Our ladders are being left in their cradles on our engines and trucks. This is even the case on fire scenes. In far too many instances, we are not being aggressive in the deployment of ground ladders. It could be that these issues are only found within the scope of my own experience, but I do believe that a general lack of aggressive ladder work is more universal. Hopefully, recognition of the fact that we can do better will help bring about some positive changes. In the first post, we discussed the who, what, and when of ground ladder usage. Please take some time and read part one, if you haven't already. Next, we will dive into answering two more basic questions regarding this topic.
Where do we need deploy our ladders?
There is much that can be said in
regard to the specifics of ground ladder placement. Instead of going
through the in's and out's of placement for window rescue vs
window ventilation vs roof ventilation, this discussion is more
geographic in nature.
Our ultimate goal in proactive
ladder deployment is to establish a secondary means of egress. As was
noted in part one, egress points can quickly be overcome by a growth in fire
conditions. Fire does not discriminate between interior and exterior exits
either; both can be compromised. 