Ep 64: Cluster Fix: Strategies for Resolving Chaos
Episode 64
Published Jan 22, 2024
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 55:54
Episode Summary
Today’s topic is overcoming tunnel vision - how to recognize when things have gone sideways. If you don’t recognize it, you can’t fix it.
Episode Notes
Active Shooter Events can be chaotic and overwhelming, and things can go wrong. In today’s episode, we’ll examine some of the common areas where problems occur and give you tips on how to recognize these, recover from them, and get back on track. Spending 60 seconds fixing a problem now, can save you time in the long run.
Watch this episode on YouTube at https://youtube.com/live/n-fUku7qC9o
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:In active shooter events, one day, whether it's of your own doing or somebody else's, you're gonna end up inheriting a cluster. Wouldn't it be nice to know how to fix it? That's today's topic, stick around. Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey. Seated next to me is Ron Otterbacher, across from him, Pete Kelting, and we've got Adam Pendley all in the house. All of us instructors, as part of the cadre. Welcome, guys. Thank you for coming back in.
Adam Pendley:
Yes, sir.
Pete Kelting:
Thank you for having us.
Bill Godfrey:
So today's topic, which ought to be kind of interesting, I want to go through the checklist and at each phase of this, kind of talk about the things that we've seen that tend to go wrong, and give some tips on how to recover from that. How to get back on track. We always say it in the coaching, we'll let people make mistakes, but we're gonna get you outta the weeds. And teaching, sometimes knowing how to get outta the weeds is almost as important as knowing how not to get in the weeds to begin with. So I want to make sure that we're covering those ideas on how to get out of the weeds when things go wrong. So let's start off with the first arriving officer. What are the things that you see go wrong consistently with the first arriving officer and their duties, which by the way, are, for the audience: size up report, identify the hot zone, establish command. They're going to be contact one on the radio, and then engage. What are the things that we commonly see go wrong with the first arriving officer duties?
Ron Otterbacher:
I think the most prevalent thing is, they refuse or they forget to give a size up and identify danger zone. Everyone else is responding to it. There's only one person knows what's going on, and everyone else is guessing. And if you don't give that important critical information, then engage the bad guy, then no one else knows what they're getting into. Everyone else is guessing, and by that, it may precipitate a bad response from everyone else. Those are the two of the most critical things we do in this whole situation, is give a size up and identify danger zone. We know that the majority of officers injured in active shooter events are injured approaching the building. If a proper size up had been given, and the identified danger zone had been put out, could that have stopped a lot of those?
Pete Kelting:
That's a good question.
Bill Godfrey:
Pete.
Pete Kelting:
I think, yeah, realizing they're in command, just to what Ron's saying, is that they're the closest to the problem at the point in time, and they need to evaluate that, and push that tactical situational awareness up to when tactical sets up, when even in relaying that to dispatch, as they're responding, getting that information out so better decisions can be made on following officers.
Bill Godfrey:
You're in charge, take charge, right? Adam?
Adam Pendley:
And to that point, one of the most important things is to also train to that. We do a lot of tactical training on how to approach, and get in the door and start addressing the threat, but we sometimes forget to make those officers also talk while they're responding, right? And it can be done, right? Clearly, if you have to utilize your weapon at a moment, you're gonna talk afterwards. But if you're moving and talking and then addressing the threat, that's one way to fix it. And the second way to fix it is, if you can tell, especially if you're in a supervisory position, you can tell that first, second, third officer who have formed up Contact Team One, they might have a little bit of tunnel vision. You may have to get on the radio and say, "Everyone else, be quiet; give us an update," and prompt them to give you an update, because you've got to have that information if you're gonna manage everyone else that's on the way.
Bill Godfrey:
I think one of the other ways that I wanna make sure we mention on this one, because we've seen it so many times, when you get a good comp center, a good dispatcher engaged, they need to know it's okay for them to prompt this stuff. That's one of the reasons we include dispatchers in training, is because they need to learn it too. If you're first arriving officer gets there and he says, "On scene," and that's all he or she says, that's a problem. And dispatch should immediately go back and say, "Need a size up report." And if you've gotta walk 'em through it, walk 'em through it. Like you said, Adam, it may take the supervisor, but if the dispatcher can grab that immediately at the end of their transmission, we may be able, before they even really are even out of the car or up on their weapons platform, and they may be able to get them to give us a little bit more information.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
Anything, any other tips on?
Pete Kelting:
I think recognizing the request, additional resources, I mean, having that situational awareness down range, and realizing what you need to call for follow-on officers to assist you.
Adam Pendley:
Right, and at that moment, like you mentioned, you're in command, essentially. So, not only do you have to request additional resources, but you're the one telling 'em what to do. So that second, fourth arriving officer, you need to tell 'em where to go, how to link up, what you need them to do.
Bill Godfrey:
So that's a perfect transition. So next up on the list is the second, third, fourth arriving officer. We want them, generally speaking, to all link up with that first arriving officer and become that full strength contact team. By the numbers, we want the second, third, fourth officer to reach out to Contact One, that first officer, and find out what he or she wants you to do, which is generally gonna be move to my location at X, Y, Z and link up with me. If that first officer fell down on the job, no matter the fact that we prompt them, we didn't get a size up report, we don't know where they are, we don't know what they're doing. What happens with the second, third, and fourth officer? What do they do to step in and plug that gap?
Ron Otterbacher:
They should be asking for Contact One, what's his location, how can I link up with you? Because they shouldn't do it unless he knows, again, that creates a blue on blue situation. If they don't know, if Contact One doesn't know that other team members are coming, you don't just want to approach, you wanna make sure you've got verbal communication that, "We're coming up to you. Where exactly are you?" If they don't know exactly where they are, but they also need to know that, "We know exactly where you are, we're coming to you now, do you copy?"
