There has been much discussion and debate about a particularly interesting and vital topic in the fire service—victim survivability—undoubtedly the most important outcome at a fire.
We have already spelled out priorities, haven’t we?
- We will risk nothing to save nothing. That’s pretty clear to me. If there is nothing to save—no lives, no property—then we are not going to risk anything.
- We risk a little to save a little. This is slightly more confusing but generally understood to mean that we will risk our lives a little to save stuff—yes, stuff! When you stretch a line into a one-story house fire with a single room on fire, you are risking your life, but probably just a little. You are probably not going to be killed fighting this fire but it could happen.
- We will risk a lot to save a lot. A lot means another life. It means a live victim. It means a trapped person. It means you are going to earn your money today!
Can we know who’s inside?
So what does all this have to do with victim survivability? There are some in the fire service who think we can use survivability profiling to figure out when it is more likely that there are victims in a burning building. If it wasn’t so ridiculous, it would be funny. Really? Someone has uncovered a process whereby we (the members of the fire service) can examine a building that is on fire and actually come up with an answer to the eternal question, is anyone in there?
We are told that before we enter the burning building to conduct a search, find victims and rescue them, we must first know if the victims can survive and if they will be alive when we get them out. Really? And how do we do that?
Research, they tell us, has concluded that civilian survival times are limited to approximately 10 minutes. I checked out those studies, one of which at the time of the article being cited was 6 years old (2005) and the other was 44 years old (1967). I was even more surprised to read that the estimations of civilian survival times in these studies was based on the study of human fire victims and laboratory mice. Is this really how we want to make decisions about such a critical operation at structural fires?
The debate
When we arrive at a structural fire today, the first-arriving officer will note the time of day, the occupancy and any outward signs of people in the building. These factors, along with the many other pieces of information that we gather as we move into the building, will invariably lead us to any trapped victims. Search teams will first enter the fire area while others begin searches on the immediate floor above. In a multi-story building, the top floor is often the next most severely exposed area and it too should be searched. Any victims who are trapped in these areas—the ones with the most severe conditions—will be found first.
Supporters of survivability profiling disagree with the mindset that there may be trapped victims inside every burning building and that we could end up being the only life hazard in the building. Additionally, they believe that even in situations where we know or are reasonably certain that civilian lives are inside a burning structure, we must sometimes look at the fire and smoke conditions and conclude that some trapped occupants are just not savable. And based on that concept, they want us to attack the fire first and conduct search and/or rescue, and/or body recovery, when it’s relatively safe for our operating forces.
Get inside
I think the decades of aggressive interior search and rescue operations have proven themselves over and over. About 2,500 civilians die every year in fires in America. I think we need to get in there and find them as quickly as possible, and attack the fire from there as well, rather than writing them off at the 10-minute mark and worrying about our own survivability first. What do you think?
John J. Salka Jr. | Battalion Chief
JOHN J. SALKA JR., who is a Firehouse contributing editor, retired as a battalion chief with FDNY, serving as commander of the 18th battalion in the Bronx. Salka has instructed at several FDNY training programs, including the department’s Probationary Firefighters School, Captains Management Program and Battalion Chiefs Command Course. He conducts training programs at national and local conferences and has been recognized for his firefighter survival course, “Get Out Alive.” Salka co-authored the FDNY Engine Company Operations manual and wrote the book "First In, Last Out–Leadership Lessons From the New York Fire Department." He also operates Fire Command Training, which is a New York-based fire service training and consulting firm.
