5 rookies and no one else.

[Michael13]

Getting to the hall and there's 4 rookies in the pumper waiting for a 5th guy. What do you do? House fire by the way. The 4 in truck and myself are all under, well were at that call, under 2 years experiance. I believe best course of action is to roll and set up at scene and give a report to dispatch and hope more guys are coming and chief is rolling to the scene and arrives first. We ended up getting about 20 for that call but mostly unexpeiranced rookies where the first 5 on scene for about 2 mins. We streched lines and waited for the bosses and water and man power. We were then split up and given a captian and an assignment.

[iamvff]

Two words....mutual aid. As long as it is available to you. Call dispatch tell them you are leaving the firehall with only five members that are all rookies, and you require mutual aid assistance, and tell them exactly what you require as far as assistance. It works good for us.

Be safe
iamvff

[wilderness]

First thing is, find out who senior man is out of the 5 of you's. next he would be in charge regardless of what anyone else say's, next get dispatch to begin to page every 3 minutes for more man power, next i would ask for mutual aid, to be paged out.... When first arriving on scene i would set the pumper so the driver could see atleast two sides of the building, and the senior man would have to do a size up and a quick scan of the area, now i would have the tanker drop the porta a tank if its rural area and proceed to get the tanker to drop its load of water and have them help set up the pumper, so thats three guys occupied out of five, the other two guys would be streaching hose to the front door and any exposed flames say comming from a window.. next i would be asking the dispatch for an ETA of the next responding hall, and i would send two guys with the tanker to the nearest and easiest water source..... after they helped set up the pumper.....

[dentedhead]

The mutual aid sounds good,however would the responding senior members not be closer i:e in thier own community?

As hard as it may have been not to make entry you could have started pulling lines,setting up accountability or whatever procedures your dept uses.

Judging by what you wrote you did I think it would be pretty hard for anyone to find fault in your actions you acted to the level of your experience,Id put it in the good job file!

Dentedhead

[Michael13]

All good ideas. As we pulled out the door Chief said he was 2 mins away from scene, and said roll, and he would do all that was needed when he saw what was going on. Veterens showed eventually, and everything was ok.

[firefighter26]

The first thing I tell any rookie is that if they get to the hall first, get in their gear and wait a for someone to show up.

If, after a minute, no one does, radio and ask for mutual aid and respond Code 2 (lights only) in a truck they are qualified to drive. if they are not qualified to drive any truck, then man the base radio until someone does showup.

For us, 98% of the members live within a 3 block radius of the station so we are their pretty quick, however, there are times when members will be delayed getting to the hall. I know I have been in the situation where I had to respond on foot and got to the station later than I would have if I drove, only to see my Engine leave without me :-(

I am not 100% sure because I can't find the e-mail, but I think dispatch's new protocal is that if they have not heard from the department to confirm the call within 2:00 minutes that they will tone out the department again. If no one confirms the call again, mutual aid will be called. I will check into that.

[FireChef]

The Department I was with, we were told by the Chief before 5pm(basically during the day) first one to the hall, shuts off the alarm(the good old airaid siren), calls back to dispatch, then they are off in the first truck, next guy to the hall grabs the second truck and is off, both always responding Code 3, rookie or senior member. There was usually ATLEAST 1 Lt or Cpt on the call, as most of the guys are shift workers. Then after 5pm, the first guy basically did the same thing, but had to wait for another FF to show up before the truck could roll. Same with the second truck. The reasoning behind it is there are more guys at home in the evening. It seems to work.

[remya]

Under the circumstances you did well.

The last call we had like that the rookie did not even roll a truck and went home when no one showed up at the hall (two senior members who should have know better responded to the call and took care of the situation). All comes back to what training/orientation is provided to these new members.

I would hope our guys would call for the other station(s) in our township to respond and if we are out hydrant range call for mutual aid tankers as well. We automatically roll our other township tanker in this case. I would rather be standing units down then playing catch up.

[MFDFF33]

Well for us it's always been that senior member is in charge, Once someone higher up arrives then you can pass the Command onto them, if they are willing to do so. Most of the time if our Senior members see you have the situation under control they may let you continue with command. As for rolling a truck, if no one has their air endorsement we are kind of S.O.L. because our bay is set up that our rescue unit and Engine 1 block our pick up truck. However we have numerous members within minutes of the have their air, in which atleast one truck could be moved to allow the pick up to go and meet. Also our S.O.G.'s state that for a structure fire as soon as we roll we are back on the phone with dispatch requesting mutual aid. A structure fire is such a grey area that no matter what we want as much man power as possible.

[North_of_60]

i am a relitivly new member to our department and we have NO mutual aid. when we were doing dry runs for practice a few weeks ago, they put me in the officers position on the hydrant truck (used because we have utilidors that run above ground instead of piipe below ground.)The hydrant truck has lenghts of 4" hose that we connect to the utilidor at certain boxes and then drive to the pumper to connect the water.
Anyways, my point was that when I asked about them putting me as the officer, our Safety Officer said that I had some other experience that was going for me and that sometimes you have to respond with what you have.
Good Job, I think that you did well and things worked out, so congrats and use every experience to make yourself that much better at what we do.