Adam Pendley:
And if possible, the second, third, fourth arriving officers, at a minimum, maybe they can at least stay together and work together and go find the one who's off by themselves. So my advice would be, don't make the situation worse by now all three or four of you freelancing. The worst thing that could happen is, if all four officers go off and do their own thing. There may be time delays, so one officer may have to make a solo entry, because they're the ones there, they have to address that crisis. But second, third, and fourth, as they come in, they should start, like an accordion, they should start coming together, and don't make it worse by doing your own thing also.
Bill Godfrey:
Pete?
Pete Kelting:
Limit radio traffic. I mean, only convey what is important at the time, especially in the early onset of an event. As contact teams link up, put somebody in charge of those radio transmissions for those teams, instead of everybody trying to chime in on what's going on.
Bill Godfrey:
And I think the one tip I would add is, if you're the second, third, fourth arriving, and you're gonna be part of that contact team, and for whatever reason, the person that you were expecting to communicate just isn't, they've vapor locked, and they're tunnel-visioned out, or they're engaged in something else, then pick up the slack. You know what the duties are. If no size up report has been done, give one. If a hot zone has not been established, designate one. Initiate, pick up that slack, what we call a crosscheck. If it got missed by the guy and gal in front of ya, fill in the gap.
Pete Kelting:
Right, and Adam talked about training. Many times, you always hear me say is, "Train the next level up," right? So the contact teams need need to know what information is gonna make tactical success successful, and so forth. The response that's above them.
Bill Godfrey:
Which is a perfect segue over to our fifth arriving officer, that will become tactical. So now in this particular case, the play here, if you will, the team, the football play is, that the first four officers go down range. And then that fifth arriving officer is not gonna go down range. They're gonna set up a position outside, and begin to coordinate all of the other arriving officers. In other words, we're gonna sacrifice one to make sure that the rest of our resources get put on the task and purpose that we need, and coordinate the response. And the first thing that we see that happens with frequency, is that the fifth officer goes in, then the sixth officer goes in, then the seventh officer goes in, and the next thing you know, you're 8, 9, 10 in the stack. How do we get back on track?
Adam Pendley:
Well, again, I think when everyone trains to the model, right, so, a lot of times we get pushback like, "Hey, in the real world, that wouldn't happen. All 10 of us would go in," that sort of thing. "That's how we do it in the real world." The reality is, you should train to how it should be done. And there's a lot of ideal reasons why basically, the exact fifth officer should stay put, and allow the other four to go in first 'cause more resources are coming. So you are sacrificing maybe one additional gun inside, in order to manage everyone else. And I say it all the time, one more gun inside might not do nearly as much good as giving a strategy and some tactical direction to the 15 more guns that are on their way, right? So, getting somebody to understand that, but the way you fix it is, if you are the 7th, 8th, 9th officer, and you realize that everyone else, in their exuberance, has made it into the site, and we all wanna be, we always wanna be that one inside. But if you realize that there's already seven or eight inside, go ahead and fix it then, right? Even if you're not exactly the fifth officer, you might've been the 9th or 10th on scene, but you know that a tactical group supervisor needs to be established, you're gonna stay put and do that job.
Pete Kelting:
I think our checklist affects behavior. I think, and again, back to the training aspect of it, if you train to the checklist, you know that it's important that command has to be established. Quite often, we have taken these checklists and looked at after-action reports of previous events and can clearly see where the challenges of that particular event for those agencies, we feel our checklist would've significantly helped change that behavior and moved a better direction on command and control of that event.
Bill Godfrey:
Ron, how about you? You got your number 8, number 9, number 10 in the stack.
Ron Otterbacher:
Recognition, first. You recognize you're number 9, number 10, no one's taking responsibility. You have to step up and take responsibility. Then immediately, the next thing you need to do is get a brief so you know where everyone's at, because now you're sending in the next 10 people to assist everyone else, but if you don't know what's going on, how can you safely send them in? How can you work with all the resources that are already down range, that already passed up the opportunity that we had to set it up right initially? So you gotta get a brief, and then you've gotta request the additional resources, and you set your staging area. So you don't, by setting staging, you try to preclude everyone responding to the scene, and you get them to set up and then you can request 'em, "I need two more four-man teams to come up, meet me here, and I'll give you your assignment," or, "Link up with Contact 2 and 3, because I got my brief." I now understand there are two and three contact teams down range, and figure out what their responsibilities should be from there.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
I think what I would, in following on to Adam's comment, is, if we train, and I think both of you said this, train to the plan, train to the plan. You're a football team, the coach has a new play he wants the team to play. The team's gonna run the play, and they're not gonna run it right the first time, and the coach is gonna make 'em run it again, and they're gonna run it again, and run it again. The coach wants to see them run that play correctly the first time, and I think that's the first play to start, is to make sure that everybody knows what the expectations are. I think the other thing, again, going back to the comm center, the comm center knows how many people have arrived on scene. They're sitting there watching the CAD, whether they're calling out on the radio arrival or whether they're punching the little button on the computer that says that they've arrived on scene, the comm center sees that. So they can say, "118, you're 5th arriving." "122, you're the 6th arriving, you're the 7th arriving," whatever, "Charlie, Mary, three, you are the number 9th arriving and we don't have a 5th man." We could call that out, the supervisors can call that out. I think Ron, right to your point of getting the briefing, is the very next thing that needs to happen. So if you're taking that role, you gotta get a briefing from somebody inside. And then the thing that I would say is, if you've only, if you've got four or five down range, you can keep them in a single contact team. But if you've got 6, 7, 8, 9 people down range, you need to split 'em into two different teams and get 'em organized.
Ron Otterbacher:
Two or three.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, two or three different teams and get 'em organized. And if you don't do that very quickly, right when you take over, that will just snowball on you in making it that much more difficult to control as you go down range, so I think those would be my tips. What other tips for recovering from that when you're, your tacticals get stood up late?
Adam Pendley:
Well again, you mentioned it earlier, the idea of crosschecking. So let's say by virtue of your rank, you're the first arriving supervisor, and because of your rank, you're not necessarily gonna be the ones to go inside, 'cause you've already got officers inside, right? Crosschecking, who is tactical? "Tactical, identify yourself." Oh, I don't have a tactical, let me assign you. "No, you stop, you are gonna be tactical. Get down there and start controlling this thing," right? So if you are gonna ultimately be command, and you haven't had a tactical set up yet, fix it at that point, crosscheck what's on the checklist.
