City of Morgan Hill Public Safety Master Plan

OPERATIONAL RESPONSE APPROACHES

Many agencies develop prefire plans to provide a response and tactical strategy for those more critical or complex occupancies in the community. The community risk and vulnerability assessment evaluates the community as a whole, and with regard to property, measures all property and the risks associated with that property and then segregates the property as either a high-, medium-, or low-hazard. These hazards are further broken down into varying degrees of risk. According to the NFPA Fire Protection Handbook, these hazards are defined as:

High-hazard occupancies: Schools, hospitals, nursing homes, explosives plants, refineries, high- rise buildings, and other high life-hazard or large fire-potential occupancies.

Medium-hazard occupancies: Apartments, offices, and mercantile and industrial occupancies not normally requiring extensive rescue by firefighting forces.

Low-hazard occupancies: One-, two-, or three-family dwellings and scattered small business and industrial occupancies. 5

Figures 4-1 and 4-2 illustrate the critical tasks and resource deployment required on low-risk incidents and moderate-risk incidents such as structure fires. Understanding the community’s risk greatly assists fire department management planning for and justification of staffing and apparatus resources.

FIGURE 4-1: Low-Risk Response, Exterior Fire Attack

Figure 4-2 represents critical task elements for a moderate-risk structure fire. Some jurisdictions add additional response resources to meet and in some cases exceed the specifics of national benchmarking, such as National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1710, Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Departments, 2014 Edition. NFPA 1710 calls for the initial assignment of 14 personnel on a single-family residential structure when an aerial ladder is not utilized. CAL FIRE utilizes the combined resources of both Morgan Hill and SSCCFD to assemble the necessary staffing to manage larger incidents. In addition, CAL FIRE incorporates

5 Cote, Grant, Hall & Solomon, eds., Fire Protection Handbook (Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association, 2008), 12.

23