Aircraft Rescue, Extrication, and Survivor Support Operations
Life safety is the reason ARFF exists, and this domain tests entry, extrication, and how you move injured people from a wreck to definitive care.
Getting in
Approach upwind and uphill, stop outside the collapse and fuel zone, and establish a hot zone. Try doors first - external handles, then emergency power-assist if fitted. Then overwing exits and hatches, then marked break-in points, then planned breaching with a rotary saw, air chisel, or hydraulic tools. Never cut a fuselage blindly: control cables, hydraulic lines, fuel lines, and oxygen lines run behind the skin.
Slides and evacuation
Slides deploy from doors and, on some types, from the wing. They are certified for use in crosswinds up to about 25 knots with assistance at the sill, and survivors must be guided away from the base, away from fuel and fire, and told to move - people stop at the bottom of the slide. Cabin-crew certification assumes a 90-second evacuation; treat that as a planning assumption, not a guarantee.
Survivor support
Triage (START or similar) at a triage sector, treat in a treatment sector, and load at a transport sector. Expect smoke inhalation, carbon monoxide and cyanide exposure, burns, blunt trauma, and spinal injury; provide oxygen, control hemorrhage, keep survivors warm, and decontaminate before transport. Document who went where.
Worked example. Sixty survivors, four likely "immediate." Reasoning: triage at the wing exit, tag and move the four to treatment first, and hold transport requests until receiving hospitals are confirmed - not every patient goes to the nearest trauma center.
Traps. Cutting into a fuselage without checking for systems; letting survivors cluster at the slide base; skipping decontamination when fuel soaked the passengers.