Close Calls: Cast to the Wind — An Oceanside Mayday

Beach towns can create significant challenges for fire departments: large, wood-frame dwellings, some with additions and related complications; water supply problems; and response and staffing problems. The one common denominator: the winds. Anyone who studies the fire service knows that the wind is no friend to a firefighter. 

The Monmouth Beach Fire Department (MBFD) covers a small, oceanside borough in Monmouth County, NJ, with approximately 20 all-volunteer members.

The dwelling that’s involved in this close call was constructed in 1905. It is a wood, three-story, 2,000-square-foot, single-family dwelling. A similar structure next door (with just 10 feet of separation) became an involved exposure on the B side.

Account from Chief Robert Pasquariello

The MBFD and Sea Bright Fire & Rescue (automatic aid) were dispatched for a reported building fire at a dwelling that is located two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. With the report of a working fire and visual, heavy black smoke in the sky from about a half-mile away, I requested the alarm to be upgraded to a “Box Alarm” level, bringing in a rapid-intervention crew (RIC) from Neptune Township Unexcelled Fire Company and a quint from the Long Branch Fire Department (LBFD). Responding with the quint was career Capt. Carl Griffin and volunteer Chief of Department Ron Guidetti.

Sea Bright (SBFD) Engine 1 responded instantaneously with a crew of Chief Charles Murphy and two firefighters. I instructed SBFD Engine 1 to find their own hydrant and lay a supply line into the fire for themselves.

Upon my arrival, I observed fire and black smoke issuing from the second-floor front windows, the B side (east) and C side of the building. I also observed fire extending via direct flame impingement and radiated heat to the building adjacent to the B exposure. There was a significant west wind blowing from the D to B side of each building at approximately 20–30 mph.

I positioned my vehicle in a driveway across the roadway from the original fire building and made a brief on-scene report while also requesting a second alarm be transmitted. I established command.

SBFD Engine 1 stretched a 400-foot 1¾-inch attack line for suppression to the area between the original fire building and the exposure building.

I instructed MBFD Tower 1 (the first-due ladder) to position the tower ladder between both buildings and prepare for tower ladder operations; they were fed a 5-inch supply from SBFD Engine 1.

Griffin arrived and reported to the command post. I requested his quint to lay their own 400-foot, 5-inch feed line to the fire building. I assigned Griffin to the original fire building with his crew of five firefighters for fire attack.

Upon initiation of an interior attack in both buildings, several divisions were established, and supervisors were assigned to reduce span-of-control and increase safety and efficiency. This included MBFD Assistant Chief Tim Griffin (Carl Griffin’s brother) to the second and third (attic) floors of the B exposure with a crew of two MBFD members.

The initial crew that were assigned to stretch a line to Tim Griffin’s position inadvertently stretched to the second floor of the original fire building to Carl Griffin’s position. This caused the first “domino to fall” for me at the command post: I continued receiving resource requests from a division supervisor who I assigned resources to, but they were not there.

Members briefly were removed from the original fire building approximately 45 minutes into the incident when Guidetti was cut off by fire while operating on the third floor. Guidetti was removed via aerial ladder and was uninjured.

There was momentary confusion as to the accountability of this fire building when two members appeared at the third-floor windows, unassigned, and then disappeared. The crew in the bucket of MBFD Tower 1 reported that they attempted to remove one of these members but that he withdrew from the window to find his partner and hadn’t returned. These members were located by sight on the sidewalk in front of the fire building and accounted for by Carl Griffin.

From the command post, conditions appeared to rapidly deteriorate: heavy, brown/black smoke issued nearly simultaneously from the front door (second floor), D side and rear. Members were withdrawn until the fire again was controlled by exterior streams and a structural reconnaissance was conducted. Members reentered to complete extinguishment and overhaul.

Although there was no radio mayday from Guidetti, the RIC would have been the resource to assist in his removal. They were assigned and there; however, without communicating directly with them, I completely wasted them as a resource.

I utilized Monmouth County Fire Marshal’s Office Fire Coordinator Jim Fenn as a “command technician,” and he also coordinated all communications between the command post and dispatch. This position proved invaluable.

Account from Chief Charles Murphy, Jr.

