extinguishing the base of the fire from farther away where the firefighters are less exposed to the heat. This also gives the firefighters more direct access to their escape route if something goes wrong during the attack.

2) Conducting Defensive attacks in structures where Offensive attacks are indicated.

There are two examples of this. The most common is Horizontal Candlemoth Syndrome; the nozzleman who runs directly to a window venting fire and attacks the fire head-on from close range from the exterior. This will usually drive the fire into uninvolved parts of the building, cut off escape routes for the occupants, and increase the amount of unnecessary fire damage to the structure. The other example is Vertical Candlemoth Syndrome, where ladder pipe streams are directed into vertical ventilation openings. This results in the fire being driven downward into uninvolved parts of the structure, with the same potential bad outcomes as the horizontal example.

3) Defensive Candlemoth Syndrome is a variation of Horizontal Candlemoth Syndrome. This occurs when a fire has been declared Defensive and firefighters push too close to a building that is either in danger of collapsing or that is a No Value building, or both.

Focusing strategy and tactics on the RECEO-VS system, maintaining personnel accountability, and having Division C and Incident Safety Officers on scene to maintain a 360 view of the fireground help prevent Candlemoth Syndrome.

Good company officers who practice organizational discipline, who monitor their personnel closely during firefights, and who are not afraid to use firefighting best practices can prevent Candlemoth Syndrome, keep their firefighters safer, and reduce the amount of antacids ingested by chief officers.

Brotherhood versus Enemies

If there are concepts that are polar opposites, Brothers and Enemies are great examples.Brotherhood means treating the people whom you call "brother" as if they were indeed blood relatives.Practicing the concept can sometimes be a little tricker, as brothers sometimes engage in family fights.

I have three brothers, and when growing up, I often lost fights to both the two older ones, who were bigger and more powerful, and a younger one, who was sneakier and not afraid to fight dirty. Let someone else pick on me though, and my brothers would turn on them in a split second.

Firefighting brotherhood is supposed to be like that, even when we disagree. Usually it is, but some firefighters bandy the word "brotherhood" about without having the slightest idea of how to practice the concept. When firefighters have a disagreement and one proclaims the others are his "enemies" over a disagreement, that firefighter intentionally sets himself outside of the brotherhood.

When I made mistakes, my two older brothers tried to straighten me out by discussing the situation and suggesting ways that I could improve upon my actions. A lot of the time, I listened to reason and found that my older, more experienced brothers were indeed right. Sometimes I didn't listen, and found that my brothers became more pointed in their advice; sometimes to the point of directly intervening if my actions would result in harm to myself or to others. Sometimes even that wasn't enough, and I ended up in the hospital getting sutures or other medical care.

The cuts and bruises were sometimes the only way I learned my lesson, but my brothers never let me do anything that would cause really serious injury to me or to anyone else.On the other hand, I wasn't stupid enough to declare myself as an "enemy" to my brothers, because my brothers simply meant too much to me.

My firefighting brothers and sisters are like that. Sometimes we disagree, and sometimes the more senior members give counsel to the younger, less experienced members as well as having discussions among ourselves as to which ways are the best to do things. We don't run around calling each other "enemies" if we expect our brothers to treat us like family, or if we plan to be accepted as a brother or sister, or if we engage in behavior characteristic more like a declared enemy than like a brother.

And...if we declare war against our brothers and sisters, we no longer can claim to be a part of the "brotherhood". If we declare that other firefighters are "the enemy" or "the problem" in a public place, then retract it and run away, we don't have the right to claim "brotherhood" with other firefighters. Part of being a brother is to share common danger with each other's help. That action is not chacteristic of enemies.

Running away in the face of danger or disagreement isn't brotherhood. It's symptomatic of feeling guilty about something."And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth..." Leviticus 26:37

One of the best things about the firefighting brotherhood is the strong bonds of friendship that results from sticking together in the face of danger; we unite against a common enemy. Friends are important in this business. "Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate." Al Brunacini

Brotherhood means being careful of what you say about each other. Enemies are under no such compunction. "An enemy generally says what he wishes." Thomas Jefferson

It's good to have a lot of friends, and few - or no - enemies.

"He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, and he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friends are most important, particularly in the face of someone who declares himself to be an enemy, then conducts attack after attack. Friends help defeat those attacks, and eventually the one who has declared himself to be an enemy will turn tail and run...often becoming anonymous and hiding in an attempt to deflect further attention. I'm proud to be called an enemy by someone who doesn't understand brotherhood and I'm proud of my brothers and sisters who stood by me in an attempt to show someone who labeled me an enemy the error of his ways.

