Three Simultaneous Calls With Two ALS Resources
15:40, four minutes into a busy shift, three calls land nearly at once. (1) Smoke showing from a second-story window at 1218 Mariposa; the caller says a family of four may still be inside. (2) A grocery store two blocks from Mariposa reports a 68-year-old man who is conscious but not breathing normally, gray around the mouth. (3) A two-car collision on Highway 12 at the 5th Street on-ramp; one lane blocked, both drivers out and walking, one complains of neck pain. Available: Engine 1 (ALS) is 2.5 miles from the fire; Engine 2 (BLS) is 1.0 mile from the grocery; Medic 3 (ALS) is 0.8 mile from the crash and 3.2 miles from the grocery; Medic 4 (ALS) is 4 miles from the grocery and 6 miles from the crash; Battalion 1 is in quarters. Engine 3 is out of service at training. Two PD units are 3–4 minutes from the fire.
1. Assign the initial alarm and each unit, and explain the matching logic.
Read the worked answer
Fire (1218 Mariposa): Engine 1 + Battalion 1, and request the next alarm level / mutual aid immediately, before first arrival. Reported occupants trapped is the single highest-consequence fact on the board, and the only engine available will be committed to rescue or attack the moment it arrives - waiting for a size-up to call for help costs 5–8 minutes you do not have.
Grocery (respiratory distress): Engine 2 (BLS, 1.0 mile) as first-out for oxygen, AED, and airway positioning, plus Medic 4 (ALS) for the transport and advanced care. The patient is peri-arrest by description, and the earliest possible hands on him matter more than the earliest possible paramedic.
Crash (Highway 12): Medic 3 - it is the closest ALS unit and the patients are ambulatory, so it will likely be a short, releasable call. Add PD or CHP for lane control.
Logic: match the scarcest resource (ALS) to the highest-acuity medical need, and do not strip the fire assignment to solve a medical problem. The crash looks urgent because it is a highway, but two walking patients with one neck complaint is the lowest-acuity of the three.
2. The collision caller is still on the line and talking fast. How do you process that call without dropping it or blocking the fire traffic?
Read the worked answer
Process it to a dispatchable state, then close it - do not let it sit open on your screen because the fire is louder.
Capture: exact direction and lane, number of vehicles, number of people, who is still inside a vehicle, whether the cars are in a travel lane or on the shoulder, whether anyone is bleeding heavily or unconscious, and whether the caller is in a vehicle in the lane (that is its own hazard).
Advise: hazards on, move behind the barrier if it is safe, do not stand between the cars. Do not ask them to move an injured person.
Close it out: tell them a unit is assigned and give a realistic expectation, take a callback, release the line.
Radio discipline: put the fire on its own talkgroup or channel so fireground traffic does not collide with the medical channel. Announce the working assignment on the main channel once, in a fixed order (address, units, channel), and keep the fire channel clear for the first-arriving engine. If your console lets you, flag the collision as 'caller released, callback on file' so the responding medic knows there is no one on the line.
3. Engine 1 arrives and reports: 'Working fire, second floor, one occupant at a window.' How does your plan change, and what do you do about the grocery assignment?
Read the worked answer
Confirm and escalate. One occupant at a window converts this from a possible rescue to an active rescue. Confirm the second alarm is en route, give Engine 1 the rescue report, and start a medical branch for the occupant who will be coming out - that patient needs an ALS ambulance that is not currently assigned. Request a move-up engine to cover the now-empty district.
Leave Engine 2 and Medic 4 on the grocery call. Pulling a BLS engine off a peri-arrest patient to stand by at a fire that already has a full assignment trades a certain emergency for a possible one. If the grocery patient arrests, Engine 2 is the only thing that can start compressions before Medic 4 arrives.
What to watch: if Engine 2 reports the grocery patient is a working arrest and needs a second set of hands, that is the moment to ask the battalion chief whether an ambulance can be released from staging - do not make that trade silently.
Narrate the trade-off in your CAD notes and to the chief: what you moved, what you deliberately did not move, and why. Resource decisions that are not documented get reconstructed badly later.