As we arrived, I instructed my chauffeur to take his own hydrant, off the street, leaving the street accessible to the truck companies that I knew would be following us in. I instructed my backseat firefighter that we would stretch our long line, which is a 400-foot, 1¾-inch attack line. This decision proved to be beneficial, because it allowed MBFD’s Tower 1 unobstructed access to the front of the building.

We deployed the 400-foot attack line to the area in between the main fire building and the B exposure building. After knocking down some fire, I turned the nozzle over to my firefighter, at which time I conducted reconnaissance of the rear of both buildings, after which command assigned me as the B exposure supervisor.

I instructed my firefighter to relocate our line to the front door of the B exposure. After a short stint of defensive operations, we proceeded through the unlocked front door. As we proceeded down the hallway into the kitchen area, we were met with heavy smoke conditions to the floor and moderate heat. Members located two additional rooms of fire: an office area and a dining/den-type area. The den area led to the enclosed porch area, which also was heavily involved with fire.

After a few short minutes of fire suppression, all of the main body of fire was knocked down on the first level. I previously observed pockets of fire traveling in pipe chases that extended up to the second floor. The members from MBFD began to open up the ceiling, and the pockets of fire were extinguished. While opening up, it was determined that there were two different ceilings in the dining/den area. The original sheetrock ceiling was dropped, which exposed wooden furring strips. Above them was the original plaster-and-lathe ceiling, which concealed a heavy amount of fire. After dropping both ceiling systems, all remaining visible fire was extinguished.

While extinguishing the pockets of fire, I heard over the radio that someone was coming out of the second-floor window and to get a ladder. Not knowing which building they were referring to, I immediately ran to the second floor of the B exposure, where I met Tim Griffin. I confirmed with him that all of his firefighters were accounted for and nobody was in distress. I then observed through a window Guidetti exiting the second floor of the main fire building via the aerial ladder of LBFD.

Account from Chief Ronald Guidetti

Upon arrival, I was assigned to the original fire building to assist Carl Griffin with suppression operations. He and I decided to break the crews into two sectors because of the amount of fire and fire spread.

Four firefighters and I advanced a primary and a backup 1¾-inch line up the stairs. As we did, fire was darkening down. One firefighter went up and split off to the left; the other firefighters went up and slightly right, advancing on the fire.

At this point, we encountered high heat. We maintained this position until we could assess to advance. With this, I advised the nozzleman to maintain that position. I proceeded to my right into the room to conduct ventilation and a quick primary search. I felt a blast of high heat. All of a sudden, conditions turned for the worse: high heat and a total loss of visibility.

I turned around to retreat and encountered severe heat, as if I were in a chimney. I heard the other firefighters calling to get out, all the time hearing the handline working. During this, I kept the wall at my right, making my attempt to find a second way out.

I had activated my PASS alarm and now, to make matters worse, my Vibralert low-air warning went off. My heads-up display was in the yellow, so I knew that I needed to control my breathing. I went for my mic to transmit the mayday and begin my LUNAR report. No mic. No radio. (After the fire, my mic cord was discovered caught under a large armoire, and my radio cord was stretched about 10 feet under debris at the window).

(Author’s note: Guidetti was carrying two radios, one for trunked communication and one for VHF/fireground. The fireground radio was in a chest radio pocket, and its mic was what came loose and became caught in the armoire. This unknowingly pulled the radio from the radio pocket. The trunked radio was a “loaner” radio until LBFD’s order for permanent radios arrives. The loaner apparently had a malfunctioning remote microphone.)

At this point, my experience kicked in, going through LUNAR and air management. I continued to self-rescue and found a window. I tried to break the glass. Although the window shattered, it wouldn’t break all the way. I decided to feel for the locks and remove each panel. As I did, I found that the lower panel had fallen. I was able to hang myself out of the window to alert the other firefighters that I was in need of being rescued.

Fire and heavy forceful smoke were rolling over my head. I attempted to exit the window with my mask hanging down. The aerial ladder was extended to just below the windowsill, which jammed my mask and low-pressure air hose against the outer wall of the A side: I couldn’t move in any direction. I expressed that the aerial had to be retracted, so I could freely escape onto the ladder. Once this was completed, I self-evacuated onto the ladder.

There are a few lessons to share about why I am here to speak about this today.

