By Janelle Foskett
Associate Editor, FireRescue Magazine and Wildland Firefighter

Tim Sendelbach, chief of training for Savannah (Ga.) Fire and Emergency Services, delivered another energetic presentation addressing the effectiveness of “objective-based assignments,” and how they enhance safety on the fireground. The class focused on the some of the most common issues in the fire service: fireground command and control, RIT operations, accountability, fireground benchmarking, communications and air management. Sendelbach hammered home the main point: All these issues can be better managed if you employ a systematic approach to your operations. “You need a plan at the front end,” he explains. “If you don’t take a systematic approach to your operations, everyone ends up doing the same thing, and the job doesn’t get done. You can’t have everyone on the nozzle. We have to do all our jobs.”

Using an objective-based approach starts with identifying your strategic, tactical and enabling fireground objectives. Specifically, strategic fireground objectives identify the overall goal of the operations, such as life safety and property ; tactical operations involve most specific unit requirements and task; finally, enabling objectives include the specific individual tasks that must be accomplished. Especially with the enabling objectives, you can break the incident into digestible bits so you’re not putting your firefighters at risk. Otherwise, the incident feels overwhelming as too many people try to do too many tasks. Sendelbach notes that this often leads to fatigue-stressed firefighters at risk of heart attacks.

To counter this, Sendelbach emphasized standardizing each unit’s priorities so everyone knows what they’re doing when they arrive on scene. He presented a matrix that departments could use to determine the responsibilities of each arriving unit. For example, the first-arriving unit would likely take command, make an initial interior fire attack and determine if rescue operations are necessary.

Another important part of objective-based strategy and tactics is tactical communications. Essentially, you must provide a standardized information report to the incident commander so he or she knows exactly what is happening on the fireground. The report must describe three things: the interior/exterior conditions so the IC has a mental picture of the scene; the actions underway; and what else is needed to accomplish the task at hand. This can be summed up as CAN: Conditions, Actions, Needs. If you do all this, you’ve got a much more organized process for your incident, and you can more easily determine what your immediate needs are.

During the interactive session, Sendelbach showed photos of fire incidents and asked attendees to explain how they would approach the fire, incorporating objective-based tactics. Their answers sparked friendly debate and created a lively, positive interaction.

Chris Miller with Florence (Ky.) Fire & EMS thought the class was “excellent.” He noted that he likes to attend classes that don’t just go over the same stuff over and over. “There are few people who make you really re-think what we do; Tim’s doing just that.”