Fire Engines Photos

French fire services have two approaches to responding to minor special service alarms. Accounting for around a third of all calls, these include a wide range of non life threatening incidents. The old solution - still practiced in many areas - was to throw what seemed to be the appropriate gear which might be useful in a van (VTU) along with one or two crew and head out. This is still the modus operandi in the VdF in Italy. This van, pictured above, is the more "modern" - but by no means universal - approach, and comes close to what some German city fire services are doing.

Now, the most frequently needed and useful gear is already loaded into and onto a 3.5 to 5 ton van, with seats for two or three crew - and off it goes to any call which does not seem to justify a full sized appliance and/or a full crew. In Berlin, for example, the eight minor alarm vans make an average of two runs a day, reducing the total number of fully crewed LHF runs needed by 7.5%. BUT Berlin's KLAF are not equipped for firefighting at all, so do not attend AFAs at all.

To address AFAs, some German fire services do equip KLAF units with fire extinguishing equipment, which is usually a self contained CAFS installation these days. But French fire services prefer to separate the roles - like Berlin and some other German cities - and send either a PS (Paris), VPI (Marseille) or FPTL with three to five crew members to an unconfirmed AFA.

Added by Rob Johnson on 03 March 2021.

Berlin will also send an ELW1 light command van to unconfirmed AFAs as an “exploration” unit if the dispatch centre cannot find any other evidence of a fire. There is a lot of variation between fire services in different countries with when it comes to handling AFAs. These range from actually totally ignoring them unless they can be confirmed all the way to sending a full first alarm assignment, and all sorts of “in-between” solutions.

It seems the chances of one actually turning out to be a real fire are around one in twenty to one in thirty, and for some fire service half of all calls are AFAs, so they can amount to a real headache.

Added by Rob Johnson on 15 March 2021.

I recently reviewed some of the literature concerning AFA turnout rates and response protocols across a large number of US fire departments. On average, they experienced AFA runs amounting to more than 50% of all alarms (excluding EMS runs for those who operated ambulance services). But the actual level of AFAs which involved a fire was under one percent, and of those four out of five were already extinguished by occupants or sprinkler systems. Unfortunately, it seems no-one anywhere has found a complete solution to this problem, but two kinds of protocols seem to be emerging:

1- More fire services are either refusing to respond at all to unconfirmed AFAs, or sending only a couple of members in a minor alarm van or general purpose unit to verify. If the alarm comes from a high risk source rather than a single family residence, then in some departments one pump is sent code 4 and the rest of the preplanned attendance at normal traffic speed.

2- Repeat offenders are fined substantial amounts, increasing with the number of false alarms transmitted. This is meant to encourage proper maintenance of AFA systems.

Just as one example, Chicago Fire Department send ten firefighters with one engine and one ladder to a high rise AFA. The response to a confirmed fire results in the dispatch of four engines, two ladders, one snorkel, one heavy rescue, one high rise tender, three chiefs and an ambulance, with around fifty personnel, as well as CPD units for traffic and/or crowd control...

Added by Rob Johnson on 17 March 2021.

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