As Winston Churchill once said "You have enemies; Good, that means that you have stood up for something..." I try to stand up for firefighter safety, being smart about firefighting and fire training, and for speaking out when I see things that I don't think are right. I'm extremely appreciative of those firefighters who understand brotherhood and who practice it rather than a vain attempt to grasp it by talking about it without understanding it.

I'm also very appreciative of a senior member of my department who is a member of the NFPA 1403 Committee, and who is not bashful about practicing brotherhood by dispensing good advice when I need it, whether or not I ask for it.

As for declared enemies, they fall into a special category; a category defined by Saul Alinsky when he said "Last guys don't finish nice."

Ramp Strikes, Mom's Name, and Survival

Although I love to read, I haven't had much reading time lately. Work and completing the edits of my chapter in Jones & Bartlett's new Fundamentals of Technical Rescue has taken up most of my spare time. I have been able to complete a book I have wanted to read for a long time recently, Deep Survival by Laurance Gonzales.

Gonzales' work is an excellent study in what it takes to survive extreme situations. He discusses several high-profile and not-so-high-profile incidents in which some people lived, some died, and the reasons for each. His research also includes an astonishing view into brain chemistry, how our brains are wired, and why people make some of the decisions we do under stress.

Some of his research led him to the pilot's ready room on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier where pilots were preparing for night landings. In case you're not familiar, night carrier landings are so dangerous and stressful that physiological studies show that the pilots are actually more stressed during the carrier landings than in combat. In the pre-flight briefing, the squadron commander tells the pilots "If you're a quarter of a mile out and I ask you your mother's name, YOU DON'T KNOW!" He went on to say that the pilots are so focused that they effectively lose 1/2 of their IQ...the half that's not necessary to land the plane.

The commander later told Gonazlez that one of the primary loss-of-focus accidents in carrier landings is the "Ramp Strike". These are devastating accidents where the pilot focuses so strongly on getting to a safe place - the flight deck - that he loses focus on the steps it takes to get to safety - actually flying the plane in the correct pattern. Ramp strikes generally kill the pilot and other carrier crew members, destroy planes worth several million dollars per copy, and cause major damage to one of our most expensive strategic weapons systems. That's a bad outcome from an event that - although dangerous - our Navy pilots perform safely dozens of times per day.

Gonzales also relates the Mt. Hood climbing accident where one team fell into another and both teams ended up with dead team members and others seriously injured. The second team was involved because they looked up at the team climbing a ridge above them and didn't realize that they were directly in that team's fall line. Gonzales illustrated this by making the same climb himself. When the guide asked him "Which way is down", Gonzales pointed down the ridge to the starting point at the lodge, even though a dropped ice axe - or falling climber - would fall off the side of the ridge, not down the edge of the ridge toward the lodge. He then realized that he'd made a basic orientation mistake - pointing toward percieved safety instead of really assessing his surroundings.

The message - staying oriented is important. When starting search rope training, I've had firefighters tell me "That's so old school. Groping around in smoke is silly - just use a Thermal Imager."

My response is that "The Thermal Imager gets you in to the seat of the fire or to the victim, but it doesn't get you out." The search rope system helps prevent disorientation and it helps you re-orient if you become disoriented. If you don't have a hoseline, anchor a search rope and stay hooked up to it. If you get disoriented, you have two choices - either spend air, effort, and time in a self-rescue or staying put, calling a Mayday, and hoping that RIT gets you before the fire and smoke do. Staying oriented and maintaining a positive connection to the exterior gives you a much better chance of self-rescuing.

A large component of personal survival is mental - both pre-event and during it. The pre-event decision is about doing a thorough, focused size-up and risk-benefit analysis, and taking only calculated risks. The during-event mental focus is to trust the survival system you put in place during the event. Being able to synthesize survival techniques from other professions can help us analyze our mistakes and avoid making them again. As my friend Mick Mayers says, "There are a lot of lessons we can learn from the military". I'd add that there are also lessons to be learned from mountain and river guides, airline pilots, wilderness survival experts, and others who are in the daily business -as we are - of surviving in dangerous places.

The lesson here is to assess your surroundings, have pre-event survival systems in place, control your emotions, and avoid erroneous perceptions of exactly how to get to a safe place.

And...if you call a Mayday, and I ask you your mother's name, YOU DON'T KNOW!

Getting Familiar with Unfamiliar Dirt

I recently spent a week on vacation that included a lot of reading on the beach. I was able to complete a six-book series, the Corean Chronicles by L.E. Modsitt, Jr... an excellent read if you're into the genre. In one of the books, a group of soldiers is deployed to an area with which none of them are familiar. They're tired from traveling and just want to set up camp and relax, but their officer immediately sends out patrols. They complain, but the officer tells the soldiers that they need to "Get familiar with the unfamiliar dirt" where they're operating in order to prevent any nasty surprises from the enemy. Frank Brannigan always told firefighters that buildings were our enemy, and "Know Your Enemy". Driving around a beachfront town that I hadn't visited in several years reminded me that there was a lot of unfamiliar dirt there, and that the unfamiliar dirt had a lot of unfamiliar buildings on it.

