Rear-Roof Fire, Two-Person Engine, and a 600-Foot Gravel Drive
At 02:14 you arrive first-due on a 1,000-square-foot single-story wood-frame dwelling with a 40-year-old roof assembly. Fire is through the roof over the rear third of the structure. A neighbor states an elderly occupant sleeps in the front bedroom. You are riding a two-person engine with 750 gallons on board. The nearest hydrant is 600 feet down a narrow gravel driveway that will not support a turnaround for the second-due engine, which is eight minutes out. A 2,000-gallon tanker is 12 minutes out. Ambient temperature is 22°F, and a light breeze moves from the rear of the house toward the street. Two police officers are holding back a crowd of about 20 people.
1. What line size do you pull, and where does it go? Support the choice with the water you actually have on the apparatus.
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Start with the arithmetic, not the habit. A 1¾-inch line with a 15/16-inch smooth-bore tip at 50 psi flows about 185 gpm. Your 750-gallon tank lasts roughly four minutes at that rate before you count the water used to fill the line and any brief bursts - call it three and a half minutes of useful attack time.
That does not mean skip the line. It means the line must be treated as a holding action while supply is established. Pull the 1¾-inch to the front door: the fire is at the rear, the reported victim is at the front, and a mobile line protects the search and the egress path. A 2½-inch line off a two-person crew cannot be advanced through a dwelling at speed and would empty the tank in under two minutes. Do not commit deep to the rear. Set the pump to tank water, have the driver prepare a 3-inch or 5-inch supply lay, and put a 2½-inch or deck gun in service the moment the tanker or hydrant supply arrives.
2. Rescue or fire attack first? Walk through the decision rather than naming a priority.
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The answer turns on savability and on whether a protected path exists.
The fire is through the roof at the rear and well advanced; the occupant is reported in the front bedroom, on the opposite side of the structure. A closed front-bedroom door on the far side of the fire can hold a tenable space for a short time. So this is not a choice between two mutually exclusive actions - it is a sequencing problem.
Sequence: mask up, charge the line, take the line to the front door, and conduct a rapid primary of the front bedroom concurrently with the initial line advance. Do not send anyone past the fire to the rear. If the front door reveals fire behind it or the front bedroom is untenable, do not push through - apply a straight stream from the doorway to knock down the ceiling-level fire, then enter. If the roof fire has dropped into the attic and the front ceiling is spongy or the smoke is banking down fast, the rescue becomes a vent-enter-search from a front window with a ladder, not an interior push. With two people, one stays on the pump and the door; no one works alone.
3. What do you tell the second-due engine before it arrives, and why does the driveway change the message?
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Tell it three things: do not come up the driveway, lay supply from the hydrant to the street, and be ready to feed a tanker shuttle.
The driveway is 600 feet of narrow gravel with no turnaround. An engine that commits to it cannot easily back out, and a stalled or stuck engine converts your only water source into a blockage. It also parks on top of the route a 2,000-gallon tanker needs.
So the message is: "Second engine, lay in from the hydrant at the road to the intersection - do not enter the driveway. Tanker, dump site at the road." Then request additional tankers and a tanker-fill site. Also tell command that the initial attack is on tank water only, so the interior crew knows their supply clock. Radio the flow plan before the apparatus arrives, not after it is stuck.