Tactics- building side A, B, C, etc.

[benbenrf]

Exactly .......... what if the house/building faces water (in the case of a lakeside home) and/or the daccessway/driveway is a long winding road isolating it from road view?

Are there a set of universal or commonly agreed upon defienations i.e. what exactly do they say regards the front of a house versus it's rear in cases where a road cannot be used as a reference?

What is the replacing feature or external reference?

The most common reference point to just about any building/house (more so than any road or other external feature would be, if indeed just about the only feature that is universal to all standalone/detached properties) would be the direction from which approach is normally undertaking i.e. a driveway or accessway(?)

Do the ABCD.... standards include the driveway/access way as a reference point?

I don't know .... just that visualy one gets a pretty good idea of front versus back when approaching a house, irrespective of external references, such as water or roads.

 

[SCPD]

Division in the OC

In Charlotte, NC we use the A B C D terms but they are called Divisions. It is often heard that flames are showing in Division B or there is a hotspot in the AB corner.
Bill

I have heard fire departments here in Orange County also use Division A-B-C-D on structure fires. Until reading this post, I never knew what they were referring to. Great job to whomever made this post.

Dave
KA6TJF

 

[Alarms50]

Front, Back, Left, Right ......... makes sense to everyone - if it ain't broke don't fix it.

It was broke, and was fixed with A,B,C,D.
Picture this: you have a building on the corner of Main St. and Broadway. The building has "front" doors on both Main St. AND Broadway. With this scenario which side is the "front". With an initial sizeup reporting A is a street, B is a street, C is a similar 5 story building, and D is a vacant lot, all members on scene now know that when looking at side A they know that to their left is a street, and to their right is a vacant lot. Same thing when looking at side B, to their left is a similar 5 story building, and to their right is a street.
A,B,C,&D was implemented because it WAS broken.

 

[robbinsj2]

Around here A is taught as the address side. Usually that works out to the "front", and the side which the access drive is on, but not always. In the case of high potential for confusion (such as on a campus where the building is well away from the nominal address), or if there's any reason to use something other than the address side as A, then the officer should report it during his/her size-up and instruct responding units which shall be considered as side A.

Same thing for floor numbers -- normally it starts with the ground level as 1 but if multiple floors exit to grade then it should be reported and instructed.

Of course a good pre-plan would cover all this in advance.

Jim

 

[SCPD]

Late this morning Newport Beach fire sent a bunch of units on a structure response. The first unit in reported smoke "coming from the C side of the building."

Dave
KA6TJF