Feature
The Incident Commander: A Prestigious, but Potentially Painful Proposition
We’ve spent the last year examining the Incident Management Organizational Structure.This structure includes Dr. David Greene the Command Staff (Safety Officer, Liaison Officer, and Public Information Officer) who keep the Incident Commander (IC) smart. We also examined the Incident Management General Staff (Operations Chief, Planning Chief, Logistics Chief, and Finance/Administration Chief) who keep the IC sane.This quarter, let’s examine the Incident Commander, which is a position that is frequently desired and sometimes despised. It is natural for members of the fire service to have a desire to promote.That desire often results in individuals wishing that they one day will be the IC at incidents. However, I have frequently written about how much easier it is to run into burning buildings than it is to command operations at burning buildings. Consider the IC at the Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Co. fire on December 3, 1999.The fire occurred in a 93-year-old abandoned building in Worcester, Massachusetts.The fire was started accidentally by two homeless
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people who were squatting in the building and had knocked over a candle. They left the scene without reporting the fire which allowed the fire to grow for 30 to 90 minutes until it was detected by a passing police officer. The building was a 46,000 square foot,
multi-floor labyrinth of connecting meat lockers with layers of polystyrene and polyurethane foam used as insulation. There were many dead-end corridors and rooms, only one staircase that extended from the basement to the roof, and very few windows throughout the structure. The owner arrived early in the fire and advised the IC that a homeless couple may be trapped inside.This caused firefighters to initiate an interior attack and search and rescue efforts. At that time, light smoke was present in the upper levels of the building which didn’t even compel the firefighters operating in the interior to don their masks. According to the IC, within a period of about “four seconds,” the smoke condition changed to the building being charged and filled completely with “black, hot, boiling smoke.”Approximately 33 minutes into operations, the crew of Rescue 1 reported that they were lost on the fourth floor and were running out of air.
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The crew of Ladder 2 began to search for the crew of Rescue 1 but become separated and lost.The crew of Engine 3 searched for the crew from Ladder 2 and although they eventually got together, the four-person search crew (Ladder 2/Engine 3) are unsuccessful at locating the crew from Rescue 1 and cannot find an egress path. Shortly after the fifth alarm was struck, the IC is forced to make a decision that I pray (a lot) that I will never have to make as an IC.The IC ordered a switch to defensive operations and no one else was permitted to enter the building.This decision was made while the IC knew there were six firefighters still missing and trapped in the building. I imagine that there were more than a few firefighters on the scene that wanted to continue search efforts for the missing firefighters. What I cannot imagine, and hope I never experience, is being the IC telling those firefighters that they cannot enter the building.The IC effectively decided that
Carolina Fire Rescue EMS Journal
