By Michael N. Ciampo
Sometimes drilling or discussing "back-to-basics" tactics can be very helpful and useful; it may also remind that firefighter who says, "Oh, I forgot about that." Often it's the smallest or simplest things that can make another situation go smoothly if we had only followed that basic tactic. Sure, there are ways of improving or enhancing the tactic, but to improve it, we need to understand why it's there in the first place.
Pulling into the block to operate as a tower ladder at a vacant structure fire, we were ordered to set up between the fire building and the exposure; lining up our turntable with the alleyway allowed us to attack the fire building and protect the exposure. As we got into position, a supply line was being stretched to our location. Unfortunately, the hose barely made it and looked like a clothesline from the engine to our apparatus. Sizing up the vacant structure and understanding that the apparatus could be moved forward to attack more of the fire and allow another tower ladder to operate in our original position, we laid out one of our donut rolls of supply hose off our apparatus. (Aerial and tower ladders should carry some extra supply hose and fittings!)
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