Award for Firefighting (to Our #9 Company)
On December 1, we were called to a house fire in our company area, about 2 kilometers from our firehouse. It was a weekend. Because many of us were off work, seven responded to the email and hurried to the firehouse to get into firefighting gear and head to the scene.
The day before, November 30, we had participated in a Tokyo Fire Department training exercise simulating the expected 7.0 earthquake that will more or less inevitably strike the greater Tokyo area. In that scenario, it is predicted that 30 or more (I think more) fires will occur in Hachioji. In the exercise, we pumped water from the river next to City Hall to a large water tank a few hundred meters away, across 12 hoses that we had deployed when the simulation started. The simulation trained us in hand-carrying our 88-kg pump to the water source through the vegetation to the edge of the river, changing out a broken hose, using the more highly pressurized hoses of the pros to douse a fire, and coordinating with other squads and the professional firefighters on our held-held radios. It was one of the best training sessions I have experienced.
Above is a bit of us experiencing the high-pressure hoses at the training event.
That November 30 event left all the hoses in our hose car (7) and some more that were stored on top of our fire truck wet and dirty. We returned to the firehouse. We were pretty tired. Holding the pro firefighter hoses had been taxing. It later caused great muscle soreness. Anything above 0.5 megapascals of pressure makes it very difficult to hold the spraying end of the fire hose safely without losing one’s grip and endangering everyone nearby with a wildly flailing hose, but theirs were 20-30% higher than that. Two people have to do it; one holds the spraying distal end and one steadies and positions the hose for ideal control right behind the other person.
So we were tired. It would have been reasonable to replace all the hoses into the hose car and onto our fire truck on a later day. But we gutted it out and spent a little more weekend time than we wanted to. We fueled up the pump, which when run continuously for a couple hours can run out of gasoline. We hung each used hose to dry and refilled the hose car with hoses, and replaced the rolled and banded individual hoses on the fire truck.
The process of replacing the hoses into the hose car is especially tedious (as depicted in the video linked above). It requires carefully and tightly folding the hoses up in layers that exactly spread the width of the cart, to fit as many as possible and leave no wasted space. When the hose car is properly prepared, is able to stretch the deployment of water across tens of meters very quickly. This all matters because for us, fighting a given fire requires first locating a water source. Our truck is a mobile pump-carrying truck, and does not hold any water of its own.
The day after the November 30 exercise, we got the call (email) at 12:45 PM to the house fire. The email said that there were multiple 119 calls regarding the fire.
Since it was a weekend afternoon, a lot of our squad members quickly stated on our LINE group that they were on their way to the firehouse. We got there and quickly changed into firefighting gear: Helmet with face shield, thick pants with suspenders, thick coat, thick gloves, and long steel-toed safety boots.
Six of us piled into the truck. One stayed behind to monitor the radio and be ready to go to the scene separately if he was needed. As a savvy veteran, he got to work putting away the many hoses that were hung after the previous day’s training and now dry.
The truck holds up to six people, but not comfortably. The front middle seat in particular is a wild ride because one has nothing to brace against as the vehicle turns or stops, but one must also stay out of the way of the manual gear shift so the driver can drive, while also stomping on the motor siren button that is on the floor, while also operating the loudspeaker to admonish drivers to stop or get out of the way and then thank them. On my left was our company leader, who resides in our neighborhood and is from our squad, but is now elevated to the position of company leader and therefore not technically in our squad. In the back were three more squad members.
The person on the front left (shotgun) seat looks left when we come to an intersection, and if we are turning left, looks back-left to make sure no pedestrians or bicycles are approaching us from that direction who might be caught up as we turn. The term that the person on the left will say is 巻き込みよし / makikomi yoshi; literally “involvement OK,” which means “we are clear to turn without crushing anyone underfoot.” The people in the back next to windows might also help with this.
The middle back seat is next to the onboard radio, so the person sitting there will often operate the radio and glean any information from it as we approach the scene.
Another back seat person will ideally pull out the Zenrin map stored in front of the back right seat; it shows in great detail the positions of homes and streets and other geographical features, along with the family name associated with most of the homes, and most importantly, the location of every fire hydrant. If possible, we want to know where multiple fire hydrants are positioned relative the to the fire scene, so we have a rough plan of where to go to connect to a water source. There are also times where a nearby river or body of water can be used, but not frequently.
(Side note: Here is the online map where you can view Tokyo fire hydrants. They show up as light blue circles on the map if you click 水利施設 and then 消火栓 under that, on the left panel. And for the stone-cold freaks, here is an Excel file containing the geographical coordinates of all 134,850 fire hydrants in Tokyo.)
All of the above roles will vary depending on how many people are onboard. Some fire responses only have two of us, especially on weekdays when most are at work and unable to respond. The few of us who work for our own businesses are a bit more likely to drop things and head to a fire. (I find it to be the greatest of ADHD side quests.) Going solo in our fire truck is strictly prohibited. One can go to a scene by using one’s own transportation, though.