Bill Godfrey:
Or vice versa, you say, "Okay, I was expecting to be command, but we missed tactical for whatever reason. I'm gonna plug that hole, and somebody else is gonna have to take command from me."
Adam Pendley:
Sure.
Bill Godfrey:
Pete, what are the things that, somebody's late getting tactical stood up? What are the the tips that you give 'em to get back on track?
Pete Kelting:
All the same things we're talking about here, especially by rank, you have folks that excel well in those positions. They train well in those positions. You know that, "Hey, you might already been committed down range, but I need you to back out, set up tactical," or put someone you know who's responding. Especially if you're like a watch commander or somebody like that that is listening to it. You just gotta get it in place. It has to be, when you said split up the contact teams immediately, as soon as you split up into three contact teams, they need a boss, everybody has a boss. We talk about that in the class. Somebody needs to wrap their arms around that tactical direction.
Adam Pendley:
Well also, I mean I think, I know we're gonna probably gonna move on to another area here, but it's really important to understand that this is overconvergence. People think that more officers is good, it'll solve the problems faster. It's not necessarily the case. We have read, time and time again, and some of us have experienced, time and time again, that overconvergence will actually slow you down.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Adam Pendley:
Because you've got too many people trying to do one task, and there's other tasks that need to get done. So, emphasizing the fact that you have to get this structure in place in order to get back on track and start making some things happen faster. And I really like your point that hey, even if you did have 12 officers inside, somebody at tactical can say, "Okay, you four, I need you to be Contact Team 1, Contact Team 2, Contact Team 3, and here's how we're gonna divide this thing up." You know, we're gonna start applying some strategy to, to circling where we know the threat's at, holding an area, containing an area, securing a casualty collection point. I mean, again, there's just the list goes on and on. There's so many jobs that need to get done.
Ron Otterbacher:
The fear is, if you take those teams and you don't divide them, now in fact, you have 12 different contact teams, because they're all going in different directions.
Pete Kelting:
And everybody's asking who's in charge
Adam Pendley:
Yep.
Bill Godfrey:
And they will; then they'll all be talking on the radio.
Adam Pendley:
Yep.
Bill Godfrey:
And by the way, you don't necessarily need to get the roll call of units that are down range from dispatch, and individually assign 'em. I mean, you could do that if you've got that level of situational awareness. But if you've got contact with one person inside, you could say to them, "Contact 1, you have eight, nine people down range," whatever, "Contact 1, get your people organized into two teams. I wanna Contact 1 and a Contact 2. Have Contact 2 call me back as soon as that's done." And delegate it, let them sort it out, right? Based on what's going on. So one of the tasks of tactical, very early on after they get their briefing, they take charge and they get those contact teams organized, is to set a staging location, pick a location for staging. And this, I don't know how it gets missed, but not that often, would you say? That the tactical is missing setting a staging location? What's the...
Pete Kelting:
It can become, yeah, a little bit of a forgotten thought, when you're focused on the threat happening down range, and still pushing people down to support. Obviously, we always say, the fire response coming to an active shooter event, they're immediately looking for a staging area.
Bill Godfrey:
Sure.
Pete Kelting:
So we quite often, in the class, talk about how important it is for communications to talk between each other. Where would the fire set up staging, and then, it's that tactical mindset to set up in the same area, that's key. It's important, 'cause that affects all your ability to build out RTFs down range, credential what type of resources are coming to you. So, it's huge.
Bill Godfrey:
I think a couple of the tips that I would say here is, number one, going back to dispatch, again, dispatch is sitting in a controlled comm center. They should have the checklist up in front of 'em. And if tactical has done this stuff and they didn't call out a staging location, prompt them. "Dispatch to Tactical, can use, gimme the staging location. What staging location did you want to use?" I've even seen some dispatchers be coy about it and go, "I didn't copy where you wanted everybody staged," saying like it was, I missed the call, even though we all know they didn't make the call. So that's one, a prompt that can be done. The other thing that I think can occur, depending on the timing of how it unfolds, fire may already be in the area.
Pete Kelting:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
They may have set up a staging location--
Pete Kelting:
I'd be inclined to ask where their staging area is.
Bill Godfrey:
You could pump this to fire, right? You could say, "Tactical to Dispatch, find out where fire has set up staging, and then announce that as the staging location for all responding units."
Adam Pendley:
Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
And that's another piece that gets missed is, we set a staging location, but we fail to update all of the responding units that they're supposed to respond to this new location. That's a gap.
Adam Pendley:
Absolutely. And again, that's something at kinda the next level up in the checklist, maybe, that again, if you know that a staging area hasn't been set, make sure you get it set, and assign a manager. The supervisor typically will be the one to assign a manager to the staging location. Well, if it hasn't even been set yet, go ahead and set it and assign a manager, and the number one thing that has to be fixed to get back on track is that police, fire, and EMS are in the same staging location, without getting your little feelings hurt. And oftentimes, and I think we're saying it oftentimes, it may be easier for the police to go where the fire trucks are, 'cause it's easier for us to move to them than it is for them to start all over again and try to move to us. So the big thing, the early 5th man setting a staging location is about slowing down that overconvergence. The next level up, the supervisor management of staging, assigning a staging manager, is about getting the right resources together, and then deploying together like they're supposed to. And again, I can't, I wanna stomp it again, do not get your little feelings hurt about who should have set up the staging. Just get it in the same location, get it done. There's so many jobs that need to be done.
Ron Otterbacher:
And at that same time, when you've identified your staging managers, that's the opportune time to tell him, this is the level of resource I want you to keep in staging. That way, it never comes back to staging call and command. "I need to order more," well, order 'em. But if you had set it up initially when you set up your staging and you said, "I want you to keep 20 cops, five engines, and five rescue trucks in staging at all times," you never have to worry about it again. And that's the opportune time to do it.
