Church of Search
Nick Ledin, Firefighter Rescue Survey

For more than 45 years the American fire service has been collecting data from our firegrounds. Unfortunately, most of this data focuses on, and thusly quantifies the negatives, i.e. estimated dollar loss, civilian injuries, civilian fatalities, firefighter injuries, and firefighter fatalities. This myopic perspective is limited in what it can tell us. To get a clearer view of our situation, we also need to collect data on our successes (rescues). Firefighter Rescue Survey was started nearly six years ago in an attempt to track who, when, and where we are rescuing civilians from fires. Since then, we have collected, collated, and calculated data from over 2,000 rescues (or 90,000 data points).  

We all know that “as the first line goes, so goes the fire”; although sometimes more importantly, “as the primary goes, so goes the victim”. This class will use data from thousands of actual fireground rescues to put us in the best position possible to locate viable victims. We will practice rescue and search skills that have demonstrated, time and again, fireground success. Specific skills covered will be: oriented search, split search, drags, engine-based searches, and coordinating search with attack and ventilation. We will then spend the afternoon reinforcing the importance of proper tempo and decision-making on the fireground using realistic, guided drills.

http://www.firefighterrescuesurvey.com/