How will getting familiar with unfamiliar dirt help firefighters? It helps us learn how to gain access to places we may never have been, it helps us learn occupancy-specific hazards, and it helps us plan firefights in places that aren't directly conntected to the dirt.

Some firefighters don't like to spend time on the dirt at the Training Center.
The places you train are built on some very important dirt.
I spent four hours on this dirt yesterday (Sunday) with several companies of very dedicated firefighters. So did two other chief officers, one of whom was off duty at the time.



Some of your dirt has structures containing bad things like hazardous materials containers...



...or hazardous materials processing.




The dirt may be open and inviting on Side A.
No matter how familiar you are with Side A, if you have to bail out the Side C door of this occupancy, you're in trouble.





How about this dirt? Which Side C door connects to which strip mall occupancy?
How well will the cantilivered awning hold up if fire attacks the interior anchors?
If you need to force entry on Side C, will basic engine tools get you through the fortified doors, or will you need the additional power carried by a ladder or rescue company?





Is some of the structure built a long way above the dirt?
How will you access the upper floors of this structure...especially if the 1st due is a single-station volunteer fire department? Are there fire protection systems to help you keep this building from becoming part of the dirt?






Does the structure extend horizontally away from the dirt?
Do you have a way to handle emergencies in places that are not readily accessible from the dirt?







Are some of the structures on the dirt crammed tightly together?
Can you safely walk between the fire building and an adjacent exposure, or is there a chance that you'll be trapped or burned if part of the fire structure collapses or autovents while you're walking the 4-foot wide dirt between the buildings?





Does the dirt include an antique building modified into apartments over an industrial occupancy with no fire protection systems?

The officer in the Corean Chronicles had an important teaching point for the fire service...learn the unfamiliar dirt to which you're first due...

..so that you don't get familiar with this kind of unfamiliar dirt.

Mutual Dependence on Independence Day

Independence Day - July 4 - is a uniquely American holiday. Many of us treat it like just another summer holiday - a barbecue, swimming or boating, relaxing with friends, and concluding with an evening of fireworks. This year, I ask you to take a few minutes to do something a little different. The American Revolution was the brain child of a few people who resolved to risk their businesses, their fortunes, and their very lives to gain independence from Great Britain. After a war that destroyed lives and property, they achieved their aim. How did they achieve independence? They achieved it by working and fighting - together - to overcome a common enemy. They were not willing to give up, to back down, or to compromise on the essentials of what they believed to be right. When he said "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately", Benjamin Franklin understood the dichotomy that in order for America to become independent, the people fighting for that independence had to be mutually dependent by "hanging together". Benjamin Franklin was a firefighter, and he understood the community's mutual dependence upon the fire department as the protector of lives, property, and commerce, too.

Patrick Henry, another early American patriot, advised constant vigilance when being faced with the loss of freedom and mutual happiness and prosperity. He also understood the value of being able to jointly determine our common fate. His comment..."The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election."

In 2009, the American Fire-Rescue and EMS services are under attack, in a different way from how our country was in 1776, but under attack no less. We are under attack from the global economy that steals revenue from our cities and counties. We are under attack from increasing call volumes while under pressure to reduce staffinug and to make that old apparatus last "just one more year". We are under attack from citizens that want us to be there in their hour of need, but who don't understand the realities of making the services available in a rapid and safe manner. Our funding is under attack from politicians and administrators that see the economic meltdown as a way to permenently reduce the costs of providing fire, rescue, and EMS services.

So, how do we "hang together" to overcome these problems?

An example is the Boston firefighters who - on their own time - staffed firehouses that would have otherwise been browned out. Columbia and Irmo, SC firefighters recently worked together to fight a house fire near both city's boundaries. Sylvania Township, OH firefighters set up a live burn for some of their elected officials - officials that had previously opposed a 1.5 mil fire tax increase. My department jointly operates three special teams (Hazmat, COBRA/WMD, and USAR) with our good friends from Bluffton Township Fire & Rescue. These are just a few examples of creative ways to work together to maintain and improve Fire/Rescue and EMS services when we can no longer just throw money at every problem.

Like it or not, we're mutually dependent on our neighboring Fire/Rescue and EMS departments, our elected officials, and our public administrators. We need to foster creative ways to use that mutual dependence to our mutual benefit. If you don't like running mutual aid or automatic aid with a neighboring department, get together, work out the problems, and start helping each other. If your services are being cut due to the economy, do your homework, get the facts, and enlist community support to help minimize the cuts. If you are at odds with your public administrators and/or elected officials, invite them to participate in a live burn, extrication demonstration, or a CPR class to find out just how physically demanding our jobs really are...and why it takes that expensive manpower to do the job safely.