Adam Pendley:
Right. Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
And as we transition here, talking about the first supervisor duties, I agree with you. I think one of the common things is, a first supervisor will get on scene, take command, and for whatever reason, staging either wasn't set, it wasn't clearly communicated, fire didn't hear it, dispatch didn't relay it. There's a problem with what has or hasn't been done with staging, so put somebody in charge of it and fix it. Fix the problem. We put somebody from fire, somebody from law in charge of it. If you happen to be in a community where your ambulance service is separate from your fire department, you need somebody from EMS as well. So you may need two or three, basically every radio channel you're working, you're gonna need a staging manager for. So put 'em in charge, get it designated, and get it up and running. Clarify what you want them to do. Give 'em the authorization to maintain those minimum number of units. And then for the ones that overconverged and went down range, if you're at the scene, have a face-to-face with tactical, get assigned into a contact team and report back.
Adam Pendley:
Absolutely, that's one way to fix those that have already overconverged, and a lot of times, we talk, and in real world wise, you have the first contact team that comes in, and we talked about it earlier, next three or four officers, they come in and they form up a contact team too. Nobody's done tactical yet. But if that happens and the person did say, "Okay, I'm gonna stay put and be tactical," that's just part of that initial briefing. Now we have two teams now. Okay, great. It should have been the fifth man, but we have two teams. Great. Same thing from staging. If staging determines that some people had bypassed staging and went on down, then just account for 'em and make sure they get assigned to something. But the other thing that you brought up, Bill, I think is really important is, that once command has set staging, and we do have enough resources on scene, and other jobs are gonna need to get done, you may have to have somebody with that command presence, with the proper rank to say out loud, "Command to all follow-on units. Do not come to my scene without going through staging. Dispatch, repeat that message."
Bill Godfrey:
Yes.
Adam Pendley:
And really, that's an opportune time to get back on track, is you've had a little initial chaos, you're going to, it's always gonna happen. A little chaos of everyone wanting to get inside. But now you've got tactical, now you've got a command presence. Stop: everybody go to staging, start getting RTFs ready, start thinking about perimeter, start thinking about the other jobs that need to get done.
Bill Godfrey:
You know, it's funny you mentioned perimeter, I was just thinking, is it wrong to tell the perimeter guys send everybody to staging, and if they don't go, shoot 'em? That's wrong, that's bad, right?
Adam Pendley:
You might end up with more patients that way, I'm not sure, so...
Bill Godfrey:
Let's talk about staging for a minute, and some of the challenges that we see there that tend to go wrong and need to be put on track.
Pete Kelting:
I think a lot of people think staging's just a matter of writing somebody's name down on a piece of paper and saying they're there, and it's much more than that, right? We all know in staging, if we get behind early on credentializing what resources are coming in, either single incident or multi-jurisdictional incident, it's huge at staging, to make sure that we're ready to go. That staging manager is putting together teams upon request, sending them out, giving 'em a boss, giving 'em a radio channel, staying organized. I think what we're talking about here is, how do we get back on track? One of the things is, stay organized from the get-go, you know, follow the checklist, and as soon as you get unorganized clutter in your incident, then you're off track, and it's hard to recover. But the staging manager in that area is in control of all those resources before they get sent out. They can crosscheck, they can double make sure that that request was valid and where they're going, and send them to the right place and make sure they come back and close the circle of communication of what that task involved and produced.
Bill Godfrey:
Agreed, the staging manager, so the law enforcement and the fire/EMS staging manager work as a pair, and have to work as a pair to do their teams. You get a request for a rescue task force. Well, in a perfect world under the model, that request should be flowing through triage, and triage should be calling staging on the fire/EMS channel and saying I need a rescue task force. In which case, a fire staging manager turns to the law enforcement staging manager, says, "I need two cops or I need three cops," or whatever the number is that your community uses. And he's gonna say, "Okay, we're gonna use 118 and 123," And you turn around and you shout out, "Engine 3, 118, 123, come here. Okay, you guys are gonna be RTF 1, you've been asked to go to this location, you're reporting to triage, and you're operating on these channels. Law enforcement, you're talking to tactical on this channel, fire/EMS, you're talking to triage on this channel, go get your briefing and your equipment, get yourself ready to go, and let me know when you're ready to deploy."
Pete Kelting:
One of the large scale civil unrest events here, in central Florida, I was privy to watch the staging area take place, and one of the best things that happened was, is they set up picnic tables right next to where you were checking in. They had portalets right there. They had water, they had everything right there. And when you checked in representing your agency, that staging manager said, "We have one representative from your agency staying here at the picnic table the entire time, never leaves, and makes sure that they have somebody to be able to face-to-face, get that resource deployed." And it worked extremely well.
Bill Godfrey:
Which brings me to the other thing I wanted to mention about staging before we leave that topic, is interoperability on radio channels. So some jurisdictions are quite large, and it's all gonna be them. That's the exception, not the rule. In most cases, you're gonna have other jurisdictions and they're gonna be operating on a different channel, whether it's a different radio system or not is almost irrelevant. The easiest, fastest way to solve interoperability problems is in staging. You know, "Pete, do you have this channel?" "No." "Adam, do you have this channel?" "No." "Ron, you got this channel?" "Yes." "Okay, the three of you are gonna be Contact Team 3. Ron, you're the one on the radio, you're the only one that's got the channel. You're going to this location reporting to tactical, go."
Adam Pendley:
Right. Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
And the problem is solved. Not everybody on the team needs to have a radio to hear that. Just one of them does. And by mixing up the resources, you can manage that. So that's one of the things that I see go horribly wrong in staging with some frequency is, we get wrapped around the axle about, "Oh no, you've got this bank and it's this group, and it's this," oh God, keep it simple.
