Firefighting 101                                                         by:  Dan Howell

RECEO

During a fire incident, the officer-in-charge must use a thorough and on-going size-up to make the appropriate intervening decisions. These decisions must be based on the fundamental priorities of the fire service and they include life safety protection, incident stabilization and property conservation. These three basic priorities can be further broken down and remembered by the simple acronym, RECEO, which stands for: Rescue, Exposures, Confinement, Extinguishment and Overhaul. RECEO is a simple tool that can be used by the officer-in-charge to help organize the wealth of information obtained in size-up and to get the incident focused towards a safe and successful conclusion.

The most important priority of the fire service is life safety and is represented by the Rescue portion of RECEO. The first lives to be considered are those of the responding firefighters. Upon arrival on the scene, it must be quickly determined through size-up what actions can be performed safely by the firefighters. The fire scene must be constantly monitored for any hazards to firefighters. One of the most important hazards to be considered, is the location and condition of any utilities present such as electricity, oil tanks, propane tanks and gas lines. Any utilities present need to be accounted for very early in the incident to avoid the possibility of tragic surprises. One of the most common and easiest forgotten of utilities is electricity. If possible, power to the structure must be disconnected and the location of any downed power lines determined. Even if department policy prevents the pulling of meters, the absence or presence of power to the structure must be in the minds of firefighters and appropriate actions taken.

After the safety of firefighters has been ensured, the focus of the incident will then be on the lives of any victims trapped in the structure. This may be a difficult question to answer because the presence of trapped victims may not be immediately known. The firefighters may have to use clues given to them from size-up and the walk-around, such as occupancy, time of day, reports from neighbors, and vehicles present. Furthermore, the difficulty of answering the Rescue element of RECEO is compounded by incidents where victims are known to be present, but the firefighters have to concede that there is nothing they can do. With these points in mind, the priority of Rescue can be further organized by the acronym OUT, which stands for Our lives, Utilities, and Their lives. Rescue is the most important part of RECEO because it involves the lives of everyone on the scene. As a result, how it is answered, will play the greatest factor on how the incident is concluded.

Once the Rescue question is answered, the fire scene must be examined for any exposures. These exposures can include other buildings, vehicles, utilities and land where a brush fire could start. Therefore, the Exposure element is looking for the places the fire could spread outside the building of origin. This information should be revealed during the initial walk-around of the structure. It is important to consider the presence of any exposures because by limiting the fire to the original structure involved, firefighters will have accomplished a major step towards incident stabilization.

As the walk-around of the structure is completed, vital information regarding life safety and exposures will have been obtained. This information should also include information regarding the extent of the fire involvement and its location. At this point the officer-in-charge will be ready to consider the third priority which is fire Confinement. Confinement refers to protecting interior exposures by stopping the fire from spreading further in the structure involved. Interior exposures include uninvolved portions of the structure and more importantly, any trapped victims. There should now be enough information to determine basic fire ground strategy. The structure may be too heavily involved and hazardous to enter, demanding a defensive attack to protect exposures and firefighters. Instead, however, an aggressive attack may be ordered if the structure or any victims present can be safely saved.

With the above information available, the officer-in-charge will be ready to consider the fourth priority, which is Extinguishment. The goal of Extinguishment is to determine what is going to be necessary to knock down the fire. This includes determining what flow rate will be needed to accomplish this task. Extinguishment also involves estimating how long it will take to achieve knockdown. The longer it will take to knockdown the fire the more resources that will be needed. Extinguishment may very well be delayed if the fire has extended to a major incident and attention must be focused on life safety or exposure threats.

The final part of RECEO is Overhaul. Once the fire is knocked down, mopping up or Overhaul begins. This is often the most difficult and time-consuming part of the incident. Overhaul is labor and gpm intensive. It is very easy to lose patience and start to clean up the scene too quickly, but remember, if you don’t do it now, you will do it later. For these reasons there must be ample resources on the scene to allow for a systematic and thorough Overhaul. Therefore, the officer-in-charge must start planning for these needs very early in the incident.

By the time the initial size-up and walk-around are complete the officer-in-charge should have enough information to make proper decisions involving life safety, strategy, water supply, needed resources, ventilation and fire attack. It is easy for this huge amount of information to become overwhelming. RECEO can be used to help the officer-in-charge more effectively deal with this information. It may very well be possible to save lives, protect exposures and confine the fire by simply putting it out. However, this will not always be possible. Take a large industrial fire for example, it may be impossible to put it out, but it may be possible to confine to its current location inside the structure. Therefore, it is not the intent of RECEO to restrict the fire ground to a rigid order of operation, nor is it intended to sacrifice the safety of firefighters. It is simply a tool available to the officer-in-charge to prioritize and organize the information made available during size-up, bringing focus and direction to the chaos often associated with the fire scene.