All too often, we see videos of major fires on the television news or in training films showing firefighters perched atopaerialsdirecting streams. On occasion, we hear of firefighters being injured while operating at the top of an aerial while flowing water. Some departments have stopped this practice for safety reasons. Others have not.
Woody Hayes, former head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes, once noted that "three things can happen with a forward pass and two of them are bad!" Such is the logic behind this month's question. Having firefighters flow water from the top of an aerial does not present very good safety odds to my way of thinking. Other than for the obvious plus of "looking good" perched high atop a 100-foot stick with cameras clicking, I can only come up with one advantage to placing a firefighter atop a ladder flowing water-that is, to better direct the stream. In a nutshell, you're either hitting fire or you're not! Either way, you should realize your effectiveness in a few minutes or so. If, God forbid, you're overshooting the building and hitting crews with the stream, they'll let you know soon enough.
The "bad stuff" that can happen far outweighs the good: broken couplings, burst lines, and ladder brackets all can injure or kill firefighters. There is a great clip in the National Fire Academy's firefighters safety and survival tape Division of Danger in which a firefighter is injured when a coupling breaks while he is directing a stream from atop an aerial.
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