Should a fast team have a seperate attack line

[Chance Buckman]

1) YES they should in case of a failure of the attack engine.

2) NO a line could be run from another unit quickly if needed

3) NO the fast team should not worry about having a line

4) Yes Have a secondary hose team standby with the fast team

[Forrest]

I'd say no to directly giving them one. The FAST team is for search & rescue of firefighter(s) in trouble. Do your regular interior search crews operate with their own hoseline? Probably not because it greatly inhibits their ability to conduct a rapid search. So why would you do something that would slow down your ability to quickly find that firefighter in trouble?

Now if you got that many people hanging out on scene not doing anything, I've got no problem with having a hose team assigned to support the FAST team.

[DoverLadder1]

I agree...a hoseline would slow down the FAST team and could prevent them from achieving their goal...rescuing a downed firefighter. if the fire condition is heavy enough or the officer of the FAST team feels they need a line in with them, have the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th etc. engine put a line in service and go in with the FAST.

[RyanEMVFD]

Depends on the size of the RIT crew. If it's two members then maybe not, but if it's four to six then yes. All across this nation team size varies from small to large, mostly from manpower or what not. It should also vary on the building. A perfect world there should be at least four members on RIT, but we're not in a perfect world but there's Walgreens.. :)

[Truckinainteasy]

Who has the back up line? Not the 2nd line to the exposure, not the 2nd line working the fire, Who has the back up line? If we still adhered to basic firefighting tactics there would be no need to ask this about the RIT cause the back up line would be in place.

[MG3610]

I say yes, conditionally. The intent of this hoseline is to protect the trapped ff's. You would want the other lines to maintain their ground and hold the fire, therefore having a seperate line would allow the engine crews to continue to fight the fire. Having just helped out teaching a RIT class a few months ago, it took every bit of 15 guys working in rotations to get a trapped and entangled "victim" up from a sub level (basement) through a hole and down a ladder. It is very manpower intensive. It wouldnt be unresonable to have 2 or 3 guys stretch a line in for the RIT position. The idea isnt to use the line as a search tool, that seems to be a misconception.

[Forrest]

I don't think we're all talking about the exact same thing here.

Should a handline be available and/or deployed for protection during a RIT rescue operation? YES.

Should the RIT team be the ones deploying this handline? NO.

The RIT team's responsibility is to locate and rescue the downed firefighter(s). As stated above and in many articles I've seen published on RIT, it is a very labor intensive operation that goes way beyond what most establish as an on scene RIT team. I totally agree with having a line available for protection during the rescue operation, but that is something that should be assigned to an Engine Company that is augmenting the RIT sector and not part of the actual RIT team.

If you need to put the RIT team into action, you'll need lots of experienced hands to work the problem. Why would you want to waste trained RIT personnel on a hand line instead of having them working on the rescue and using "regular" FF for that task?