What's News?

By Second Assistant Chief Jordan Roblee

Wednesday April 16, 2025

When a fire department responds to an alarm of fire, time is of the essence to save as much life and property as possible.  The first few minutes after arrival can make or break the outcome.  For this reason, the Chaffee-Sardinia Fire Company trains regularly on deploying hoselines for fire attack.

Monday night, interior and exterior firefighters performed “step off” drills.  These drills mock a real life scenario for a responding crew, from receiving orders to applying water to the fire.  Each evolution started with a fire attack crew receiving orders from command on what line to pull and where to deploy to.  While the crew deploys the appropriate handline or master stream device, the vehicle’s pump operator engages the pump and prepares to flow water to the hoseline.  These evolutions are typically timed, with a goal of applying water to the fire within 1 minute of stepping off of the apparatus.

The majority of the time, our crews deploy a 1-¾” preconnected handline packed in a triple layer load.  The triple layer load is more intricate to pack than a flat load, but deploys much more efficiently in critical moments.  The hose is folded over itself twice, making three layers that deploy in a relatively kink-free layout when charged.  Regardless of the type of hose load, regular training is required to build muscle memory for this critical task.  For this reason, the fire company completes hoseline deployment training multiple times each year.

The step off drill was expanded to include securing a water supply.  After the fire attack crews deploy the hoseline, a second crew was assigned to provide a water supply for the first due pumper.  Due to our rural environment, our most common water supply method is to “nurse” or relay pump water from our tanker to the attack pumper.  This relay can be established quickly using a 3 inch supply hose to supply an additional 2000 gallons to the fire attack efforts within the first few minutes.

Fighting fires is taxing on our membership.  More hands make for lighter work, which is why we need more volunteers!  Even if running toward a burning building seems intimidating, there are plenty of other roles that need to be filled.  Drivers, pump operators, fire police and auxiliary members play a critical role too!  See our volunteer page for more information on where you fit on our team!