Adam Pendley:
Yeah, and just real quick, three more quick things on staging. The first one is the idea that your staging manager is also a cheerleader in the sense that people want a job. So as they arrive, let 'em know, hey, we're gonna have a job for you. You're probably gonna be on our RTF, we're probably gonna need you to supplement the perimeter group, or we are gonna need a fourth contact team, but stay here. I need you to be ready to do this. You clearly have to train to staging. So setting up a separate like staging training I think could be really important. And the most important, the thing I think that we see staging managers get overwhelmed with, that you can fix really easily, is get some help. If you need a scribe, or you're still trying to figure out who was on the scene before you got stood up, have somebody sit down with the CAD system separately and start scribing out, looking through the CAD, figure out where everybody went, based on the dispatcher's notes. So you can fix some of that early overconvergence by getting some help, having a couple assistant staging managers that are helping you get caught up, and a scribe.
Bill Godfrey:
And I wanna point this one out, 'cause I think the scribe thing applies to everybody in all positions. If you cannot handle the radio, talking to someone and doing your job, you're overloaded. Get somebody to help you, and divvy it off. Hand your radio to somebody else, let them talk on the radio to you, put somebody else in charge of keeping your notes on the whiteboard, whatever you've gotta do, delegate some of those roles out. It's a simple overload that happens at all levels.
Pete Kelting:
Organizing, parking, and staging. Again, that same staging operation I was watching, they had probably five, six folks making sure, vehicles were coming in, parked the right way, they can get in and out. I mean it was, I wanna say 15, 20 folks working that staging area.
Ron Otterbacher:
The other thing goes back to recognition. If you are in a command level, I don't care which position it is, and you have to keep calling someone and they don't answer. Now you recognize from your position, this person is overwhelmed. If they don't call for assistance, you send them assistance anyways. And those are all, it's kind of hard to do with the contact teams, 'cause you may just have to say, "Someone grab him and tell 'em grab the radio for a second." But everything else, you recognize they're not answering you. You've got important information you need to get, send someone to help 'em.
Adam Pendley:
And I'm gonna go off on a real quick tangent, Bill, but one thing we hear a lot of is, well, your radios don't work in the school, the radio doesn't work in the hospital, the radio's not gonna work inside. So again, that's a little bit of a cluster, but there's a way to fix that. There's one of two ways to fix it. A lot of times your fancy 800 megahertz radios have simplex channels, car to car, that actually will work. They'll kind of cut, they don't have to hit the repeater, they'll get out to tactical, but if not, be prepared to have a runner. If you have to have a runner that can go the same safe corridor, that the contact team's already cleared, go in, get information, bring it back out to tactical. You might have to switch to Sneakernet, but saying the radios don't work isn't a reason to throw your hands up and say you can't manage this thing.
Bill Godfrey:
Amen to that, so let's talk about perimeter for a minute, and then we'll move on to second supervisor duties. So perimeter, some of the challenges and tribulations there.
Ron Otterbacher:
I try to do with perimeter is, from a command perspective is, I tell staging, "Assign this person to run perimeter, pick his units, call me when it's done."
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Ron Otterbacher:
I don't, it's not my job as a command officer to set these perimeter locations. We do it all the time with, we used to, on the street, we'd take the furthest unit away, "Pull off the side of the road, set the perimeter." It's an easy thing to do, but you just have them let you know it's completed. That way, you close that communication, it's done. It's off my plate, I'm good to go. I don't have to worry about it.
Adam Pendley:
Yeah, often--
Pete Kelting:
Yeah
Adam Pendley:
Go ahead.
Pete Kelting:
No, go ahead.
Adam Pendley:
Oftentimes you see that, that they grew up as a sergeant or a lieutenant, they wanna call out the locations, instead, just give 'em a mission. So I agree with you, assign it to somebody, but then just give them the mission. "I want exit only traffic. I want only law enforcement comin' inside. I want to stop everyone, and get their information before they leave--
Bill Godfrey:
"I want them to all go to staging."
Adam Pendley:
I want them to all go to staging, absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
No one to stop. What you gonna say?
Pete Kelting:
No, I was on Adam's point, setting up perimeter early enough is a challenge as it is. I mean we talk about schools, how parents beat us to the scene before we get perimeters set up,
Bill Godfrey:
You bet.
Pete Kelting:
And a lot of our other locations. For an example, I remember one time had an incident where we already had enough folks down range, right? And I see a motor officer come running in, eager to get on one of the contact teams, and we're thinking like, your best ability to help us is help on perimeter and traffic, and traffic control, so it's, where are your resources best utilized? Obviously, if they were nearby on the initial response, they go in, but traffic units, people that are good at doing things like that, can make that perimeter such a, get you back on track, make that perimeter such a better function.
Bill Godfrey:
I think the biggest tip on this one for me is, is what what Ron said is, don't try to call out the posting positions and manage it directly. You call and get somebody put in charge of it, and let them manage the numbers and the positions, and then just hold 'em accountable. But I think the big one, and this is gonna take me into the second supervisor, the big one that I see is that the first supervisor gets a little overwhelmed with what's happening down range, and they forget about getting the perimeter stood up or staffing it adequately, there's a gap somewhere.
Pete Kelting:
Trusting delegation.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, and the second supervisor, you know we talk about crosschecks, the second supervisor arrives on scene, he should be going to his checklist and going, "Okay, did you do this, this, this and this?" And if not, kind of revisiting this. So that's one of the ones that I see that, that isn't technically on the second supervisor's duty, but seems to happen with some frequency because the first guy or gal misses it.
Ron Otterbacher:
But it is on the second supervisor's briefing there, because they get a brief. If they don't say, "I've established a perimeter," then we're short.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Ron Otterbacher:
That's why the brief is so important. No matter which position you've got, it allows you to know what they've done and what they haven't done, and then you say, "Ooh, they didn't do this. Let me accomplish that."
Adam Pendley:
Yep.
Bill Godfrey:
So what are the big, big gaps that puts the second supervisor, who's ultimately the long-term incident commander, what puts them in the weeds and how do they get out?
