By Sean Gray
After “Attack from the Burned Side Can Save Lives” was published in Fire Engineering in November 2011, a firestorm (no pun intended) of controversy ignited. The article was negatively criticized by the “Old School group” and was applauded by the “New School group.” Some folks told me, “We will just have to agree to disagree.” Well, that adage is fine if we’re discussing politics or religion in the firehouse. But when it comes to keeping firefighters safe and saving citizens’ property, I have a much more passionate opinion. I’m willing do the right thing, even if it means admitting that I have been doing it wrong for the past 20 years. Take a look back at where or from whom you gained your knowledge. It was probably from some old salty captain or chief you looked up to when you were a rookie. There is nothing wrong with that. All of us have had a mentor who took us under his wing. However, where or from whom did they get their knowledge? Probably from their mentors and their own experiences, and it continues to be a vicious cycle that is reflected in firefighter injuries and line-of-duty deaths LODDs. Is it possible that we have just been telling stories for all these years?
It has been said that the American fire service has 150 years of tradition that is unimpeded by progress. I’m tired of hearing this assessment because we’re better than that. It may be true that we are often not ready to change and that, unfortunately, it takes a death or a critical injury of a firefighter for someone to ask the question, “How could this have been prevented?”
With regard to attacking from the burned side instead of from the unburned side, we hear recent terminology like “softening the target,” “hitting it hard from the yard,” and “transitional attack.” Although all of these terms are appropriate, an argument could be made that an initial rapid exterior fire attack to knock down the bulk of the fire is actually an offensive tactic.
The interior attack doesn’t need an explanation because we’ve been doing it since the inception of the self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). However, most of us active in today’s fire service were not around when the attack from distance was used on a daily basis back in the 1960s-1970s. Firefighters then used the reach of the hose streams to attack the base of the fire.
Early in my career, I was sent to fill in for the day at the slowest station in the county. There were two old-timers less than six months from retirement, and we caught a fire. As we arrived, flames were showing from a window on the A/B corner. As I got off the apparatus and started to pull a cross-lay, the driver instead pulled a booster line and handed it over to the officer. He then proceeded to take the booster line, open up the fog nozzle, and throw it into the fire window. I was shocked and bewildered. He looked at me and said, “Okay, boy, go in there and finish it off now.” All I could think of was how wrong that was in comparison with what I had been taught in recruit school. Looking back on it now, it worked: The fire was knocked down quickly, and I can remember being disappointed because he had taken away the dark, hot, and smoky hallway I was looking forward to entering. Now that I’ve matured and learned that there is a safer and more efficient way to operate, I wish that I could go back and apologize to that officer for all the times that I told that story as if it were the worst tactic I had ever seen.
The Discussion
What is the definition of exterior attack? Is it an offensive or a defensive tactic? What if you were using an exterior attack in the offensive mode and pushing toward the fire? Would that be a transitional attack? This is a new tactic for the New Age fireground. One of the controversies being discussed is the exterior vs. the interior attack. A crucial part of the argument comes down to the possible victim and the pl