By Erich Roden
The safety officer, or anyone designated to fill this role on the fireground, has a lot more to consider on the fireground than a single companyofficer, or even the incident commander (IC) himself.
A company officer will be managing his company’s area of responsibility based on order of arrival, or the position that is assigned by the incident commander; the IC will be managing companies to ensure they’re where they’re supposed to be, when they’re supposed to be there, and that the fire is going according to plan.
安全官员必须在20tand all of the above, but also ask himself questions the IC might need the answers to. For instance: what is the progress of the first hoseline and how does it correlate to the fire conditions we can see now, rather than what was seen upon arrival? Did thetruckremember to bring a search rope before entering the commercial building to conduct a primary search? Why is there a ton of radio traffic? Why is there too little radio traffic? These are but a few of the thousands of questions the safety officer needs answers to so he can follow through on his assignment of advising the IC of potential dangers and keeping everyone on the fireground safe.
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ERICH RODENis the co-editor ofUrban Firefighterand a battalion chief assigned to the Training Division with the Milwaukee (WI) Fire Department. He is a lead instructor for the Urban Essentials hands-ontrainingclass. He is a fire service instructor for the Milwaukee Area Technical College. He was the keynote speaker at theFDIC2014 Opening Ceremony.