Once you determine the best way to foster the mutual dependence with the other stakeholders, follow Benjamin Franklin's advice and "Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve."

Tomorrow is Independence Day in the United States. Remember the people who fought to make it so, and in the words of our most famous early firefighter "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." Let's foster our mutual dependence to provide the people whom we serve Liberty - Liberty from fire, entrapment, and the loss of loved ones and livelihood. Pointing out our mutual dependence can go a long way toward improving bad relationships. Remember Great Britain, our enemy in 1776 and again in 1812? They're now our closest ally, sharing mutual dependence.

Don't save Safety for the Critique

At the end of the 2009 Safety, Health, and Survival week, I'm sitting here sadly shaking my head. June has been a bad month for the U.S. Fire and EMS services. This month there have already been 10 reported LODDs involving 9 firefighters and a rescue squad member. One of the LODDs was from my state, South Carolina. Since Safety Week started, a random sampling of fire and EMS news includes an Ohio firefighter that was originally reported as a LODD that is on life support following a line-of-duty event, three San Antonio firefighters burned when a fire unexpectedly breached a wall during an interior attack, and four Baltimore firefighter injured in an engine vs. structure crash. This morning, I woke up to see this bad news about a St. Paul FD ambulance being involved in an accident that resulted in a civilian fatality. I've had a very busy week, with focusing on the punch list for our nearly-completed training center, but I've still tried to find time to promote Safety Week and to ensure that our firefighters had easy access to Safety Week activities and information.

A couple of evenings ago, I had the chance to stop by one of our busier stations. The crew was taking advantage of a little lull in the action to engage in a little team-building discussion. The discussion was pretty interesting. It centered on chief officers - one of the four areas of concentration for this year's Safety Week. The comments were, in typical firehouse fashion, blunt and to the point. One of the firefighters commented that chief officers need to understand the difference between thinking tactically and thinking like a safety officer when they act as the Incident Safety Officer. I asked what he meant. He went on to say that some chiefs focus on how to extinguish the fire regardless of what vest they're wearing, while others understand the Safety Officer's role and how to carry it out without interfering with a properly-run operation. The other firefighters commented on the other extreme, when the Safety Officer attempts to start the post-incident critique while the battle against the fire is still being waged.

So where does the Safety Officer draw the line?

The Safety Officer is charged with recognizing unsafe acts and conditions, informing Command, and can take direct action to stop unsafe acts or remediate unsafe conditions. How do you do that without inappropriate interference with the tactical situation? My rule is that if the issue is minor, if I'm the Safety Officer, I correct it and move on. For example, if the pump operator forgot to don his safety vest, I tell him to don it and keep moving. If a firefighter wants to start a mid-fire conversation about the unsafe acts of a different company, I tell him "Save the critique for the critique." On the other hand, if I see a company starting to make entry into a building with collapse potential, not only do I stop the entry, I immediately notify Command that we need to evacuate the building and I start establishing and marking a collapse zone. The trick is to know when to make a big deal out of the problem, when to simply communicate conditions to Command, and when to directly correct a minor problem.

As my good friend and colleague Mick Mayers says..."Don’t try to take shortcuts because you think it is easier. Shortcuts are cheating and cheating ultimately results in a catastrophic failure when someone gets caught." If you're in the Safety Officer role and you see someone taking a dangerous shortcut, stop it!

There are some common sense things that we can all do to make life safer and easier for all of us. If the drivers don't routinely don full gear, then they should have their traffic vest on their seat and don it prior to responding. It won't delay the comany's turnout time, trust me. If you use the Passport accountability system or a similar system that uses helmet identifiers, then the officer should ensure that every company member has their name tags in the system and has helmet identifiers properly attached as soon as they enter quarters to start the shift. In other words, Don't let the little things become big things.

When you get to the critique, if some of us are a little peeved because the Safety Officer made us wear eye protection to operate extrication tools, made us stop to put on a traffic vest, or stopped us from entering that marginal structure fire that we just "knew" we could hit offensively and "get away with it", then remember that you're alive and well to be peeved. After all, we can work out critique points at the critique. We can't, however, go back and unbury a LODD brother or sister at the critique.

In closing, even though this year's Safety Week is over, don't act as if it is. Drive safely, condition, wear incident-appropriate PPE, stay hydrated, get help when you need it, and look out for each other. Rehab as if your life depends on it, especially in the tropical heat wave we're having in the south right now. Make every week Safety Week.