Picture this: It’s 1976. You own a house for you and the other three members of your family. It’s 1,600 square feet, which is average for the time, and that size is what you and your family need to function.
Fast forward to 2020: The average home is some 2,600 square feet. It comes with a basement or an “unfinished attic,” which doesn’t count toward the “livable” space that’s required to be disclosed. What can we safely assume the actual size is? What are we sending if we’re called?
A residential fire response or package has so many variants across this country. One area sends a light force and will upgrade on arrival for a working fire. One area sends a “2 and 1” and a chief. Some areas tone stations that send what they have available.
NFPA recommends 17 people on scene for a fire in their 12-minute window.
(Do departments still use the paid ambulance as two members on their National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) reporting? That was a big option for smaller areas to get staffing on scene quickly with reporting. In reality, those two members on the ambulance are paid by a county EMS system and don’t help your 17-person pool for fireground operations.)
A commercial response also varies by area of the country. Some departments send five engines, two trucks and a rescue/squad. Some smaller areas still tone the department or station, so you might have four stations assigned, instead of just three. What level of chief officer does this bring and how many?
When will we start sending a full commercial response to residential structure fires?
Your district, your responsibility
When we respond to a residential fire, we usually can handle it with two hoselines that are 50–100 feet, and we have plenty left to move. What happens when we make that third-story push in an unfinished attic and we find 600 more square feet of space? Do we have enough hose? Do we have enough water? What about manpower?
We all have discovered fire hiding in the attic. This takes the available fire load to a new level and puts objects over our heads that we don’t assume are there. Now, we are taught to never assume anything, but even the most prepared crew can find itself in a bad situation that gets worse. That is the nature of this job.
Your fire district is your responsibility, so learning and mapping your district and its borders are a key function of any member of your firehouse. This is the time to look for hazards, such as house sizing and how to effect a rescue if needed. Preplanning these houses can make a difference in how your department dispatches calls and can have a positive outcome for everyone involved. We must prepare, and that means changing how we function. We must look at the size of the houses that are in our community and think as if they are commercial structures.
Strip malls or stand-alone businesses range in size, but no matter what, we send a commercial response package. We cancel who we don’t need. What if we add one question in the call-taker’s computer-aided dispatch system, so dispatch can call for a response that’s based on the size of the house—say, a 3,500-square-foot house that’s elevated on a shoreline. A finished attic and a room addition on the ground level can increase the size to 4,500 square feet or more. Do you believe that your residential response package still can effectively handle this fire? These fires require more of everything: more chiefs/officers, more water, more ladders, more manpower and more planning.
If your department has a C-side operations officer, is that individual able to move around and see in windows? Can that person see fire conditions on the A side? Most likely, no. That commercial package of an extra chief, an extra engine and an extra special service can make all of the difference in your safety, in the attack on the fire and in the capability to make a faster stop on the fire.
Ideas for change
We have had numerous fatalities that resulted from lost and disoriented members. A fair number of these members were lost in large houses. How can we change this?
We must look at our area. We must just knock on the doors of these larger houses. We must build a rapport with the residents of the community to show them that we are servants of their area. Also, we want our teammates to come home alive at the end of the day.
We must coordinate with our call-takers at the 9-1-1 centers for them to ask about the size of a house, hidden areas and additions to the house. 9-1-1 centers added COVID screening. Why can’t they screen for the size of houses?
I believe that we all can agree that there are times when we have too many firefighters on scene, and that does tax the local resources. That said, the first-arriving chief can get his information reports from conditions and/or from interior crews and return unneeded units when applicable. An incident commander has the responsibility for that scene, and it is that individual’s job to find out what is and isn’t needed.
Dig into the numbers
The purpose of this article isn’t to justify that your department should change how it operates but to get you out of your station to look at your community’s houses, talk with residents (we talk to business owners constantly) and learn how we prevent one more fatality.
If you decide to change your response package, I recommend that you look at your department data to see what houses you responded to and for which of those did you have to call for more resources. When you compile your data, you might see that it's time to adjust your responses, because you are calling for these second alarms, or additional “1 and 1’s.” Beat yourself to the punch. Build it into your initial packages.
