Victim Survivability Profiling? And some thoughts
Posted by hdf561 on January 28, 2013
Have to thank my good friend Rude Boy for pointing this video out to me. Apparently it was on some other websites but I missed it.
I just have some thoughts, and I do not know everything about this fire, this fire department, their staffing anything like that. I just see a very small snap shot in time and have some thoughts to consider.
1. It seems a lot of focus was on the room on fire. While I think that’s a good thing fire tends to move up,down,left,right,front, and back. It what appears to be some sort of multi family occupancy with adjoined rooms where is the line above? Where is the line in the room adjacent to the fire room? In fact why are searches not being initiated in those rooms as they present more chance to produce a viable victim?
2. They found a victim after knocking down a MASSIVE amount of fire. They obviously thought this victim was viable because they drug him out of the building. Then they took what they thought was this viable victim and….left him there. Why did someone not start hands only CPR? Why was an EMS crew not close to the scene?
Again not picking because I do not know what the circumstances are that these firefighters were facing, but this incident speaks to me about some priorities I may want to make at my next fire, or that you may want to consider at your next fire.
Do we (insert your FD here) even have the resources readily available to combat a fire like this and care for a victim? If not how can we get them? If we are depending on mutual aid can we get them on the first alarm, or do we need to adjust when that process gets started?
The fire service is not easy, especially today when we have extreme fire loads, buildings that fail easier, and we have to process all of those things in a dynamic time compressed environment. On top of that every move we make now is documented and put out there for all to see, so every “mistake” is magnified. That makes it all the more important to get in the gym, get on the training ground, and do all the prep work on the front end. Lets give these amature filmmakers Oscar performances!
Thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!
One Response to “Victim Survivability Profiling? And some thoughts”
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Chris (@redd_dragons) said
Seems a little odd to me. Either the victim is confirmed dead (which in my area us a firefighters don’t have the authority to do) and you would leave them there for the fire investigator, or the victim could be saved, which would mean you should start working them asap.
Like you said, very hard to pick up on tactics when you only see a snipit in time.