[linsomniac]

SysAdmin related: I was once talking to a fire chief and I asked about how much water the fire engines carried. He said that they carry about enough to put out the typical house fire. The first engine on scene immediately jumps to fighting the fire. The second engine on scene hooks the first engine up to the water supply before going on to fight the fire.

I've often thought about that when there's a work crisis: If I'm the second on the scene, what can I do to support those fighting the fire right now, before jumping in.

[dreamcompiler]

Our engine holds 1200 gallons. It goes in first* and starts putting the wet stuff on the red stuff.

As the engine drives in it drops a 3" hose along its path. Next is our big tender with 3000 gallons. It stops at the street and connects to the dropped hose to pump more water up to the engine.

The tender also has a drop tank -- think about a portable kids' wading pool but much larger and deeper. Shuttle tenders refill the drop tank while our big tender draws from it to continue supplying the engine.

We don't have fire hydrants, so this is the dance we have to do.

* It's very important to park the engine close to the fire but not too close. Ask me how I learned this.

[mulmen]

> It's very important to park the engine close to the fire but not too close. Ask me how I learned this.

I was a farm hand as a summer job to cover beer and books in my college years. We harvested wheat which carries a high fire risk. Most farms kept a tractor with a large plow hooked up so it could quickly encircle and contain any fires.

Pulling a 40’ wide plow is hard. Tractors can do it because they have huge engines that suck in huge amounts of oxygen.

Just like fires.

If you get a tractor too close to a fire it starves for oxygen and stalls out. The plow becomes an anchor. There’s just enough time to bail out before the tires catch fire. After a few minutes the whole thing is a pile of ash and melted steel.

[dreamcompiler]

Didn't know wheat harvest came with fire risk. I know about the dangers of grain silos but I didn't know the harvest itself was risky.

[mulmen]

Oh yeah. It’s a constant threat.

The wheat is harvested “dry”. The plant dies and dries out. The drier the better. Moisture leads to mold in the silos and clogs up the harvesters.

The wheat is harvested by “combines” which are literally a combination harvester and thresher. Both machines are extremely complex.

They’re used at 110% capacity to beat the fall rains then sit rotting for 9-10 months. Lots of seized bearings or broken bits of machines sparking and starting fires.

The grain trucks I drove had their air conditioners removed to discourage idling and the exhaust pipes dumped directly in front of the rear tires to auto-snuff exhaust fires.

[jonah]

Wow. We're probably more rural and can't fit such large apparatus in many places we have to go. Out our type 1 engine carries 1,000 gallons, and our type 3 (wildland) 500 gallons and our tenders have 2,000.

1,000 isn't going to put out a house fire unless it's really small and not fully involved. The past two good structure fires we had took 20,000 and 60,000 to gallons respectively.

[dreamcompiler]

Agreed. We could never put out a residential structure fire with one truck's worth of water. That's why we ask for mutual aid and an army of shuttling tenders shows up.

Our big tender never leaves the street; it's too big and too heavy for residential driveways.

We do have a brush truck for tighter spots and for use as a relay pump for extra long driveways.

[bombcar]

How did you learned this?

Rural properties I'm familiar with required a 3,000 gallon water tank with fire-connection far enough from the main structure as to be accessible.

But ask the fire department how they'd approach your house, and put the hydrant on that road; it might NOT be the road/driveway you normally come up!

[jonstewart]

H-h-how did you learn this?

[dreamcompiler]

The hard way.

[tharkun__]

Details!

Also, please set up something like this or give me a link to a North American fire department that has such high production value videos: https://www.youtube.com/@BrandweerLunteren

I just love that the guy literally bikes to the fire station in like a minute and he's not even the first guy to arrive or just barely. And the others following in the van are like a couple minutes out at most. Where I am, the volunteers at the fire department have to be there within 15 minutes plus the time it takes to get to the actual fire.

(no worries I understand that the Netherlands is a much different country with regards to fire hydrant infrastructure and closeness to the station from the US / NA, at least/especially the rural US/Canada. I just want such awesome videos from other places around the globe really)

[mindcrime]

"No worries Chief, that'll buff out!"

[dreamcompiler]

Exactly. Back when I was a newbie we melted all the lights on the engine as well as on my own truck since I was first on scene POV (Personally Owned Vehicle). And of course we charred some hose but that's common. Then CHAOS happened (Chief Has Arrived On Scene) and he quickly moved both trucks farther away from the fire, saving the county (and me!) the cost of a new truck.

[mindcrime]

It's incredibly unfortunate when those things happen, but it comes with the territory sometimes. Case in point:

https://www.firerescue1.com/firefighter-safety/photo-video-l...

[WarcrimeActual]

>I've often thought about that when there's a work crisis: If I'm the second on the scene, what can I do to support those fighting the fire right now, before jumping in.

Great! Now I'll have to see this quote over an image of a sweaty firefighter on LinkedIn every 3 weeks for eternity.

[WarcrimeActual]

https://i.imgur.com/zCjoWIZ.jpeg

I feel gross.

[BuildTheRobots]

> I've often thought about that when there's a work crisis: If I'm the second on the scene, what can I do to support those fighting the fire right now, before jumping in.

A lot of it depends on the size and skill-set of your team and the escalation routes available to you, but in general (and off the top of my head):

- Get the first people on scene to give a summary of the problem as they know it. Make sure everyone actually agrees on what the problem is and what symptoms have been observed. Understand what areas people are currently investigating and make sure they aren't trampling over each other or actually making the situation worse [1]

- Make sure the situation hasn't evolved whilst the first on scene have been investigating the initial symptoms. It's easy to get lost in the weeds digging into a handful of monitoring alerts only to look up and realise there's now 300 and the original problem is only a small part of what's going on.

- If there isn't one already and you're not better doing something else, become incident commander. When done right it's an extremely important and useful role.

  - Take over external communication and protect the team from distractions
  - Start assessing escalation options
  - Take copious notes and keep a timeline 
  - Act as a shared memory and keep people honest 
  - Have a less panicked, wider (non minutia) view of the problem
  - Start collating and pulling up documentation/schematics so the people at the coalface can quickly query it rather than getting distracted searching for it.
  - Be ready to jump, for when someone inevitably asks "can someone check..." or "does anyone know"
  - Keep track of the "shared truth" of the incident as it evolves. What have we witnessed, what do we believe is the cause, _why_ do we believe that? Have we invalidated anything, do we need to reassess, are we sure logical lynchpins aren't confirmation bias or dyslexia?
  - Onboard new people and hand over if appropriate.

Being at the coalface when it's on fire is a very different view of the world to watching other people panic and singe their fingers. It's also very easy to get lost in a chain of technical problems [2] when it's mostly irrelevant to the wider picture.

If you get a moment, it can also be a good time to assess how useful your monitoring is during an actual event.

[1] "Hey, server x has flagged on monitoring and my ssh session is hung waiting for a login prompt!" I've been round the houses enough to know this is probably OOM and if I just wait, I'm likely to finally get in. I also know that saying this in a room of 20 technical people, means the server is now processing 22 new ssh sessions and now no one is getting anywhere.

[2] The famous Malcolm in the Middle intro where Hal is tasked with changing a lightbulb and ends up repairing the car. Except in my example the bulb is actually fine and there's a power cut we missed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0