It was my first night as a fire company boss. I had eight years on the job. Worked as a firefighter, paramedic, and hazardous materials technician. Just finished a stint at the Training Center, where I taught EMT and was a live fire instructor. Scored #4 on the Fire Sergeant promotional list.
It was quarter to one a.m., and I was wide awake in the shift leader’s office. I was the boss of Engine 28 and responsible for the safety of my crew.
The fire suppression books I memorized for the promotion exam were authored by big city chiefs who worked with fire companies staffed with four to six firefighters and supported by a rapid arrival of command officers. There was no way a two-person truck company could perform the initial fireground tasks that a heavily staffed Fire Department of New York (FDNY) truck company could accomplish.
My county was evolving from a coalition of rural/suburban volunteer fire companies to an urban county fire department, which would be accomplished years later.
When I was sleepless in Seven Corners, we had daywork career battalion chiefs, three or two-person fire crews, rudimentary SOPs, and the beginnings of an incident management system. It was a very different environment than FDNY.
As a fire officer candidate, you would respond to an assessment center scenario with everything you remembered. The sequence of factoids was not as important as it was to get every item ticked-off in the assessor’s checklist to get the highest score.
I struggled as a paramedic student. The “nice to know” trivia factoids interfered with what I needed to know to get credentialed, and I was having the same problem now.
As the boss of Engine 28, I needed to do the right things first when arriving at a structure fire with our three-person engine company. Ironically, I recalled something from a retired FDNY Chief of Department that provided focus.
Edward P. McAniff’s book Leadership in the Fire Service, was on our promotional exam reading list. IAFF Local 2068 hired McAniff and Associates to deliver a preparation class, as this was our first exam to use an assessment center.
Chief McAniff said: “The goal of the first arriving engine is to advance an attack line and gain control of the interior stairs.”
That worked for me. A couple of weeks later, I applied this concept.
At 8 p.m., we were dispatched to an “Across from …” structure fire. We arrived at a single-level home four blocks south of the fire station. Fire was showing from the roof. A car was in the driveway, and lights were on in the house. After no response to our banging on the door, we forced the door open and advanced the 1.5” attack line.
There was no smoke or heat in the house. The second arriving engine company got to the rear and reported a fire coming from the natural gas regulator that spread to the soffit. When we opened the attic stairs, we found the fire.
The attic was finished with a hardwood floor and jammed with a lifetime of items from international travel. Overhauling the attic took a couple of hours using two engines and a truck company. The occupants were having dinner at a restaurant.
Returning at 1 a.m. for a fire watch check, we watered down the 10’ pile of slightly steaming international debris in the 40-degree weather.
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