BY ALAN BRUNACINI
In our last installment, we finished looking at the safety side of our hazard vs. safety model. We went through the details of adequate staffing, operational hardware, safety standard operating procedures, and personal protective equipment (PPE) and finished up with a discussion of incident command by going over the eight standard functions of command. The model is a critical part of the initial and ongoing size-up process. These items make up the basic safety system we use on every level to protect our firefighters working in the hazard zone.
Fire companies operating on the task level must evaluate the ability of all the safety system elements “they have on” (literally, in the case of PPE) to directly protect them from the level of hazard present. They must also forecast the future hazard level of where they will be working as the incident evolves—what’s next/next/next? Sector/division/group tactical level bosses are the decentralized eyes and ears of the incident commander (IC). They must maintain an awareness of the safety/hazard balance in their assigned area and function and must always account for and move the troops forward when the safety side is bigger than the hazard side. Conversely, they must move the workers away from the hazard zone when the hazards are more powerful than the safety system components. The IC must use the eight standard command functions to determine and manage the overall offensive/defensive strategy for the entire incident—again, based on an incidentwide hazard/safety comparison.
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