Adam Pendley:
Well, it's just that, that they run up and they start looking in the hole too, right? And you've used a sport analogy a couple of times and I'll kind of extend on that. Your law enforcement branch is your offensive coordinator, right, and your fire or EMS branch director is gonna be, your medical branch, is gonna be your defensive coordinator, let's say. You should think more in terms of being the head coach: you can't get down in there and start trying to reinvent their wheels. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes you have, is they get in and they want, they don't just get a briefing, they start trying to reinvent the wheel that's already been done. And they're wasting time by doing that. If you step back, take a moment to digest what they're already doing, get them back on track, and then start giving direction. And the other big one is stay put. If you are that head coach or you're that ultimate incident commander, you have to stay put and start creating that method that which they get jobs done, they report back to you what's done. You send another, you give out another kind of job that needs to get done, they get it done for you. And then you create that little communication triangle within the command post that I think really gets everybody back on track.
Bill Godfrey:
Pete?
Pete Kelting:
I think kind of the reason behind sometimes why that happens is, depending on who that individual is, and where their comfort zone is during stress, during critical incidents. We see a lot of times, at tactical, we may have a very senior road officer that really hasn't spent time doing any type of command-level decision making. Same thing all the way up to command. So train, not on game day, you don't wanna be wondering that on game day, but train to operate the next level up, so that we don't get off track, if you're the person that's put in that position.
Ron Otterbacher:
And understanding what your responsibilities are. You've already taken place of the person in charge at that time. You move them down to law enforcement branch, now you got two responsibilities. I need someone to gather intel, and I need someone here, 'cause we know we're gonna have to do a press brief. So that's all your responsibilities are, while you've got that 30,000 foot view, you know that if you got a cop question, I go to law enforcement branch, I got a medical question, I go to them. So often we see the incident commander try to reach past them, and okay, you need to have four more. No, it's not your job to tell 'em to have four more ambulances. Say, "Do you have the resources you need? Do you have the resources you need?" Okay, I'm here now. I'm getting ready for my brief.
Bill Godfrey:
I think that's a perfect segue over to medical branch, and let's talk about medical branch and talk about that EMS stack that goes up. So obviously medical branch, once we get that first supervisor gets a command post set up, whoever the ranking officer is for fire and EMS goes to the command post, establishes a face-to-face communication, and becomes the medical branch working for the law enforcement incident commander, and then begins to stand up the fire and EMS response, which at the lowest level is gonna be the rescue task forces, and the rescue task forces are reporting to triage. Parallel to that, right next to them is gonna be the transport group supervisor, and the transport group supervisor will run all of the ambulances as they get assigned out of staging and manage all of the transports, and they're reporting all of that information back to medical branch, so that's our structure.
So let's talk about some of the common problems we see and let's start at the lower level, with the rescue task forces. So one of the big ones start with it in staging, when you get assigned, is they don't take 30 seconds to introduce themselves and get clear on who's doing what. And this is one of my biggest concerns is, I think sometimes law enforcement makes some assumptions about the level of training that the fire and EMS people that are going in with 'em on their RTF have had, and simple things that are common to you guys, like, don't stand on the X, and don't stand in a T intersection, that's a dangerous place. Well, those were terms I had never heard until the very first time I went through training. And so one of my concerns is, it's almost essential to take that 30 seconds in staging for the law enforcement element and the fire/EMS element to have a quick conversation, introduce each other, talk about which cop is taking point, who's taking rear guard, how you're moving, what the rules of the road are, what stuff are we carrying and where we're going, things like that. What are the other mistakes that you guys see that gets the rescue task force in the weeds?
Adam Pendley:
I think once they get down range, they try to do too much themselves, forgetting that they can also call for additional resources. They can delegate up to triage that "Hey, we need two more teams here." And then, when those RTFs make it into the casualty collection point, somebody taking charge and giving direction, this is a term we use loosely, but kind of a room boss,
Ron Otterbacher:
Room boss.
Adam Pendley:
Room boss. right, having that first RTF has already sized up what they have, and as new teams arrive, making sure they tell them what needs to be done next.
Bill Godfrey:
Pete? RTF mistakes.
Pete Kelting:
I think recognizing that, from a perspective of a casualty collection point, it's not gonna be this, most likely not gonna be this nice clean, perfect area that everybody's gonna be located in. Perfectly in the real world, which we try to train to, right, for make it defensible and accessible and so forth. Just like Adam's saying, is getting that situational awareness, how many more rescue task force we need down there, and get them going sooner than later.
Ron Otterbacher:
It comes back to training. We assume the law enforcement officers know what their responsibility is for an RTF, but how do we know that those brand new two rookies that have been put together know what an RTF is, and knows what their responsibilities are? Training is so essential, whether it's in-house, whether it's with everyone from public safety working together, we've all gotta have an understanding of what our responsibilities are. We can say, "Okay, you're rear guard, you're lead penetrator, and you're going with the RTF," do they even know what those responsibilities are? So we've got to, we've gotta understand that we've got some areas we can do better on, and we need to work on it now, instead of when the incident occurs, because we make a lot of assumptions, and like they say, hope is not a plan. We hope that things are gonna work out that way. But if we got four people that have never been in an RTF, trained for that function, and they're now the RTF, what are their chances of success? You hope it's good, but we've gotta understand that we've got weaknesses, and we've gotta address those weaknesses.
Pete Kelting:
And we can't forget that our number one debrief topic on RTFs in class is, who's in charge of them. That usually sends everybody sideways of, there's law enforcement in charge of sending the first one down versus medical at the time, and then there's medical branch control. You know how all that movement takes place. We see that derail RTF response quite often.
Bill Godfrey:
And once the RTF gets down there, I see frequently, they immediately go to work and they fail to communicate with triage and what they've got, so triage is only working on the information given to 'em by tactical, which is based on the contact team's initial screening. And those screenings of greens and reds may have included some that have black tags, they may have changed, the numbers may have gone up, and we need to split 'em into green, yellow, red, and black tag and update those numbers. So the first RTF through the door, the very first thing they should do is give triage a count of injured without colors. This is what I am looking at at this location right now. And then that should immediately be followed up by the numbers of reds, yellow, green and black tags that they're dealing with at that location. The other big mistake that I see RTFs make is, and it's just a habit that medics today have gotten into is, "This is my patient, Pete, you come in, you take that patient,Ron, you get that patient over there." That's how you do it day-to-day, but that's not mass casualty behavior.
