Engine and Truck for FAST/RIT CO

N

nfd2004

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Jun 22, 2007
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"mack" had mentioned on here that the Boston Fire Dept sends an Engine Co., a Ladder Co., and a Chief as a RIT Co in that city. I think that is an Excellent idea. I also read on here that at a large job somewhere here in NYC, a second Fast Co was assigned. That is another Excellent idea. But the truth is, the picture across many parts of the country is not as rosey. I guess mainly I am referring to the northeast.

  Not too far away from Boston is another larger city, Springfield, Mass. I'm guessing that city has a population of about 150,000 people or so. Like Boston, it has its typical old New England neighborhoods with its closely packed 2 1/2 and 3 story frames. Its old mill factories, its share of high rise buildings, and its ghetto areas. With all that, the Springfield, Mass Fire Dept runs every Engine and Ladder Company with only a Three man crew. An Officer and Two Firefighters. Springfield used to have 16 Engines and Nine Trucks plus a Squad/Rescue. They now have 8 Engines and 5 Trucks, plus a Squad/Rescue. All those Companies gone.

  And now they want to close down another Truck Company. I wonder how they can function as they do now, WITHOUT closing down another company. And the surrounding cities/towns are very limited as far as sending in mutual aid.

  Bridgeport, Ct once had 14 Engines, 6 Trucks (three of which were two man City Service trucks with ground ladders only), and a Rescue. Today its 9 Engines, 4 Trucks, and the Rescue. Recently they had a large fire in an old vacant factory with a serious exposure problem. They brought in 2 Engines and a Truck from Fairfield, and an Engine from Stratford. The rest were Volunteer Fire Companies that probadly have never had to deal with conditions like Bridgeport has.

  Newburgh, N.Y. another city with major cutbacks over the years. I think they are down to 2 and 1 now.

  The story is the same. Yonkers left with only one Battalion and an Engine and Truck cut.They cut out their Safety Officer.

  Most NewEngland cities today are just lucky to have a skelton crew to fight the average building fire. Yet throughout the years, these firefighters have learned and had to adapt to work with what they have. Even having One FAST/Rit Company is almost a luxury these days. Many have to depend on volunteer fire companies to relocte into conditions those firefighters never faced before. Many cities are now depending on these rural volunteer firefighters to be their front line FAST/Rit Company, not knowing how many will be able to show up.

  Conditions are NOT very Good. NFPA preaches the two in/two out rule. Thats not really possible for some places today. OSHA (?) talks about having a FAST/RIT Company at the scene of a Working Fire early on.  For many places, that's wishful thinking.
 
 
Chicago runs a dedicated truck company and a battalion chief to all confirmed fires as a RIT unit.
 
It's some dark days for the fire service in terms of budget cuts/manning. Boston, in my opinion, has a great concept going. The IC can pull from either the Engine or the Ladder for R.I.T., plus there is a dedicated District Chief as R.I.T. Chief, and a Rehab. Unit in the mix.

In New York, a 10-75(Working Fire) gets an additional Engine, Truck(for F.A.S.T.), Battalion Chief, Squad, Rescue, and a R.A.C.(Rehab.) Unit. I'm not 100% sure, but since the Squad and Rescue both have F.A.S.T. capabilities, I think the IC can use either of them as an additional F.A.S.T., as well as having the ability to S/C an additional Truck for it.

In CT, particularly lower Fairfield County, most(if not all) FD's rely on Engines for R.I.T. However, like Willy said, many paid FD's run with only 2 or 3 per rig, making for a 2 or 3 man F.A.S.T./R.I.T., which I guess is better than having none at all, but it's not great by any means. A lot of volunteer gigs have an Engine, Truck, or Rescue to use as F.A.S.T./R.I.T. In my town, whenever there's a job, one of the three volunteer FD's sends out a Truck, Rescue, and Chief as the R.I.T. Both the Truck and Rescue make up the R.I.T. and the Chief is in charge of R.I.T. Of course, because it's volunteer, there is no guarantee on how many you can get on a rig, but luckily, you usually end up with a pretty good-sized crew.

In Bridgeport, a Structure Fire(or Signal 29 as they call it there) gets a Box consisting of 4 & 2, the Rescue, a BC, and a Safety Officer. One of the 4 Engines on the Box is the dedicated R.I.T. Unfortunately, many FD's around lack a Safety Officer, or at least none on the initial assignment for a fire. Because the Bridgeport FD lost two firefighters(one of whom's sons I went to high school with) a few years back, they now run a Safety Officer to most of their incidents. Also, like Willy D said previously, it would be better for Bridgeport with the number of companies it once had. Now, usually, anything above a Working Fire, and sometimes for a W/F, mutual aid from surrounding towns in brought in to cover and sometimes respond. Anything above a 3rd Alarm gets M/A to the scene. Again, in Bridgeport, it's 4 & 2, Rescue, 1 BC, Safety on the Box, 2 & 1 on the 2nd, and 2-3 & 1 on the 3rd. Usually you get the remaining Engine/BC to cover the city with M/A.

Now, going back to Springfield, MA. There are currently 7 Engines, 4 Trucks, 1 Rescue, and 2 District Chiefs in service daily. An 8th Engine is only in service if there are enough guys to mann it. Recently, the city closed their 5th Truck Co. due to budget cuts, and are planning to cut quite a few FF's in the future. This will likely result in the closure or at least browning out of companies. Yet, the city's population keeps growing and their fire load does not decrease.

I'll end with giving those who don't already know, or haven't already heard, the run down on another budget cuts story out in Scranton, PA. One of the biggest cities in the Keystone State, the SFD used to run with 7 Engines, 2 Trucks, 1 Rescue, and 1 Battalion with 150 firefighters in 4 shifts. Now, as of 2011, the SFD runs with only 5 Engines, 2 Trucks, 1 Rescue, and a Battalion with 112 firefighters in 3 shifts. Plus, 2 of those 5 Engines are browned out daily, leaving 3 & 2 to cover the city every day, meanwhile, if you go south to Reading, PA, they were cut from 7 & 3, Rescue, and a Deputy down to 5 & 3, Rescue, Deputy. However, each rig is staffed with only 2 FF's. Most of the time, searches of a building on fire are conducted by only 1 firefighter, alone. In two cases, almost back to back recently, firefighters have been trapped and maydays have gone out, because there is only 1 firefighter doing the searches. In these two cases, both homes had collier's mansion conditions. In Reading, and in many other places, there is no such thing as "2-in, 2-out".
 
You see a sharp looking rig on a run, lots of sirens and lights. Look inside you see 2 or 3 guys responding. 99% of the populace have no idea for minimum manning
 
Some HUGe incident will happen where several fire fighters/civils will die and more will be badly hrt before conditions occur. Here in Northern Nevada we run 3 man engines with a rescue(ambulance) running with two to all fires, we use volunteers purly for rit teams after they go through a 8 hour course and thats only when they show, which is almost never between 7am-6pm.
 
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