5-alarm Task Force!

One of the most important numbers in our business is 360! It has been drilled into us that upon arrival at a call for smoke and/or fire, the first arriving officer should make as complete an inspection of the structure/scene as is possible. Then, the officer gives the crew initial instructions to mitigate the issue. What does that officer see? What’s involved? What needs to be done first. All of this is part of what we call the “size-up.”My guest is Chief Mike Terpak, recently retired from the Jersey City Fire Department, where he served as Deputy Chief and Citywide Tour Commander. With over forty years of experience, especially in one of the most intensely populated cities in the nation, there's little that the Chief has not seen!We discuss how his most recent book, “Fireground Size-Up” (Second Edition) was actually “born” when he was a rookie firefighter and began to use notebooks to keep track of calls, what had to be done and how they would accomplish their task. Those notebooks piled up over the years an