By Ian G. Poole

On a busy summer afternoon, you’re dispatched to a single-family residential fire with multiple calls reporting fire coming out of the garage door.

In most cases, this is a “bread-and-butter” fire. Today is different, though. Today you’re the officer of the first-due “ladder”—a 105-foot straight stick quint with a 1,500 gallon-per-minute (gpm) fire pump and 300 gallons of tank water. During the response, you realize the closest engine is delayed because it is on a medical call.

Arriving on scene, you see a two-story single-family structure with an attached garage on the D side. The garage is well involved and threatening to extend into the house. As the first arriving fire officer, you must quickly evaluate your tactics—are you a ladder or are you an engine? Do you perform ladder work, or do you pull a handline and attack the fire? As many departments have decided to equip their ladder trucks with pumps and water, many officers are now faced with the tough decision of whether or not to pull a handline if that ladder arrives first. The decision is not clear-cut and requires careful consideration of the quickly evolving situation.

As progressive officers and firefighters, we are conditioned to go right to work and to put out the fire. We know the best chance for victim survival and preservation of property is to extinguish the fire. The solution may not be that simple, though (photo 1).

1 Ladder 10 arrived first on the scene of a residential fire while Engine 10 was tied up on a medical call. They elected to pull handlines because of time and distance of the next-in engine. (Photos by Rayford Smith.)

In National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1901, Standard for Automotive Fire Apparatus, the design of a quint essentially allows us to package an aerial device and an engine into one apparatus. The combination of an aerial ladder, ground ladders, hose, and water can be a major advantage to departments facing limited staffing and budget. The debate here, though, is not about the effectiveness of quints in a fleet or the total quint concept; rather, it revolves around the decisions faced when arriving first on scene as a ladder that has a pump and water. In the context of this question, references to “ladders” in this article assume they have a pump and a small supply of water onboard. While pulling a handline and putting water on the fire might seem like the first choice, let’s consider the alternatives. There are many reasons a ladder arriving first on scene should look to avoid pulling handlines if engines are responding. We will review when and where a ladder should and shouldn’t pull attack handlines.

Ladders Play an Important Role

In most departments, there are clear and direct procedures and operations for ladders (not considering the fire pump and the tank) when they arrive at a fire. They usually include forcible entry, search and rescue, ground ladders, ventilation,