Fire alarm resets, burnt food, odor investigations, steam mistaken for smoke...the list goes on and on. We all have been on these types of calls and we will continue to do so day in and day out. These are the smells and bells calls that keep us busy, oftentimes at the most inopportune times. But we go on them without hesitation. Why? That’s easy; because it is our job, it’s an expectation of ours and it is what the community expects from us. While we may not always see all of them as emergencies, others do, and that is why they rely on us.
The "smells and bells" articles will review incidents, scenarios, and call-types that are not our flashiest or most exciting opportunities to perform. Though these incidents may not be major responses, they are important for our own understanding, training and experience for the next time we respond.
Think about your own experience and some of the minor alarm or assistance calls you have run throughout your career or just recently. What was the issue? What was expected of you and your crew? What was your demeanor or approach to this minor call? The goal of this series is to find the silver lining and the true learning opportunity for each and every call we go on. Let’s face it, not many firefighters remember their first pull station reset or motor vehicle overheat, but they do remember their first car fire, house fire and rescue. Though the latter calls are incredible for our overall experience and knowledge, it is the mundane that we need to bring some attention to. It is the basic day-to-day response and assistance we provide that can improve our abilities to respond more affectively for the large calls.
It is the daily mundane where we can find our opportunities to improve as firefighters, fire officers or as a crew. Next time you are on a known false alarm call to a large multi-family or commercial building in your jurisdiction, don’t be quick to reset and clear the scene, take a moment to take a peek. Take a few minutes on the call to look around the building a little bit. You’d be surprised what you can learn about a building in a matter of just a couple of minutes. This review can pay dividends later when the call is for a working fire.
The calls and responses we go on vary so much. As all of us know, the fire service truly is a catch-all for so many services and we have to be at our best in all areas. Our community and response area rely on us to be ready to go for anything and everything. To better prepare ourselves, we have to learn from each opportunity that presents itself. This comes from trying to learn as much as possible about our response area, our buildings, streets, hazard areas, etc.; while we are out on the street. The training room is good, but a first-hand look in the street is better.
Take a Peek
It’s 6 p.m. and you are dispatched to a multi-family dwelling for a report of a fire alarm sounding with a smell of smoke. Admit it, many firefighters make that quick thought and assumption of burnt food.
A multi-family building in our response area is a perfect opportunity to take a peek around to simply get a better feel for how to better handle another emergency in that building. As I have mentioned before, don’t be quick to reset and clear. Just take a few minutes to look around and re-enact your call. Treat it like doing a pre-plan on the fly.
As a crew, perform a quick walk-through. Once you do this a few times as a crew you will see how quickly you can perform this. The important thing to realize is that you are not a prevention or inspection crew, keep the review to tactics and crew knowledge, not enforcement. Certainly, if you see an egregious issue document and report it, but keep it to the basics of what you and your crew need to be aware of if this incident had not been just burnt food, but something more.
So, let’s take a peek:
- Are there fire doors to separate the hallways or wings of the apartment building? How does this help or hinder your crew when stretching hoseline?
- Is this building sprinkled? If so, where are the sprinkler connection and the riser room? Is the sprinkler connection easy to get to? Sometimes these connections can be hiding in strange locations behind bushes, around the gas meter(s) or in random places
- Does this multi-family building have balconies? How can you use those balconies to your advantage when gaining access, setting up secondary egress or stretching hoselines in the absence of good access and/or standpipes?
- Where is the fire alarm panel for this building? If you are arriving second or third due you may be assigned to silence the alarm as one of your initial assignments in an effort to improve communications
- What kind of access does your apparatus have on all four sides of the building? You want to make sure that your apparatus is able to be mobile depending on where the fire is and where you are going to be deploying hoselines.
These are just a few of the basic questions and items to review as a crew. The list can certainly be longer (or shorter), especially for crew-specific items (roof access, HVAC system review, standpipes, etc.). It is truly up to you and your crew to decide what you would like to know more about with the building.
You Never Know What You Will Find
A recent opportunity where my crew and I got a chance to take a little peek was a small working fire at a commercial building. The sprinkler system did its job and put the fire out. Our crews forced entry, performed a quick search of the structure, controlled the fire, shut down the sprinkler system, performed some salvage and reset the alarm system. For the most part, a pretty cut-and-dry response.
This was a great opportunity to take a peek. After we shut down the sprinkler system in the basement, we walked around a little bit just to get a lay of the land. I had only been in this building a couple of times, but never in the basement. What we found was quite interesting: a completely open basement and a stairwell to nowhere. Now, change up the situation for a minute and let’s say we had a good working fire or even a cold smoke fire in the basement versus the first floor. What if a firefighter or crew was slightly disoriented or due to smoke conditions had limited visibility and found these stairs. They start to walk or crawl up the stairs to recycle and slam into the ceiling. This might cause quite a panic. Where am I going, where am I, what the heck is this obstruction? Just poking around after this small fire gave us some good intelligence on this building to know about this hazard and inform our folks that it is set up like this.
This is just one example of something we learned on this small fire. We also gained some intelligence on access around the building and learned where the riser system is located.
Conclusion
I look forward to work with and learn from all of you throughout these articles. More than anything I would like to see this as an opportunity to share ideas and experiences both ways. The next time you are out and about hopping from run to run with a lot of smells and bells calls, try take something from each and every one. Tell me about your recent smells and bells experience. I love to talk fire and training, and I enjoy hearing different experiences, struggles and successes that we all have in this business. Let’s learn from the day-to-day mundane to continue to get better when it matters most! And, on your next call, take a peek.
Please feel free to reach out to me via email: [email protected].
DAVID BROSNAHAN is a battalion chief with the Roseville, MN, Fire Department and his primary role is the coordination of the day-to-day operations. Brosnahan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hamline University and a graduate certificate in Public Health Emergency Response from the University of Minnesota. He is a certified fire instructor, Live Burn 1403 instructor and a fire instructor with Hennepin Technical College teaching NFPA 1001 and Live Burn training. You can follow him on Twitter at: @dwbraz.
