In Fireground Strategies, 4th Edition, Anthony Avillo writes about the staffing considerations an IC needs to take into account to maintain operational equilibrium when requesting additional alarms.
Personnel Requirements
Your tactical reserve is the extra personnel you have staged at the command post (CP) when you have reached operational equilibrium, which is not to be confused with incident stabilization. Incident stabilization is when you have the incident under control or stabilized to the point where severe extension and damage is no longer a threat. Operational equilibrium is when you have not only sufficient personnel working in all areas of concern (and supervisory personnel to manage them), but also a healthy amount of personnel waiting to go into the game, i.e., your tactical reserve.
Regarding fireground personnel requirements, you are always striving for operational equilibrium. Consider the fire in figure 1. You arrive to find your first-alarm companies going to work. You have no personnel at the CP to give additional required assignments to, and there is plenty to do. So, you strike your second alarm if it hasn’t been done already. You know that you must begin addressing your exposures, so you must assume that your second alarm companies will also be eaten up quickly. In fact, you must assign them as soon as they arrive (and sometimes by radio before they arrive, such as to secure additional water supplies). You still have no tactical reserve. Third alarm time. At this fire, exposure issues and the need to cover adjacent threatened areas might also eat up your third alarm quickly. The fire in figure 1 escalated to four alarms very quickly. As the IC, you are striving for some friends at the CP. You reach that when you have struck enough alarms that the latest arrivals at the party can be held at the CP for future use. Your goal is to be able to continue operations and still have several companies (preferably two engines and a ladder) standing by waiting to go into the game. That is your tactical reserve. How long it takes you to establish this depends on current and forecasted conditions .
The 3X Factor
When calculating the personnel needs for the entire incident, I often use the 3X rule of thumb. I estimate the approximate number of people I need in the fire building and in the exposures to fight the fire to be X. Since these people will get tired at some point, and I will have to replace them, I double that number to 2X. While the first group is in rehab and the second group is fighting the fire, I still need a tactical reserve, so I triple the first number to 3X.
Additional Alarm Rule of Thumb
When requesting additional alarms, the rule of thumb I like to follow is this: if the fire is still escalating and I don’t have at least three companies standing by at the CP as a tactical reserve, I strike an additional alarm. They can always be sent back if they are not needed. This rule of thumb has served me very well during my career as an Incident Commander. Additional companies must be available for relief, reinforcement of operational areas, and to address unplanned-for issues.
The mindset of the IC must be that all incidents not under control require a tactical reserve. The policy regarding additional alarm response should include a task force of at least two engines, one ladder company response, and a chief officer—remember to maintain your span of control, since more people equal the need for more supervision. Requesting a “one company at a time” response is counterproductive. Additional alarms are struck because of the need for personnel. If mutual aid is needed to fill out the required compliment for a task force response, it should be dispatched. The personnel compliment of one company is hardly enough to put a dent in the needs of an escalating incident. If you don’t need them, they can always be released from the incident or staged. Don’t dribble companies in.
The Bull’s-Eye Theory
The more alarms you strike, the further the responding companies must travel. I call this the Bull’s-Eye Theory. If the incident is the bull’s-eye, and each subsequent alarm is a ring that is further from the center, each representing an exponentially longer reflex time, you can see the need to be proactive in summoning personnel to the scene.
The Ripple Effect
The ripple effect that is created by such urgent situations as an immediate rescue upon scene arrival often makes a mess of the assignments that the first-alarm companies were supposed to conduct. If your first-arriving ladder or first-arriving engine has to conduct a ladder rescue because the victim is a potential jumper or endangered by fire, this operation often consumes the whole company at the expense of the other tasks for which they are normally responsible. Who does forcible entry? What about other victims inside who can’t get to the windows? How about ventilation of the structure?
If the first-arriving engine must perform an immediate rescue, who will put water on the fire and place a line between the fire and other victims and their paths of escape? This rescue operation’s ripple effect impacts all other operations. Immediate striking of additional alarms will be required to address the standard operating procedural tasks that the first-alarm companies are not able to carry out. As the first-arriving company’s IC, don’t get so sucked into this situation that you neglect to call for help.
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