“Columbus Fire Department, respond to a possible structure fire in the area of Dove Tail Lane. Caller states that there is a large column of smoke, and several small explosions have been heard.”
How would your department respond to such a dispatch? What would your apparatus run card look like for such an incident? Would your response change if this area was serviced by hydrants or located in the wildland/urban interface (WUI)?
No doubt this is the same type of dispatch received at hundreds of fire departments throughout the country every day. When this call came in to my station, we considered it a bread-and-butter-type incident, but upon arrival, it quickly became anything but.
Department Overview
The Columbus Fire and Rescue Department (CFRD) is an average-size department by Montana standards. We have one station for 42 rostered volunteer members and a paid chief. We’re equipped with three engines, four brush trucks, three tenders, one rescue unit, two ambulances, one 55′ quint and one command vehicle.
Our first-due response area includes the town of Columbus, a municipality of 1,800 citizens with hydrants supplied by a recently upgraded water system, and a rural fire district that covers 375 square miles with 4,800 additional customers and no water system.
Last year we responded to 256 calls. More than 40 percent of our fire responses are wildland, with a fair number of MVAs and a dozen or so structure fires. Our county as a whole has one of the highest percentages of subdivided properties in the state, so we’re very familiar with WUI issues.
The Call
On the day of this particular fire, the weather was typical for south central Montana in August–about 90 degrees, and at the time, the wind wasn’t blowing. The structure involved was located in an area approximately 9 miles out of town in a ponderosa pine and juniper bush-covered creek drainage that over the years has transformed from old ranches to new homes. Oh yeah, and it’s an area that’s been stressed by drought for the last 9 years! (Does this sound like some of your response areas?)
Within minutes after receiving the call, we had a fully staffed Type 1 engine on its way, with a 3,000-gallon tender trailing behind. While the engine was en route, a highway patrol officer several miles away reported a large black smoke column coming from the direction of the structure. The CFRD immediately called for mutual aid from our neighboring community to the south, and again, the response request was for a structure fire, which would give us an additional structure engine and a water tender. (Note: In the West, a water-hauling apparatus is commonly referred to as a tender. If you talk tankers in this part of the world, keep your eyes to the sky because “tankers” here have wings!)
Is anyone starting to see a common theme here? Remember I asked earlier what your apparatus run card would look like for a similar type of call?
With mutual aid, we had a total of three Type 1 engines and four tenders. With all these resources, even if we didn’t get there in time to save the structure, we surely could keep the fire contained to the site of origin–right?
At the Scene
The first-arriving person, the highway patrol officer, gave an initial size-up that painted a picture of a fully involved, two-story log home sitting mid-slope on a hill, with flames possibly spreading to surrounding trees. Wait–did he say spreading to surrounding trees? Should such a size-up possibly have prompted a request for a different type of mutual-aid response? (Did I mention that this area has been experiencing a drought for the last 9 years?)
Access to the home was up a steep, narrow, dead-end road that opened up beside a shop, a garage and then the house. Add to that the heavy vegetation lining the road and surrounding the house, and it became clear that getting all the necessary resources in place was going to be difficult. The apparatus lined up one behind the other, making it impossible for the first-arriving engine to leave until all other apparatus on scene had cleared. (Note: This is a great example of what not to do!)
The first-in engine started a defensive attack, and the first-in tender began to supply the engine. Sounds pretty standard, right?
Murphy Rides Again
Well, this is where things started to get interesting. Ol’ Murphy and his boys rode in chanting “If it can go wrong, it probably will!”
The house was really going, so we all became very focused on the task of getting water flowing as soon as possible. While carrying out surround-and-drown operations, several firefighters managed not to get caught in the “moth-to-the-flame” syndrome and noticed a strong breeze suddenly blowing toward the east. This, of course, increased the potential for fire spread due to blowing embers, which wasn’t good considering that directly to the east and downhill, downwind of our current incident, were at least three more homes and several other outbuildings.
We began to get spot fires in the vegetation around the structure. Have you ever tried to drag a 1 ¾” structure hose through vegetation that was designed by Mother Nature to reach out and claw, rip and tear someone (or something) in full bunker gear on a 90-degree day?
Out of the Box
Once we noticed what was happening, we started digging through all the stuff we carried on our structure apparatus to see if we could muster up the supplies we needed for a working wildland fire. We finally found several rolls of wildland hose, the adapters to go from structure hose fittings to forestry–basically everything needed except the nozzle (but being firefighters, we improvised).
The problem: We had responded with the mindset that this fire was going to be a typical “in the box” type of operation for a structure fire. To our surprise, the incident quickly moved “out of the box,” transforming from a WUI structure fire into a full-blown wildland fire.
