Rural Fireground Safety Starts Way Before the Call

As the fire chief of a rural fire department, you’re busy on the emergency scene. Most likely, you deal with less-than-adequate staffing, compounded by lengthy response times and a lack of municipal water. So to make a difference in your department’s safety, you must prepare well in advance of the call.

You may not have daily contact with the crews under your command, but you should must be a presence. It’s especially important that you meet personally with new members who may be assisting on calls before they complete their training. Tip: Set the standard for safety from the beginning.

Driver Safety

Traffic accidents during response are the second greatest cause of death in the fire service, and most rural departments allow their members to respond directly to the incident scene, while one or more members bring the equipment. As a result, you must ensure your department is following all applicable traffic laws regarding the equipping of personal vehicles with warning devices.

Items to outline in your written SOPs include:

1. While responding to incidents, members are subject to all motor vehicle laws, such as wearing seatbelts and stopping at stop signs and stoplights. Being a member of the fire department DOES NOT exempt you from obeying ALL motor vehicle regulations.
2. Upon arrival, personnel must park personal vehicles well away from areas where arriving apparatus will need to be positioned. Consider having the first-arriving person designate a vehicle staging area for all incoming personal vehicles and ensure dispatch announces this location.
3. Ensure every member is trained in your department’s accountability system and that there are specific policies for the location to leave accountability tags upon arrival of members in personal vehicles. This may require duplicate tags carried in the chief or command vehicle in addition to the tags carried on each member’s personal protective equipment (PPE).

Equipment Operation

Most of your new members will have had little or no experience driving large vehicles, much less ones with lights and sirens, as well as various pumps and aerial equipment to operate. Proceed slowly and in detail. Research other departments’ SOPs. One good resource: the Volunteer and Combination Officer Section of the IAFC (www.vcos.org).

At a minimum, the qualification process should include:

1. A driver’s license check; 
2. Classroom sessions, including area familiarization, maintenance procedures, fueling, accident policies and an overall vehicle and equipment overview;
3. Supervised non-emergency driving, beginning in a large, open lot;
4. A driving course, as detailed in NFPA 1002;
5. Over-the-road test, including pump and/or aerial operations as needed;
6. Supervised emergency driving and operating; and
7. Any additional courses, such as state-mandated driver pump and/or aerial operator certifications as required.

Riding Positions & the Fireground

After safe driving, the next areas that new members should train on are fireground operations and assignments. Each riding position should be responsible for specific tasks on the fireground. These can be written and posted in each position to make up for the lack of activity and training that is the reality of today’s rural fire departments. Additionally, each command vehicle, regardless of its type, should have the basic accountability system and incident command system (ICS) material available for whoever ends up being the incident commander (IC).

In the rural fire service, it’s generally rare to have enough staffing to have a dedicated safety officer as well as a rapid intervention crew (RIT). The IC often serves as the safety officer for much of the incident. If you have the staffing to establish a two-person RIT, make that officer the safety officer and have the crew be mobile on the fireground, looking at all sides of the structure and ensuring windows and doors are opened as needed–all while observing the scene for safety issues.

Multitasking is the key to rural fire incidents. Operating with limited staffing, equipment and water supply are challenges the rural fire officer faces daily. Therefore, it’s vital to perform a deliberate risk-vs.-benefit analysis before commencing any operations, especially if you are considering an interior, offensive attack.

A good document to use when establishing your fireground SOPs is NFPA 1720: Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations and Special Operations to the Public by Volunteer Fire Departments. Note: This document is for volunteer as well as combination departments. When performing the risk-vs.-benefit analysis, use the staffing recommendations and response times outlined in this document to make the initial decision on your tactics (see chart).

Other recommendations from NFPA 1720 include:

1. One individual shall assume the role of incident commander.
2. Some type of accountability system shall be used.
3. At least four members should be assembled before any interior operations are initiated. Two firefighters should be available outside to assist the two inside.
4. There should be the capability of performing other needed activities including: a) fire suppression; b) search and rescue; c) forcible entry; d) ventilation; e) preservation of property; f) accountability of personnel; g) rapid intervention crew; and h) other support activities, as needed.

As with the OSHA “two-in-two-out” requirement, NFPA 1720 also states that if initial-attack personnel arrive to a situation where there is an immediate life threat, interior operations can commence with less than four personnel. However, the IC must make this decision using all available information. The primary–and, in my opinion, the only–factor in the decision to attempt interior operations is the possibility of someone being trapped.

Final Thoughts

As the IC, “take a lap” around the structure if you can. You may be able to identify another means of egress for your personnel that may be closer to, or in the case of a bedroom window, lead directly to the area that needs to be searched.

Note: If you do send a crew in a window (vent-enter-search), ensure no one flows a hoseline from the opposite side. If it isn’t a life-threatening situation, keep personnel outside, and do what you can to combat the fire by using a defensive attack and protecting the exposures. This will not make you the most liked chief, but it will ensure everyone goes home.

Keep safe!