Always don your PPE to the fullest. Never cut corners. You won’t have time when your life is on the line to don a piece of equipment that you didn’t take the time to put on properly.

Never stop training. I have attended countless hours of training. I haven’t stopped learning and haven’t stopped reading about fire topics.

Training saved my life: LUNAR, firefighter safety and survival courses, air management, etc. A few simple steps can save air and save your life.

I didn’t have my radio to transmit the mayday and LUNAR; however, that didn’t stop me from running it through my head: LUNAR, PASS alarm activation and self-rescue techniques.

Comments from Chief Goldfeder

More and more suburban departments—both career and volunteer—operate with automatic mutual-aid agencies because of staffing challenges. Although the help is great and, certainly, needed, it demands expanded responsibility from the chiefs, in general, and the IC, specifically. Without question, discipline while operating under common policies that everyone has trained on is critical.

Pasquariello explains that it’s a very difficult “tightrope walk” between allowing firefighters to be firefighters and protecting them from themselves. “I personally struggle mightily with the hypocrisy of ordering members not to do things that I did as a firefighter,” Pasquariello says. “I justify this to myself by assuming I have learned from my mistakes and don’t want others to repeat them.”

This is a common feeling among all of us: Knowing what we did back then and having the responsibility of the fire that we now own. Identify what is appropriate and what is not and accept zero tolerance on fireground playing, period.

Pasquariello believes that it’s imperative that the IC have people that he/she can depend upon and trust. “This trust can only be built by experience with each other,” he says. “However, that experience is hard to come by now and has to be built during training if lack of fire duty precludes it.”

If your department runs regular mutual or automatic mutual aid, now is a good time to set aside any excuses and to start working on the items that are needed for increased success on your fire scenes. By scheduling regular first-alarm drills, aligning policies and procedures and just having some familiarization activities, the payoff is priceless.

In the area I work, up until about a dozen years ago, every fire department was their own island—and calling mutual aid was seen as a failure, an ego killer. The so-called leaders completely forget that we would lose structures, but they’d be giddy proud that they didn’t call anyone. That’s absolute insanity from (past) chiefs who failed to look at the big picture: taking care of the people who have the fire and taking care of the firefighters who take care of the people.

Pasquariello says it’s difficult to operate with multiple mutual-aid departments when they don’t play from the same playbook. “What this creates for me as the IC is near-immediate task and strategic saturation,” he notes. “Having to give specific orders to every rig that calls in service bogs the IC down in the minutiae of the details and makes it very hard to focus on the bigger picture. At this point in my career, this is overwhelmingly the area that I have personally failed the greatest. It has to change.”

And it can change, but it takes untiring chiefs, mayors and commissioners, supported by the firefighters. A simple template of “Is this good for the public?” and “Is this good for the firefighters’ ability to serve and survive?” helps to find the correct solutions almost every time.

Pasquariello states that there is no worse feeling in the world than the feeling that the control of the fireground is “getting away from you.” Reports that there are members in the wrong places or missing, particularly when you didn’t assign them to begin with, can make you feel overwhelmed the quickest.

“At this fire, I received several requests from Tim Griffin for a line to the second floor of the B exposure,” Pasquariello says. “I already assigned a company with six members and a hoseline to his position, but because of a miscommunication with a company officer, they went to the wrong building.

“At nearly the same time, we had: a member cut off by fire; ‘straggler’ members showing up at windows in buildings that they weren’t assigned to; and rapidly worsening conditions in another building. The IC has to have the ability to tighten the reins and regain control.”

Pasquariello says he has found that one effective way to do this is to threaten to take away the ability for members to keep working “if members don’t conform to what I want them to do and where I want them to do it.

“I have been ridiculed, but I can honestly say that it doesn’t bother me at all. It is vitally important for me to not allow the tail to wag the dog.”

Pasquariello is exactly right. This isn’t about who gets to do what job nor about who likes who. This is about the job—career, volunteer, whatever. Of course, by the nature of who we are as firefighters, we like to get along and enjoy being with one another, but it never can be at the expense of operating as competent pros.

The fireground is not a freelancing democracy. Quite frankly, there must be clear, dictatorial control and communication by the IC to ensure that what is expected is being done. That only can be accomplished by highly trained firefighters and officers who “get it,” specifically related to their own behaviors and personal accountability.