With structural equipment, you typically come in, set your pumps and your lines, and set up your water supply, whether it’s from hydrants or a tender shuttle. With everything set, you become pretty stationary. That’s all well and good until your fire decides to start moving around on you, and at this point, the fire had spotted toward the bottom of the hill and, due to a wind shift, made a hard push across the slope, cutting us off from the road we came in on. As a result, our structure engines and tender became completely useless.
The End Result
Within 20 minutes from the start of this incident, a countywide mutual-aid response had been called for and an array of equipment began to arrive, including Type 6 and Type 3 engines, more tenders and aircraft. In total, the response included three Type 1 engines, four tenders, three tactical tenders (to perform mobile attack), 20 wildland engines, four retardant bombers, four heavy helicopters and two air-attack units to supervise aircraft.
Eventually, the fire burned more than 200 acres, threatened a dozen homes and destroyed the building of origin, as well as two outbuildings on that same property and a shop on the neighboring property.
Note: The explosions that had occurred early on in the incident had been caused by propane tanks and paint cans igniting; however, when the CFRD reached the incident location, no further explosions took place.
Lessons Learned
To put it simply, this incident caught us off guard. As a result, it helped instill in my department the importance of “thinking outside the box” of normal operations. It impressed on us the critical need to continue gathering and processing all available information and to maintain situational awareness.
As many departments are increasingly responding to fires in the WUI, it’s important to think about what our run card looks like when responding to these types of incidents. And I’m not talking about the type of apparatus, but how an apparatus is set up or the combination of responding apparatus.
More and more departments are being affected by WUI issues as communities grow and folks move outside or to the fringes of town. That fact, combined with the intensity of WUI fires encountered these days, makes it absolutely necessary for departments to define the WUI for their own response area and determine how to handle WUI fires.
Multi-Tasking Apparatus
After this incident, the CFRD started to subscribe to the multi-role apparatus concept. We determined that we needed an apparatus that could handle structural work and give us mobility in the WUI without requiring several crewmembers to operate it. We recognized that CAFS helped give us those abilities and started to incorporate them into our new trucks. Before, the CFRD was just like a lot of other departments that have a whole station full of trucks designed for either structure fires or wildland fires–never both. Now, we have three pieces of rolling stock that we’ve tried to design with the WUI in mind:
- In the summer of 2007, we put into service a quick-attack unit built on an F550 chassis. It carries 400 gallons of water and is equipped with a 250-gpm/125-cfm CAFS system, a bumper turret controlled from the cab, a full complement of wildland tools and other equipment necessary to respond to a wide variety of calls.
- In the fall of 2007, we received a tender that carries 3,000 gallons of water and features a 1,000-gpm pump with CAFS and a front-bumper turret. This unit was designed to perform structure protection and carry water to our rural areas. It also has pump-in-motion capabilities so it can perform mobile wildland attack with some limitations due to its size, but it’s a force to reckon with.
- Our latest addition is what we consider our Swiss army knife. It’s built on an all-wheel-drive, 4-door chassis, carries 800 gallons of water and is equipped with CAFS, a front-bumper turret and a fully rated, 1,000-gpm, PTO-driven, stationary structure pump. It also carries a full complement of wildland equipment as well as tools needed for structural firefighting and pre-connected hydraulic rescue equipment.
So now all of our first-out apparatus can do double duty. If needed, we can smoothly transition from a WUI fire to a wildland fire if/when needed.
Simple Changes
Does this mean that everyone has to replace their whole front line with combination apparatus? Although that would be nice, I realize it’s not possible. It is possible , however, to make simple changes, such as stocking the apparatus you do have with a complement of equipment that can be used in multiple roles. Carry wildland hoses with the appropriate fittings in prebundled assemblies similar to high-rise packs. Keep some hand tools on the engine that you can use to construct line. And ask yourself a couple questions:
- Is a compartment or space not being used? If so, consider installing an auxiliary pump.
- If your department normally wouldn’t respond on a brush truck first alarm, could it if it needed to?
- If staffing is an issue, could a neighboring department supply your wildland response component?
- Are you using mutual aid to its fullest? If not, start building relationships now. Sit down and examine who can provide what, and build the system to give the optimum response not only to the WUI, but to all your incidents.
Note: I’m not talking about high-tech, high-dollar solutions. Most departments have equipment lying around that could be used in the WUI or neighboring departments that, most of the time, would be happy to assist us.
Conclusion
Hopefully, my department’s experience is more than just a good story. Hopefully it serves as a reminder that the WUI issue isn’t going away any time soon; it’s starting to impact departments that never thought they would see the day when it came to their town.
The CFRD used this experience to adjust tactics and procedures to create what we hope will be a more adequate response. The lesson: Don’t wait for a WUI or wildland fire to destroy property–and possibly lives–in your community before you make changes. Instead, take the time now to sit down, examine your operations and prepare for the unexpected.
Remember: If you have the right equipment when and where you need it, you’ll not only be protecting your community, you’ll be protecting yourself and your crew as well.
