How sure are you of your firefighters’ ability to head in the right direction if they have to exit during a fire?
As firefighters, we are expected to be prepared for anything an incident may throw at us. One of the small details that gets spoken about often in the larger context of self-rescue is the ability to read couplings so that we can confirm which direction we should be following a hoseline to reach the exit. While there have been some articles that have done a good job at addressing this specific point, they rarely if ever address the very real failings of the techniques we are all taught in academy and that we fall back on in an emergency. This has been a hot-button issue for me for the past year or so after doing an impromptu training drill with my crew. I repeated the drill with a variety of crews as opportunities arose; the results were surprising and disappointing. Having taken time to quiz my fellow firefighters, I’ve found this seems to be a widespread issue, from rookies to seasoned veterans. Flange Adaptor
We’ve learned a few different catchphrases to help me remember how to read a coupling properly, from “smooth-bump-bump leads to the pump,” “ the long lug leads out,” to “smooth—smooth sailing, rough—rough seas.” Regardless of how we were taught, time and stress can often lead us to misremember what we learned. I used this brief drill to help my coworkers determine whether their knowledge would get them out or leave them hanging:
I work with a few groups of amazing men and women, both career and volunteer firefighters, ranging widely in experience from probationary firefighters to seasoned vets. With this drill, I get a reasonably consistent mix of people who would safely exit and people who would be headed back to the nozzle, with no real correlation to their time on the job or general competency. Often they are incredulous that they have misremembered, and it leads to an interesting discussion on which group (it’s rarely a single firefighter who turns to go back toward the nozzle) read the brass correctly and which didn’t.
Immediately following the brief drill, I ask those who choose incorrectly how they remember which way they’re supposed to turn. They inevitably offer a tried-and-true mnemonic such as those mentioned previously. Given that they recalled a correct phrase, we try to determine what then, went wrong. Some simply remember the “bump-bump” of the longer phrase without the applied context of the “smooth,” and hence have no clear idea of which direction to face. Some firefighters use a mnemonic to identify which hand is holding the female coupling, and then possibly apply a misremembered concept, such as those mnemonics indicating that female couplings lead in the direction away from the fire. Generally, these members assume that since they are holding the connected female and male coupling in their hands, they turn the direction of the hand that was holding the female coupling. This same issue comes up with the phrase “smooth, smooth sailing.” If the smooth shank of the female coupling is in the firefighter’s left hand, and the single lugs of the male are in the right hand, the member turns toward the left hand, since that is where the “smooth sailing” should be. Likewise, if someone attempting self-rescue crawls up a line in the direction that person assumes will lead to the exit, but encounter the lugs then the shank, the innate expectation is that he or she has the requisite knowledge to accomplish the task. This may lead to confirmation bias, in which the firefighter might then determine that since he or she is moving in the direction the smooth shank is “pointed,” the member is obviously going the right way and in for “smooth sailing.”
I’ve also witnessed people “reading” the couplings with their gloved hands who spend an unnecessary amount of time identifying the two “bumps” since it’s “smooth-bump-bump,” or trying to identify the long lug of the male, because “long leads out.”
Given this litany of errors, I’ve personally started using and teaching the simplified phrase “smooth THEN bump leads to the pump.” The most important and seemingly least emphasized aspect of any of these memory aids is that we need to determine the sequence we should encounter the features of the couplings if we are truly following a hoseline out to the pump panel. If we encounter the smooth shank of the female followed by a bump, then we’re good to go. We don’t need to rely on whether we can tell if one lug is longer than the other while wearing bulky fire gloves, or whether we can distinguish two separate lugs that are separated by a small gap, in the instance that these might happen to be lined up with each other. We simply need to determine that if we follow the hose, would we encounter the smooth shank followed by the bump of a lug? Is it “smooth THEN bump”? If so, we’re headed in the right direction. We can even stop the conversation here, as all of the focus should be on this technique to help us orient and get to the exterior in an emergency. There’s no need to have another saying in regards to being oriented to the nozzle. If that needs to be part of the conversation, then let that be something that is decided by our rational mind, and not something we try to ingrain in our lizard brain for emergencies.
Although there is ultimately nothing wrong with sayings like “smooth, smooth sailing” or “the long lug leads out,” I feel that any memory aid we use that does not provide all necessary information and directly addresses the order we should encounter the features of a coupling should be discontinued in favor of a mnemonic that gives a complete context to our being able to successfully accomplish the task 100% of the time.
Take a moment when you’re with your crew next time and run through the brief drill I outlined above. My hope is that every single firefighter turns so that he or she is headed to the apparatus, but for those who might not, I hope it will generate some introspection and good conversation about the importance of the details of even our most basic skills.
Ben Singley is a firefighter/paramedic with nearly 17 years on the job. He got his start with the Tucson (AZ) Fire Department and currently works for the Kennewick (WA) Fire Department. He also volunteers with Benton County Fire District 1 and instructs at the Tri-County Recruit Academy.
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