Are You Ready for the Floods?

Agencies must preplan for dynamic water incidents

By James M. Chinn

Moving water kills more Americans every year than fires, with floods occurring in all 50 states and all the Canadian provinces. As nearly 20% of all non-federal land is considered flood plain, and over 10,000 major communities are located within flood plains, the chance of your agency handling a water rescue is high. Statistically, swift-water rescues are 400% more dangerous than any other kind of rescue, including structural firefighting and urban search and rescue, so you need to have well-trained personnel responding with comprehensive preplans in place.

Assessing Training Needs

How do you determine if your agency is ready? First, you must find out if you have a problem. Remember, even deserts flood from time to time. The best way to determine if flooding could be a problem is to talk to older members of your department. Find out if local history tells of past flooding events. Take a trip to the records department of your local county or city government offices. Local libraries have old newspapers you can use to help you research past incidents. If you identify known problems, you should develop an action plan.

Preplanning is Key

An effective preplan is composed of four elements:

Training: It is imperative that personnel are trained in water rescue, especially swift-water rescue techniques. If you don't have instructors within your department, look to outside agencies with the reputation and skills necessary to provide quality training. You may need to send your personnel to other areas to receive proper training. As some companies offer boat-based rescue courses, look into every option to find the one that best suits your needs. Don't be afraid to ask for more information from training schools. Courses are usually expensive--you should get your money's worth. Be sure to request a written outline or a video of the training.
Below are some of the different levels of training available:
- First Responder Level--This level is highly recommended for all personnel as it offers training in self-rescue techniques that may save lives if rescuers are accidentally pulled into the water or fall in while attempting a rescue.
- Technician Level--This level trains personnel in the rescue of fellow team members and victims.
- Command Level--This level teaches command officers what their personnel have been trained in and allows them to conduct a proper hazard assessment and initiate a safe rescue.
Appropriate training teaches you how to perform a hazard risk assessment when approaching a water-rescue incident. Do not rush into an incident the same way you would a house fire. Once you've entered the danger zone, you are at the mercy of the water. During your assessment you need to look at the big picture. What happens if I do nothing? Has the rain stopped? Are the waters receding or rising? Do I have all my safety systems in place? You need downstream and upstream spotters to warn personnel engaged in rescue operations of any obstacles coming down the river which may have a severe impact on rescuer safety. These incidents, whether it's just a car stalled in a flooded roadway, or an entire city flooded, take time, equipment and personnel.
Staffing: Most flood incidents require a multitude of personnel to mitigate the situation. Unless you are from a large city department, you should have mutual-aid agreements signed and units ready for deployment. Details should be worked out in advance. Find out what assets these departments can offer. What will they show up with? Can they work 24-hour shifts for as long as needed, or will they show up with a rubber raft and two people? You need to train with these departments. Make sure they are not just patch hogs--you know the type--they attend one training class and sew the patch on their uniform, yet never practice what they learned.
As well as arranging mutual-aid plans, you should also consider how you will relieve and rotate your own crews. Experience on urban search and rescue missions shows that if you don't order your personnel to take breaks, rest, eat and rehydrate, they won't. As long as there is work to do or people to help, rescue personnel will give 110%. However, on long-term incidents, people can run themselves into the ground and become useless after several hours. Preplanning allows you to establish provisions to properly feed and rest your personnel.
Equipment: When an incident occurs, you need to have methods of acquiring equipment to match your needs. You will require boats, personal flotation devices, rope throw bags and rope gear in multiple quantities. During preplanning, establish agreements with local retailers so that your resource management or purchasing department can purchase equipment and have it immediately delivered on site. Include in your preplans a list of the equipment that surrounding jurisdictions have on hand so that when you call for mutual aid you know what equipment they will show up with.
Make agreements ahead of time with local military, coast guard and police departments so you have access to helicopters. Find out their rescue capabilities. Do they carry Billy Pugh nets? Do they have jungle penetrators? Do they have a winch or a way to perform short hauls? Are they able to train for rescue incidents? If they don't train for rescue on a regular basis, the chances are that you don't want them assisting you.
The onus is also on you to train with these agencies. Many helicopter crews will not perform hoisting evolutions with you unless you train ahead of time. Remember that anything on the cable in a hoisting operation is considered "jettisonable cargo" so only use these techniques in emergency situations. It may look cool to be hanging from a basket or seat below the helicopter, but even you can be cut loose if aircraft personnel feel they are in danger.
An essential piece of equipment is a map. You should know what the area looked like before the flood. Topographical maps help you see the layout of the land with elevations. They identify low-lying areas and valleys, which may need to be prioritized for evacuation purposes. You may need to have an aerial reconnaissance team look at trouble areas and identify upstream and downstream problems that will affect your rescue efforts. As these incidents take time, you may need access to evacuation shelters.
Incident Management System (IMS): A strong IMS is essential to success. We use IMS on every incident in our department. If your personnel are trained to use IMS, and have the discipline to make it work, it becomes second nature. If you don't currently have a system in place, look at how larger fire and rescue departments in your area conduct IMS. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. There are many systems out there and they work.
You will also need to establish a personnel accountability system. This allows the incident commander to account for all of the personnel assigned at any given time during the incident. If you are part of a fire department, it is not only a good idea to have these systems, but it is mandated by the National Fire Protection Agency. Commanding a flood incident is different from running a fire or medical emergency. These are dynamic incidents. We can't always "take a lap" as when doing a primary size-up on a fire. You can't always see the other side. Your hazard risk assessment must be completed, but it may take some doing. You may have to rely on your preplans.

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Develop SOPs in concert with your training sessions. Identify different tasks and goals that you want your team to accomplish. Outline how you want the incident managed. You need to have a stern set of rules for company officers to follow, but they should not be too confining that personnel can't make judgment calls. As you know, you can't come up with viable solutions to every incident ahead of time. You must provide your officers with tools to work with the training to accomplish these tasks, but also the leeway to make appropriate decisions in emergency situations. The following rules should be in place in your SOPs:

Anyone working within 10 feet of the water must wear a personal flotation device (PFD) and water rescue helmet.
Most injuries occur within ten feet of the water when people slip on rocks or mud banks and are pulled into the water. A PFD offers both flotation and protection against falls.
Don't tie a rope around any rescuer who is going into the water.
Be aware that tradition kills. Many people feel the need to attach a rope to someone they are sending into the water because they don't want to lose them. However, the danger is not in losing them as much as drowning them. Many rescuers have died at the end of a rope.

If you are a swift-water rescue technician, you will recognize many of these as the "absolutes of water rescue." Don't reinvent the wheel. This information is out there, so use it. SOPs are rules born out of other peoples' mistakes for your benefit.

James M. Chinn is a 24-year veteran with the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department. He is currently the Station Commander at the Gunston Fire Station. Capt. Chinn is a Swift-water Rescue Instructor for Rescue 3 International and is responsible for developing the county's swift-water rescue team which won the Higgins Langley award in 1996. He is also the Department's coordinator for all water rescue training. He serves as a team manager for the Department's Urban Search and Rescue Team and has been deployed to incidents such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the US Embassy bombing in Nairobi Kenya.

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