Residential high-rise SOP’s. Are they fit for purpose?

by Peter Stanley MA(ODE)BA Hons(Open),Cert Ed, MIFirE, MIfL

About the author: Peter Stanley retired from Kent Fire & Rescue Service in
2007, as acting Area Manager Training & Development, responsible for
learning and development for the services two thousand employees. After
retiring he established a training consultancy specialising in developing fire
commanders in incident command and functional command support, which
figures a significant number of UK fire and rescue services amongst its
clients.

The extreme level of hazard associated with dealing with high-rise

residential fires was brought sharply into focus within the UK service after
the events at Harrow Court in Stevenage in 2005, when two members of
the public and two fire fighters lost their lives, and more recently the
tragedy of the Camberwell fire in South London. Whilst it’s too early to
judge the impact on the operational response of what seems to be a highly
unusual fire spread at Camberwell, there is a wealth of material available
from the Harrow Court investigations. The unauthorised self deployment by
two fire fighters, their subsequent gallant attempts to rescue residents in
the fire compartment, all without adequate command and control and fire
fighting medium protection, is of course well known.

After Harrow Court, many UK fire and rescue services reviewed their
standard operating procedures (SOP’s) and introduced much stricter
preplanning requirements as well as prescriptive operational procedural
guidance, which understandably emphasised the requirement for charged
water supply being available before offensive operations commence. This
was a predictable and logical response from services but it has clearly had
the unintentional effect of increasing the time period between discovery
and the appearance of fire fighters in numbers, at height, to undertake fire
and rescue operations. Whilst this approach clearly seeks to ensure fire
fighters are protected as far as possible from risk, it does beg a question.
Have the UK fire and rescue services achieved a satisfactory balance
between delivering the outcomes the public expects in these extreme life
and death situations and the constraints of health and safety legislation?

It is relevant to identify three critical risk periods associated with residential

high rise fires:-

i) The first critical risk period is that of the occupants between

discovery of the fire and arrival of the first fire service attendance.
ii) The second risk period is between arrival of the first attendance and
the charging of the dry riser, which under most SOP’s, legitimises the
commencement of fire fighting and rescue operations and is
applicable to both occupants and fire fighters
iii) The third critical period is the time the service takes to build up a
satisfactory infrastructure to support operations at height, supplying
BA wearers, hose and equipment to the Bridgehead, resources to
operate in the Search sector and so on. Grimwood (2007) suggests
that a reactive response may take over thirty minutes to establish a
meaningful hose attack and conduct secondary searching in affected
compartment, during the second risk period, and over an hour to
have a fully functioning support structure in the third risk period.

By any criteria, the residents of the building in or above the affected

compartment should not be routinely subjected to a waiting time of thirty
minutes or more before any rescue attempt is made during the second
critical period. However for the fire fighters, as was the case at Harrow
Court, attempting rescues at height in that period, without effective
management of risk and fire fighting medium can be fatal. So how can such
a dichotomy be resolved? The first step may be to employ a balanced
standard operating procedure. By this I mean one which balances risk
against gain equally for all those involved and in proportion to their
circumstance-member of the public or professional fire fighter. Clearly their
exists an expectation from the general public that their fire service,
confident in the professionalism and discipline of its operational
commanders and fire fighters would in most circumstances undertake rapid
rescue deployment in response to a situation where residents are clearly
unacceptably at risk, direct the simultaneous implementation of a ‘stay
put’ strategy above and below the fire sector(employing the inherent
passive fire resistance of the building as it was intended), organize a long
term fully supported attack on the fire compartment using the building dry
riser and still comply with the requirements of current health and safety
legislation.

The two rapid deployment elements of a balanced standard operating

procedure undertaken with a parallel charging of the dry riser, resulting in a
fully supported attack on the fire compartment must be achieved within an
acceptable time frame to those members of the public who are at risk.
Routinely taking over an hour to build up a support structure should not be
accepted as an unavoidable outcome of a SOP. To achieve consistently
quicker time frame, the predetermined attendance to the building should be
heavily front-end loaded. The traditional approach of assigning three pumps
and aerial platform to a high rise residential risk is simply not appropriate.
There are not enough front end resources to be able to successfully and
speedily implement a balanced SOP. The traditional slow build up approach
to such incidents does not recognize the realities of the situation.

A balanced SOP must authorise junior commanders, after dynamic risk

assessment and under appropriate tactical control, to exercise freedom of
judgement to operate above the fire floor, accessed via the attack fire-
fighting shaft as part of a rapid deployment response in the second risk
period. The restraint on initiative, particularly in the search sector, imposed
by some of the SOP’s analysed, may be due as much to the effect of the
House of Lords judgement, Bermingham versus Sher Brothers(1980) as
anything else but clearly a key element of the successful operation of any
‘stay put’ strategy and particularly after the events at Camberwell, would
require a ‘boots on the ground’ response i.e. fire fighters quickly appearing
on the floors above and below the fire to reassure, direct and inform
residents.

Time should be recognized as the key and essential dynamic of pre-

planning and the ‘on the day’ operational response and the principle safety
factor is professional and consistent multi level decision making. As such
incident commanders and fire fighters need better equipment and a higher
degree of training to prepare them thoroughly for the challenge. The UK
service could mitigate any strategic and tactical anomalies with a dual
technology and training approach.

By this I mean:-

i) Commission the fire industry to produce portable high rise

extinguishing media that can be deployed very quickly to provide protection
for rapid deployment search teams when entering the fire compartment to
carry out immediate rescues, prior to the establishment of the dry riser
supply. For example a high pressure portable water or AFFF type
extinguisher, able to provide a series of short duration high pressure
suppression sprays into a compartment, to minimise the potential for
flashover and back draft should not be beyond the reach of modern
technology.

and

ii) Train key fire fighting teams, to a much higher standard in terms of
the chemistry and physics involved in high rise fires, ventilation at height
and in individual risk against gain decision making. They should be
innovative in balancing risk against gain in the fire and search sectors
whilst carrying out rapid deployment rescues and implementing the ‘stay
put’ strategy, in the crucial second risk period before the charging of the
dry riser. The practice of creating ‘safe havens by forcing entry into an
unaffected flat in the corridor on the fire floor, to enable fire fighters to
have somewhere to retreat into in an extreme situation’ Klaeme.B &
Sanders.R (2008) is an example of this type of innovation.

In conclusion, there is strategic risk to the service in continuing to

implement standard operating procedures, which seek to mitigate risk to
fire fighters to such an extent that an excessive period of inactivity
(certainly in terms of the general public’s perception) is observed in the fast
moving phase of a primary rescue and life saving situation. The subsequent
public approbation of the service is a predictable yet avoidable damaging
outcome. The recent experiences of the UK banking profession and
Members of Parliament are examples of how much damage can be done to
professions when a gulf between public expectation and outcome is
identified but not addressed.

Bibliography:

1. Grimwood. P (2009)’The first five minutes may dictate the next five
hours’ Fire Middle East, Issue 07 Mar/Apr09, Publications International Ltd
2. House of Lords Judgement UKHL 16 (1980)’Bermingham versus
Sher Brothers’[http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1980/]retrieved
14/07/2009]
3. Klaeme.B & Sanders.R(2008) ‘Structural Firefighting Second
Edition]NFSPA