Filling the breathing apparatus crew at 21:40
ComCen is filling the breathing apparatus crew for a house fire at 21:40. The appliance seats six: one driver and up to five BA wearers. Brigade rules in force:
- Anyone riding as a BA wearer must hold a current BA medical clearance.
- Each BA team of two must include at least one member holding the team leader ticket.
- No member may be rostered beyond 16 hours operational duty in any 24-hour period.
- A driver must hold a Class 2 licence and have had at least 8 hours off duty in the previous 24 hours.
Who is at the station tonight:
- Ben: BA wearer, team leader, 4 h duty, Class 2 licence.
- Kiri: BA wearer, team leader, 2 h duty.
- Mere: BA wearer, team leader, 12 h duty.
- Tama: BA wearer, no team leader ticket, 8 h duty.
- Ana: BA wearer, team leader, 15 h 30 min duty.
- Hine: BA wearer, 17 h duty.
- Liam: BA wearer, team leader, BA medical clearance expired last month.
- Josh: not BA trained, Class 2 licence, 6 h duty, 9 hours off in the previous 24.
Two BA teams are required: two entry and two standby.
1. Who rides, in what role, and why is each other person excluded?
Read the worked answer
Work each rule across the list before choosing anyone.
Eligible BA wearers: Ben, Kiri, Mere and Tama - exactly four, which is exactly what two teams of two require.
Exclusions:
- Ana: 15 h 30 min duty leaves 30 minutes before the 16-hour limit. She is technically not yet barred, but a house fire will run well past 30 minutes, so rostering her would breach the limit within the first half hour. Exclude.
- Hine: 17 hours already exceeds the 16-hour limit. Exclude, and flag it - someone rostered her past the limit and that needs a fatigue report, not just a quiet omission tonight.
- Liam: no current BA medical clearance, so he cannot ride as a BA wearer regardless of experience. Exclude unless a non-BA task exists for him.
- Josh: not BA trained, so he is not a BA wearer, but he holds a Class 2 licence and has had 9 hours off, meeting the driver minimum. He drives.
Crew: Josh driving, plus Ben, Kiri, Mere and Tama as the four BA wearers - five of six seats.
2. How do you pair the four BA wearers into entry and standby teams, and how do you justify the pairing?
Read the worked answer
Both teams must contain a team leader, so the three leaders (Ben, Kiri, Mere) and the single non-leader (Tama) have to be split 1 + 1 and 1 + 1, with one leader in each pair. Any arrangement meets the letter of the rule; the choice should be made on who can rescue whom.
A defensible arrangement:
- Entry: Kiri (leader) with Tama.
- Standby: Ben (leader) with Mere.
The reasoning is that the standby team is the rescue team. If the entry team gets into difficulty, the standby pair goes in after them, so the standby team should be at least as capable as the entry team - not the pair you assembled from whoever was left. Putting two team leaders on standby and pairing the least experienced wearer with a leader on entry gives both a well-supervised entry and a strong rescue capability.
State the reasoning out loud when briefing: crews follow instructions better when they know the standby pair is a deliberate choice rather than an afterthought.
3. Mere says she feels fine and offers to do another four hours. What do you decide?
Read the worked answer
Take the offer seriously but do not build the plan on it. Mere is at 12 hours, so four more takes her to 16 - the limit exactly, with no allowance for the fire running long, the drive home, or the debrief. A house fire at 21:40 can easily run past four hours, and once she is committed inside a structure the practical options disappear.
Decision: keep her on the crew for now, but tell her the limit is 16 hours and she comes off at 15 hours or at the end of the fire, whichever is first, regardless of how she feels at the time. Fatigue is judged badly by the person experiencing it.
Then plan the relief in parallel: request through ComCen a relief crew or a neighbouring brigade for the next two hours so the handover is arranged before it is urgent, and identify who relieves her on the pump or the branch.
Also act on Josh: 9 hours off meets the 8-hour minimum but only just, and driving to a structural fire at night after a short turnaround is a risk worth naming to him. And submit the fatigue report for Hine's 17 hours - the roster, not Mere's goodwill, is the problem to fix.