Appliance cover and crewing under simultaneous incidents
You are the duty station officer at a station with one pump ladder (PL), one pump (P), one aerial ladder (AL) and one light rescue unit (LRU). On the day shift you have 22 operational staff: 6 qualified drivers, 3 BA instructors, 2 hazmat technicians, 4 aerial operators and 1 watch commander. Of the 22, two are on leave and one is on a promotion course and cannot ride. Station policy requires a minimum crew of 5 for the PL and P, 4 for the AL and 3 for the LRU. Every appliance must have at least one qualified driver. At 09:00 a structural fire is dispatched to a 12-storey building. At 09:04 a multiple-vehicle collision with a fuel spill is reported 4 km away. Your station target is to keep at least one pump and the AL available for a second concurrent call.
1. Calculate the available staff and test whether both incidents can be covered while keeping one pump and the AL available.
Read the worked answer
Available staff = 22 - 2 leave - 1 course = 19.
Minimum crewing for all four appliances = 5 + 5 + 4 + 3 = 17. That leaves only 2 spare, so the station is already tight before any incident.
To keep one pump and the AL available, I must hold back 5 + 4 = 9 staff. That leaves 19 - 9 = 10 staff to cover both incidents.
The structural fire needs at least a PL crew (5). If the AL is held back, the fire response is PL + P? The P crew is 5, so PL + P = 10, leaving nothing for the MVC. If only the PL goes to the fire (5), 5 staff remain; the LRU needs 3, so the MVC can be covered by the LRU, but then no pump is available.
Therefore the target cannot be met with 19 staff. The arithmetic shows a shortfall of at least 5 to 7 staff depending on the appliance mix. The options are mutual aid, recalling off-duty staff, or accepting that either the pump or the AL will not be available. The worst option is to under-crew an appliance and hide the gap.
2. Propose a response plan and justify it, including qualifications.
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A workable first response is:
- Structural fire: PL with 5, including one BA instructor; AL with 4, including one aerial operator. Total 9.
- Fuel spill MVC: LRU with 3, including one hazmat technician; P with 5, including a driver and a second BA instructor if available. Total 8.
That is 17 staff, leaving 2 spare. It covers both incidents, but it does not keep a pump and the AL available. To restore cover, I would request immediate mutual aid from the neighbouring station for one pump and keep the AL commitment under review: if the 12-storey fire is confirmed as a flat fire with no external rescue need, the AL can be released earlier.
The qualifications matter: the fire crew needs a BA instructor for breathing apparatus control; the MVC needs a hazmat technician for the fuel spill; the AL needs an aerial operator. With 3 BA instructors, 2 hazmat technicians and 4 aerial operators available, the plan is feasible, but the hazmat technician and one BA instructor become single points of failure. Control should be told the exact crewing and the cover gap.
3. If only one hazmat technician and one BA instructor are available at the same time, what is the risk and how do you mitigate it?
Read the worked answer
The risk is a single point of qualification failure. If the only hazmat technician is committed to the fuel spill, a second hazmat incident has no specialist; if the only BA instructor is committed to the fire, a second fire or a BA emergency has no instructor to control entry, log runners or authorise emergency procedures. The incident commander may be forced to choose between delaying a rescue and committing without specialist advice.
Mitigation:
- Allocate the hazmat technician to the fuel spill because that incident already involves a known hazardous material; keep the BA instructor at the fire because BA wearers are committed there.
- Request specialist mutual aid early, not after the gap becomes critical.
- Use a competent person as an interim BA control officer under the incident commander's authority, and record the deviation.
- Keep one appliance uncommitted if at all possible; if not, ask Control to move cover from another station.
- Brief both sector commanders on the single-point risk so that neither assumes specialist support is available.