Mass casualty behavior is, we first need to figure out who's the most severe and who needs, who's gonna benefit from the quickest help. And so, my first duty is to get everybody triaged and you know, Pete, when you come through the door as Rescue Task Force 2, I should be saying to you, "Pete, those two over there with the chest wounds are number one, you deal with those, get on those right away," and then, Adam comes in with RTF 3, and you say, "Adam, I haven't been able to get to those people over there, they're yellows and greens, but I didn't get a chance to reassess 'em. Start working with that, that stack over there." And Ron comes through, maybe as a fourth RTF, and you say, "Ron, I need you to get a plan together for how we're gonna move these people to the ambulance exchange point." So we've lost a little bit of that leadership that goes into place, but how do you recover if you get an RTF that goes in and goes silent on you, you're triaged, they work for you, you're the boss, call 'em, get a report.
Pete Kelting:
Right, and you got a law enforcement component with 'em.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Adam Pendley:
And just to kind of back up a little bit, one of the other things I think we've seen in some actual incidents is RTFs that get, they get hijacked by walking wounded, and they need to be clear about where they're going and what their mission is, meaning, if you're sent inside of classroom number three, it's because there are seriously injured patients in there and that we need you in classroom number three. Being stopped in the hallway and not making it to your assignment is something that has to be fixed, and it has to be fixed quickly, and it's the RTF's responsibility to either say, "Hey, we've been stopped by a serious patient out here in the hallway, we're gonna stay put and we need to send somebody else," or "Triage, what do you want us to do? We have walking wounded here, where do you want us to send them?" So there needs to be a plan in place for that as well.
Bill Godfrey:
So let's jump over to tactical, I'm sorry, triage and transport. Pete, you spent a lot of time coaching tactical triage and transport. What's the most common things that gets triage and transport in the weeds, and what are your tips for getting out?
Pete Kelting:
They silo their own individual look at the incident. That's the whole purpose they're co-located together is, to start working together, to digest that information and make the best decisions. Like you said, changing triage colors and so forth. Movement of the RTF teams, knowing that tactical, talking to contact teams, that contact teams aren't calling dispatch, saying, "Send me rescue in rooms such and such," when we have an RTF component in place and moving down range, they've gotta work together. They gotta trust each other, update each other. Those are things that tend to get 'em off track. If they don't pay attention to that.
Bill Godfrey:
All right, Adam, what about you?
Adam Pendley:
I think, and this is kind of RTF to the triage and then to transport, is realizing that we we're gonna be ready for transports pretty quickly if we're starting to work our patients right. And so closing that communication loop for the RTFs, to tell triage, "Hey, we're in five minutes, we're gonna be ready for a transport," and start working out that location. Transport, I think can help fix it by prompting triage, "Hey, make sure they tell us when they're ready for the transport as quickly, or where they're gonna go, or where we're gonna go, so we can get, we might even be able to move from staging to a little closer, and then be able to come right in when the RTFs are ready.
Pete Kelting:
And that supports making sure your ambulance exchange points are properly set up and secured. We see that a lot of time in class, where it's delayed.
Bill Godfrey:
It's delayed.
Pete Kelting:
Or ambulance will be sent down without proper security so, that communication is huge.
Adam Pendley:
But all three working together, I think, is the key.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay. Otter, how about you?
Ron Otterbacher:
I think, again, broadening out a little bit is understanding, everyone needs to paint the picture. I don't care what your responsibilities are, if you don't paint a picture on what you've done, if you're tactical, you're command, anyone else, if you're contacting, everyone else is guessing. And the other thing is, lines of communication. Again, the rescue task force doesn't be need to be going to the dispatcher. They've got bosses, that's who they need to go to and that's who it needs to be reinforced to, is if you're down range, you're either going to tactical or triage, and then once you're transporting, you're going to transportation. If you understand those responsibilities and that's your lane, that should be the only place you stay.
Bill Godfrey:
I think for me, the most common mistake I see triage make is they get wrapped around the axle about the initial numbers and colors that they were given and they're like, we're missing this, we're missing that. And it's just a mistake, because those are always going to be moving targets. They're going to change by the nature of patients decompensating or being stabilized with some treatment, and instead, the phrase should be, "RTF 1, what do you have left at your location? RTF 2, what do you have left at your location? How many viable patients are left for transport?" And on the transport side, the biggest mistake I think I see there that gets them into real trouble is, they'll send ambulance two up to the ambulance exchange point, and they'll say, "You're gonna pick up one red and two greens." No, don't, you have no idea what's there. You may think you know, but you don't know what's there. Let those individuals manage that. They're the ones that are there, but ambulance three needs to call you back as they're departing the AEP, right? And say, this is what I've got.I've got this many reds, this many yellows, this many greens, I need a hospital. And that's when you can kind of close the loop.
Now let's jump up to medical branch. I think the biggest thing that I see as medical branch is, they want to try to run everything from medical branch. They wanna step on triage and transport, and not let those guys and gals do their job. And instead, they fail to recognize the altitude at which they're at that. Like you said, they're the head coach on the fire and EMS side, they're not the offensive and defensive coaches on the fire and EMS side. That's what triage and transport are supposed to be doing. They're supposed to be making sure that the benchmarks get hit and keeping command informed about what's going on, what the needs are, things like that. Adam, you've done a lot of time in the command post. What are the things that jump out at you on medical that send them sideways?