A squad leader will occupy the seat next to the driver—in the front middle seat if there are six people total. So that’s where I was on December 1.
A trick I have learned from our excellent company leader is to give instructions to the driver that can be broadcast simultaneously on the loudspeaker as information for drivers and the general public who might be nearby. In other words, I am navigating for the driver and instructing him (whether he needs it or not—the driver in this case is much more experienced than me) on what to do safety- and route-wise. For example, I will press the loudspeaker button and say, “The emergency vehicle will come to a complete stop at the red light and then go straight after confirming safety.” I might repeat as needed. I might call the driver’s attention to a vehicle that still needs to yield, while also asking that vehicle to yield, by saying, “Oncoming vehicle, please pull to the side and wait.” That makes both functions more efficient.
We arrived at the scene. As usual, several trucks of the fire department had arrived before us.
Arriving at a scene, there is no direction or protocol other than to find your spot, stay out of the way of activity that is underway, and begin activities that will contribute to direct firefighting or at least the safety of the scene and inevitable onlookers.
For us on December 1, this meant finding a hydrant that was not yet in use. There is always a certain number of fire hydrants around, but they can quickly be connected to at a scene like this where a lot of units have already responded. (As you walk around a Japanese city, look for manholes that are clearly marked with yellow lines, whatever the specific pattern might be for the city. These are fire hydrants.)
The squad member in the back right seat, another seasoned veteran, found a hydrant on the map, about 100 meters up the street from where we parked our truck, the opposite direction from the burning home. While two of the squad members and I moved with the company leader up to the burning home, the person who had been driving got out with the one who had found the hydrant on the map went together to confirm the fire hydrant location.
Importantly, the driver had been the engine operator when our squad competed in past skills competitions, so he was most skilled at connecting the pump to the fire hydrant and quickly starting and ramping it up so that water could reach the end of our hose as soon as possible. We kept in touch by our radios, which are on a frequency dedicated to our #9 Company.
The two members who had gone with me to the front returned to help deploy all the hoses from the hose car and then starting rolling individual hoses from atop the truck toward the scene, which was a left turn up a street traveling mildly uphill and then a right turn into a dead-end residential street, the last house of which on the right was burning and spreading to surrounding houses and a shed or two.
I ran around the corner and up the street to the house behind and uphill from the burning house to assess its risk of also burning due to spread, while also looking for potential other hydrants to use. The residents of the house above the fire were spraying near the fire with their garden hose to slow any spreading. There were also pro firefighters on the bamboo-forested hillside to the side and uphill from the fire, spraying to keep the fire from spreading that way.
Meanwhile, the three who were deploying hoses, and the engine operator connecting to the hydrant, completed their tasks in just a few minutes, so they were able to start spraying on the right side of the burning house to keep the fire from spreading to the next house that was not yet burning, third-to-last on the right side of the street. The distance from the hydrant to the fire was 210 meters, so it took 12 of our 20-meter hoses to get the water there from the pump and hydrant. The extra hose was attached along the way using a splitter valve, so pressure could be relieved or another end attached for spraying, without stopping spraying on the end that was already set up.
The engine operator had not immediately been able to find the hydrant, which was unusually placed in the bushes along the street rather than the typical surface of the actual street. Luckily, the fire was very close to the firehouse of another squad in our company, and the members of that squad showed our engine operator where the hydrant was. The members of that squad were on top of their important job of knowing every hydrant in their assigned area.
Other squads arrived from our company, too. They mostly did safety detail around the fire, keeping onlookers safe and helping to direct traffic. This is the task we most frequently perform at an actual fire scene.
Here is a YouTube video taken by a resident. It only shows the smoke rising but gives a small idea of the scene.
In the end, the fire did not get any further in the direction of the side of the burning house that our squad sprayed. A total of 115 sq. meters of structure was burned; one home burned down completely, one halfway, one partially, and two at least temporarily began to burn but were extinguished.
Above all, no one was hurt. I heard later but don’t have direct confirmation that the cause was a lithium battery that had been charging. The resident of the home that burned completely had just begun renting the place.
One reason for writing this is that I want a record of how things played out, to reflect on when my memory of it soon fades. There were some good lessons on coordinating and acting at the scene that I need to learn—I could not have directed the actions that we took. The company leader was key in giving the right orders.
At the New Year’s Review, our #9 Company received the above-pictured award from the Tokyo Fire Department Head of Disaster Preparedness. Since this is only one step below the head of Tokyo F.D., it is a pretty rare award—these are usually given at the city level. They gave it to our company because of the speed and efficiency in getting water to the fire, which directly prevented its spread to more buildings. And it was our squad that did the water-moving, so we secretly and humbly claim the award as our own. It is hung on our firehouse wall. Our squad enjoys good interpersonal relationships and has a lot of dedicated veteran firefighters who know what to do at a scene like that. It is really cool to be a small part of.