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In Fireground Strategies, 4th Edition, Anthony Avillo writes about the strategic considerations of size-up. This excerpt discusses how size-up informs all decision making on the fireground.
Command presence, like command confidence, is based on command competence.—Chief Edward Flood North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue
A strong command presence only looks easy to the untrained eye.—Chief Ed Buchanan
Chief Ed Flood wrote in the text Full-Contact Leadership, that “size-up, as a fireground diagnostic tool, is a continual assessment of all the exponential potential present in a fire or emergency. Size-up is used to deconstruct, reconstruct, intervene, outwit, and tame the exponential factor.”
Strategic size-up must be the foundation and rationale driving all on duty, in service and ready decision making, on, off, before, during, and after fireground operations. Strategic size-up and your ability to recognize the exponential factor potential is based on education, experience, and most importantly, pre-fire street intelligence. Pre-fire street intelligence includes building familiarizations, pre-fire planning, and getting out on the street, keeping your head on a swivel, and knowing all you can know about your area. These influences allow you to foresee, predict, and act upon all exponential potential by making the best use of available staffing and resources. Size-up is an all-senses activity. Some say that size-up begins with the receipt of the alarm and continues until the emergency is under control (fig. 1).
Knowledge of building construction and the paths of least resistance is critical to strategic size-up and will allow you to make the best decisions on where to stretch lines and how to recognize survivable spaces in order to protect and rescue occupants, ventilate, force entry, check for fire extension, and predict water pathways for salvage operations. Speaking of survivable spaces, building construction may be a benefit to protecting survivable spaces or it can be a liability. The urgency with which we must engage survivable spaces is often a function of the protection afforded by the building construction and design.
The protection of life is our number-one priority. It is the ultimate reason we exist. We must determine, based on the location and extent of the fire, how to best utilize apparatus and personnel to accomplish this crucial benchmark. Often, the who, what, when, where, why, and how of life hazard is not determined until scene arrival, with arrival cues such as location and extent of fire along with an understanding of building construction as a benefit or liability aiding in strategy determination.
A major consideration of life hazard control is to understand the availability and/or likelihood of survivable spaces. Survivable spaces are not always seen from the command post. Personnel recognizing and attempting to exploit a survivable space must notify command of its existence and their intention. Failure to notify command of a survivable space is always a mistake and a failure of discipline. The consequences of the failure to report a potential survivable space may include unintended fire spread, mayday notifications, and the focus change of the fireground caused by the mayday. The command post cannot support what it does not know about. When notified of a survivable space, the duty of command is to support the survivable spaces with:
The most effective way of protecting survivable spaces is by putting water on the fire. The second most effective is by making sure that there are barriers between the fire and the victims such as closed doors. The simple action of closing a door has saved many lives. The “close before you doze” initiative can help us identify survivable spaces quicker and, more importantly, buy us more time in protecting the life hazard (fig. 2).
Exposures, our number-two priority after life hazard, represent where the fire is going and sometimes will create a greater concern than the parent fire. Failure to realize this fact caused by incident commander tunnel vision and candle-moth syndrome has led to many conflagrations and needless death, injury, and property loss.
So, when is an exposure an issue to be concerned about? The Rule of 15 works quite well. If the buildings are 15 feet apart or less or there is a 15-mph wind or greater, consider it an exposure concern. When wind and distance are taken together, it can exponentially increase the problem. Additionally, when the fire is more advanced, this 15-foot rule should be expanded, but it is a good starting point. If the exposure fits the rule, make sure the exposure is searched and evacuated and at least drop dry lines in case they are needed should the incident escalate. When in doubt, put hose on the ground.
Many of the size-up factors you will be required to know for the target building will carry over to the exposures. Your preplanning activities may reveal that, in the event of a serious fire in the target building, it may be more practical to focus your efforts on protecting the exposure. Some exposures may change with the time of day or season, such as rail cars or trucks parked alongside or inside the structure. In some areas, you cannot get away from the exposures. In North Hudson, there are always at least two, and sometimes three, exposure issues (fig. 3).