Adam Pendley:
Well, that, and I think the big thing to understand is that, I know you're the battalion chief. I know you're in charge, but you can't be in two places at once, you can't be down range getting that right now information from tactical to make patient transport decisions. And you can't, at the same time, also be in the command post to help the incident commander understand the medical mission, like the hospitals, and where patients are gonna be transported, and what resources they need and whatnot. Your presence is needed at the command post, make sure you get, however you wanna divvy it out, an engine company that runs both, or you send two officers down there, whatever you wanna do. You have to have triage and transport set up separately from medical branch. And the other thing I see is that they get caught up in the terminology. There's such a push on the fire/EMS side that they want to call it unified command. Early on, it is a murder in progress. Law enforcement is gonna be calling the shots.
It's like me coming to your fire ground scene. If you've got a two-alarm structure fire and I'm a law enforcement officer, I'm not gonna slow you down by me asking to be part of unified command over that structure fire. I'm gonna say, "Hey, I'm here to do law enforcement duties. This is what I need to know. This is how I'm gonna help you." That should work kind of both ways. So it's really, I think it's sometimes a policy or protocol issue. Sometimes it's just an ego issue. Get in there, take the medical branch assignment, support the incident as best you can. And at some point, after we get the whole process going, there will be a time for unified command, but don't slow things down trying to say, "Well, we're not gonna do anything until we've established unified command." That's the number one mistake I think we see.
Ron Otterbacher:
The other thing I see from the medical branch is, a lot of times they'll get there before law enforcement gets there to set the command post. Don't waste that time. You've heard what's going on, you know you got injured people, so what are you gonna do first? While you're there, you call the staging, "Look, I want you to assign someone for triage and transport. Let me know who it is. Triage, you're there. Start working on standing up your RTFs once I give you the word, or once you get down range and get the word, then they're ready to deploy instead of waiting." Well now we need RTFs, and it's 20 minutes in, now, you're trying to send 'em out. They should already be stood up. They should be ready to go. You should be ready to go once they establish where tactical is, and you've already gotten there a lot before everyone else. So once the law enforcement bosses get there, you can integrate with them, and everything's already set up and ready to go.
Bill Godfrey:
Right, yeah, I agree. And Adam, to your point, I think we have to be respectful of the role that we play. Just because we're in the habit of being in command doesn't mean that we have to be in command. And it doesn't mean that there's a legal authority for us to be command. There's nothing wrong with unified command. It has value, it does contribute. It should be your goal to get to unified command. We call it out on the checklist, that you should ultimately get to a unified command. But what we found over time is, that if you try to make that your focus in the first few minutes, like you said, it does slow things down. And I've had fire department people tell me, "It's our policy that we have to have in command. We have to be in command." And I'm thinking to myself, as I'm standing there trying to delicately redirect it, and I'm thinking, I really seriously doubt that that's what your policy says. And if that is what your policy actually says, that needs to be changed, because it's dead wrong. Fire/EMS has been telling law enforcement for 40 years that we want you guys to use ICS, and that it's this shared way of managing things. And yet, when it's your turn to be in charge, we don't wanna let you be in charge. I mean, it's kind of nuts from that perspective. So Karla gave me the 30 minute sign about 45 minutes ago. So let's get wrapped up here, with just going around. Final thoughts, Pete, final thoughts?
Pete Kelting:
Yeah. We started this with, if your event's gone sideways, right, or your incident's gone sideways, how do we get out of it? And you heard me talk about stay organized from the beginning, Ron, we all talk about training. I was just thinking if you took our checklist and kind of split out all the responsibilities and the parts of it, and put a domino on each one and said, "Did we meet all that benchmarks on that first domino? If we didn't, I'm gonna push it, and it's gonna collapse all the rest of the dominoes." And that's where it turns into that cluster is that we're not organized, we haven't trained properly.
Bill Godfrey:
Yep, Ron, final thoughts?
Ron Otterbacher:
The key is recognition, recognizing that it's gone sideways, and once you do, you may have to call time out for 10 seconds, to get it going back the right direction. But recognition's the key. If you don't recognize it, you can't fix it.
Bill Godfrey:
Yep. Adam?
Adam Pendley:
And then the other part that can really help you is some early intelligence. So that's another, in the command post, assigning somebody to do that intelligence function so you can get your head wrapped around not only what happened, but why it's happening. So you can get outta that fog of war as well. So that's something else that can throw your incident into chaos. But again, there's a tool in the toolbox for that, getting intelligence assigned. But like everyone else has said, pick up where you've left off, and just crosscheck, and then start working from there to get back on track.
Bill Godfrey:
And I think my final thought on this is gonna be a tag on to Otter's. And that is, you may not know you've missed something. You may not even know you're in the weeds. You may not even recognize that this thing is clustered up on you. But if you are overwhelmed and overloaded, something is not right.
Ron Otterbacher:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
If you delegate out these responsibilities, nobody in the stack should be overloaded. Busy, yes, but overloaded, no. So if you're feeling overwhelmed and overloaded, get some help. And in the process of getting help, crosschecking another mind that's coming in, whatever was not quite right is gonna reveal itself. And to your point, you take the hit. If I've lost accountability, if I've got five contact teams down range and I don't know where they are or what they're doing, you take the hit as soon as you realize that's what's happening. You say, "Okay, all units stand by. Emergency traffic only. Contact 1 from tactical, gimme your location and your status, great; Contact 2 from tactical, location and status, Contact 3 tactical, location status.
Pete Kelting:
Reset.
Bill Godfrey:
Yes, it burned 60 seconds, but did you just save 10 minutes because you've reset and you've got your situational awareness back. So if you're feeling overwhelmed and overloaded, something's not right. Get some help, and when you figure it out, take the hit and fix it. Gentlemen, thank you very much. This was obviously a good one. We probably could have split this into two parts. I think we had had more we could have done on this. If you haven't liked or subscribed to the podcast, please do so, wherever you consume your podcast. If you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe to the YouTube channel. We've got a lot grander plans on pushing out some more content, not just the podcast. I wanna say thanks to Karla Torres, our producer, as always, for doing a great job in managing these things as we record 'em live, and she is switching us back and forth. Karla, thank you for what you do. And until next time, stay safe.