(FFCC’s NOTE: How many times have all of us been dispatched to what sounds like a BS run? Countless. The middle of the night-tones go off -we groan-and respond. When we arrive… jeez… “it’s a tree fire” and we do what we have to without major concern…and then GRAVITY kicks in. LOOKING at the big picture and thinking…”where is the fire?… where was the fire?… and due to that-what COULD go wrong due to the damage OF the fire? ” is a good start. It is too easy for us to get “caught” on what we perceive to be a “routine” run… looking at THE BIG PICTURE and thinking about WHAT CAN GO WRONG HERE is all of our jobs.)
My engine company was called out to extinguish a tree fire in the middle of the night. Upon our arrival we indeed found a large oak tree involved in fire from bottom to top. As we stretched our trash line to extinguish the fire i stood about 15 ft. From the 50 ft tall tree and awaited water. As the line was charged and i opened the nozzle i looked up and the whole top of the tree was coming at me. I dove out of the way so fast i did not even close the nozzle. The impact of the burning tree burst our hoseline and sheared the bail off the nozzle. I was lucky on this incident, but also complacent. The collapse zone is not only for buildings!