What’s in your pockets?

What’s in your pockets?

This is just a quick look at some helpful items to carry in your pockets, or with you, when riding on the engine company.

Door chocks are a must! If your stretching a line and you go through a door, it’s your responsibility to make sure that door gets chocked open. Don’t count on the guy behind you assisting with the stretch to do it. Don’t count on your officer to do it. Don’t count on one of the truckers coming in for a search to do it. You stretch the line, you chock the door, plain and simple. If you’ve noticed that you’re having problems with your chocks not staying in the door if you wedge it at the bottom, on the floor, then try a different spot. Try the top of the door, try getting your wedge in above the hinge. A while back in one of the trade magazines, a department out west did a short story on a new idea they had for wedges. They made their standard wedges, but then in the middle they cut out a notch, around 1 1/2 to 2” wide. The point of this was so that you could take the wedge and set it over the hinge. This keeps the door propped open and also keeps the wedge where it’s supposed to be. It doesn’t have a tendency to fall out and you can have someone come along and push that door open and it will close back only until it hits the hinge because the hinge wont fall out.

If you don’t have any hinges then carry some nails, either in a pocket or in a band around your helmet. Pull a nail out, put the pointed end in the door, the head pointed towards the frame and give a good tug on the door, setting the nail into it. If you’ve done it right the door will be propped open and you can push that door open all you want without the nail falling out.

Another good piece of equipment to keep is some webbing. If nothing else carry a short section which you can use for tying off your line if your stretching into a building from the outside or doing a well hole stretch. A short 3’ or so section of webbing will work great. Throw a quick loop around the line and tie it off to something substantial before you charge the line.

It also comes in handy to carry a longer section of webbing. Personally I carry a 20’ section that has been folded in half and tied with a water knot, essentially creating a 10’ section. I can use this to wrap around a 2 ½” line and then put over my shoulder to assist with advancing that line. I can also use it if we come across a victim or it’s needed to assist with removing one of our own members.

As an officer if your going into the building to do a recon for the best route to stretch the line, or confirm the location of the fire, what have you, take a small bag of rope with you. If you find that you have wrap around stairs or think that it might be easier to haul the line up the outside of the building, you’ll already be one step ahead of the game. Hopefully your crew will have some sections of line off and be ready to deploy it once getting the word from you. You can now simply drop the hook and rope to them to tie onto the hose and you can hoist while one of your members is making his/her way up to your location to start the attack.

These are just a few simple suggestions for some tools to keep with you when riding on the engine that hopefully will make your job a little easier to complete.