Commercial Occupancy RIT / FAST & Firefighter Rescue​ Who Will You Choose? Commercial Fire Operations, you should have a (4) four-person RAPID INTERVENTION TEAM (RIT) / FIREFIGHTER ASSIST & SEARCH TEAM (FAST). This four-person team must be experienced and trained in Fireground Rescue Operations, including Firefighter Rescue.

The RIT / FAST needs of commercial occupancies differ from the residential ones. The chance of a successful Rescue in a commercial will/probably be more significant than residential if you study the last three decades of Line of Duty Death (LODD) reports from incidents occurring in these occupancies.

What is the difference? A Fire Behavior event in a residential occupancy is usually the primary cause of Firefighters needing Rescue. In contrast, a Building, or Air Supply event, is usually the primary cause of Firefighters needing Rescue.

If this makes you want to disagree or debate, that is Awesome. It means we both care and want to dive deeper into preparation for our worst day on the Fireground. Now the biggest question. Are you READY TO DO FIREFIGHTER TRIAGE? Who will you leave, and who will you take first?

I wrote an article on this topic years ago, and some people got furious or outraged. HARD DECISIONS REQUIRE SERIOUS THOUGHT way before the event ever happens. Prepare now, be ready for the most challenging decisions.

Sources of Power “Read It”

A publisher’s book summary is pasted below.

A modern classic about how people really make decisions: Drawing on prior experience, using a combination of intuition and analysis. Since its publication twenty years ago, Sources of Power has been enormously influential. The book has sold more than 50,000 copies, has been translated into six languages, has been cited in professional journals that range from Journal of Marketing Research to Journal of Nursing, and is mentioned by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink. Author Gary Klein has collaborated with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and served on a team that redesigned the White House Situation Room to support more effective decision making. The model of decision making Klein proposes in the book has been adopted in fields including law enforcement training and petrochemical plant operation. What is the ground-breaking new way to approach decision making described in this modern classic? 

We have all seen images of firefighters rescuing people from burning buildings and paramedics treating bombing victims. How do these individuals make the split-second decisions that save lives? Most studies of decision making, based on artificial tasks assigned in laboratory settings, view people as biased and unskilled. Klein proposes a naturalistic approach to decision making, which views people as gaining experience that enables them to use a combination of intuition and analysis to make decisions. To illustrate this approach, Klein tells stories of people – from pilots to chess masters – acting under such real-life constraints as time pressure, high stakes, personal responsibility, and shifting conditions.