Proactive Rescue Operations

Follow us Firefighter Mayday Survey

We can take this data in a lot of different directions for conversation, and I understand that every department has different staffing models, response plans, and available resources.

With that being said, 34.9% of the reported incidents had NO formal RIT established prior to the Mayday.

But here is the bigger question:

What can your RIT actually accomplish with the staffing you give them?

Two firefighters may be able to start solving the problem, but firefighter rescue is labor intensive. Locating the FID, managing an air emergency, moving them through obstacles, forcing doors, raising ladders, providing water protection, and physically removing a firefighter can eat up people quickly.

This is also why I believe everyone on the fireground should have some level of firefighter survival and RIT training. Not every department has the luxury of a lot of manpower, and the Mayday may happen very early in the incident before a formal RIT is even established.

Having a RIT assignment on the board is not the same thing as having a capable rescue resource ready to go. Do not use RIT as a check the box assignment for your command board.

How many firefighters does your department assign to the initial RIT? And if that team gets deployed, how quickly can you replace or reinforce them? Do you have a plan?

These are decisions we need to make before the Mayday, not during or after it.

If you or someone you know has been involved in a firefighter-in-distress incident during a structure fire, please complete the Firefighter Mayday Survey.

www.FirefighterMaydaySurvey.com

Source: First 100 Report, page 71.

Ladies and Gents,

I present to you, the graduates OBT 12!

Well earned!

# HoldTheStandard

We’re five days out from OBT 12 in Estero, Florida.

I hope everyone selected has been putting in the work and preparing. But at the end of the day, you shouldn’t be preparing just because you have a class coming up. You should be preparing every day for the job!

This should be the mindset we ALL have. This should be the standard we hold ourselves and our crews to all the time, not just when there’s a class or test coming up!

The class is just another opportunity to find out where you’re at, training with likeminded Firemen and learn some skills under pressure.

Looking forward to kicking off OBT season.

Come and earn it.

Bassel Ibrahim

We are BACK! Pretty damn excited to be heading back to FDIC in 2027.

I’m extremely thankful for the opportunity to once again teach, train, and more importantly, learn next to some of the best firemen and instructors in the country.

This year we were fortunate enough to have two classes selected.

Live Fire: Operation Mayday
8-Hour HOT

and

One Bad Day: The Proactive Mindset
Classroom Session.
(Last year, this session sold out extremely fast. So don’t wait, and get signed up!)

FDIC has always been special to me. There’s nothing like getting firefighters from all over the country together who genuinely want to get better at the job.

Last year was an incredible experience, and I’m grateful they’re giving us the opportunity to come back and do it again on the big stage.
Thank you Diane Feldman Rothschild, Chief David Rhodes, Dana Sica Kubicko and to everyone else on the board for giving us another opportunity to Hold The Standard at the Big Show.

April 2027. Indianapolis. SEE YOU THERE!

42.7% of the incidents in the First 100 Report were not formally reported.

That is a big number.

If we are not documenting these incidents, how are we supposed to learn from them?

Maydays, near misses, firefighter injuries, disorientation, collapses, falls, air emergencies, all of it matters. Not just the incidents with the worst outcomes.

Formal reporting should not be about blame. It should be about capturing what happened so the rest of us can learn from it.

So the question is simple:

Does your department have a clear process for reporting firefighter-in-distress incidents and near misses?

And are your members actually using it?

If you or someone you know has been involved in a firefighter-in-distress incident during a structure fire, please complete the Firefighter Mayday Survey.

www.FirefighterMaydaySurvey.com

Source: First 100 Report, page 11.
Bassel Ibrahim

65.8% of FIDs were located within 20 feet of the egress used to remove them.

At first glance, 20 feet does not sound like much. But anyone who has operated in zero visibility, high heat, tight hallways, around furniture, stairs, hose lines, or debris knows that 20 feet can become a long way when you are trying to move a downed firefighter.

30.3% were within 1 to 10 feet.
35.5% were within 11 to 20 feet.
14.5% were within 21 to 30 feet.
And the remaining FIDs were located farther out.

Here is another good question for you:

What is your decision point for packaging the FID versus simply grabbing them and going?

If the firefighter is only 10 or 20 feet from an egress, are we spending valuable time packaging them when we could already be moving?

Well… it depends.

There are obviously situations where packaging, securing the firefighter, or addressing an air issue before movement may be necessary. That decision is going to depend on the firefighter’s condition, the environment, the obstacles between you and the exit, how far you actually have to move them, and most importantly, your training.

This is another reason why firefighter extraction training needs to be realistic. We should be moving live firefighters through real spaces, not just dragging a mannequin across an open apparatus bay floor.

What does your department use for firefighter extraction training? Tight hallways? Stairs? Windows? Entanglement? Low-profile spaces? Hoarder conditions?

If you or someone you know has been involved in a firefighter-in-distress incident during a structure fire, please complete the Firefighter Mayday Survey.

www.FirefighterMaydaySurvey.com

Source: First 100 Report, page 98.

That number is ridiculous!!! More than half of the Incident Commanders did not have specific training on this! That is unacceptable..
If your department does not provide that type of training, go get it somewhere else. There are classes, conferences, instructors, and outside resources everywhere. You do not have to wait for your agency to hand it to you.

When a Mayday gets transmitted, the Incident Commander is now managing two problems at the same time. You still have the original fire to deal with, and now you have one of your own in trouble inside the building.

That takes more than knowing the SOPs. It takes reps. And not just comfortable tabletop reps. It needs to be practiced under stress.

How are you going to manage the Mayday?
Who is running the rescue?
Who is tracking the FID’s last known location, and how?
Who is handling accountability?
When do you send additional RIT resources?
When do you strike another alarm?
How do you expand command without losing control of the original incident?

And that is just scratching the surface.

In my opinion, there are four things the Incident Commander should constantly be training on for a Mayday or FID incident.

I am not a huge acronym guy, but for this one I use RSSS:

Receive the Mayday
Solicit information
Send resources
Scale the command structure

Those decisions cannot be getting figured out for the first time when one of your people is actually in trouble.

We spend a lot of time training the firefighter on survival and training the RIT crew on rescue. We better be putting the same effort into training the person sitting in the command post managing the entire thing.

Does your department provide specific Mayday-management training for company officers and chief officers? And how often are your command officers actually put through realistic Mayday scenarios?

If you or someone you know has been involved in a firefighter-in-distress incident during a structure fire, please complete the Firefighter Mayday Survey.

www.FirefighterMaydaySurvey.com

Source: First 100 Report, page 112.

10 new Firefighter In Distress incidents since the beginning of September.

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve recorded an average of 1 Mayday/FID incident every 5 days.

If you were involved in one of these incidents, or know someone who was, please have them take a few minutes and complete the survey.
If you know of an incident that we missed, please let us know!

Every incident gives us another opportunity to learn from what is actually happening on the fireground.

If you were there, we want to hear from you.

FirefighterMaydaySurvey.com

Only validated submissions will be added to the official reports.