Fire pre-plans your crews will actually use
A pre-plan is only worth the work if it's in front of the crew when they need it — turning out the door, not filed in a binder back at the station. Most departments have a stack of pre-plans that are three years out of date and unreachable on the rig. Here's how to build a pre-planning program that holds up on the worst day.
What a pre-plan is for
A pre-incident plan (the concept behind NFPA 1620) gathers what your crews would want to know about a building before they arrive: how it's built, what's inside, where the hazards are, and how to get water on it. The payoff is a first-arriving officer who already has a size-up in their head instead of building one from scratch in the driveway.
What belongs in one
Keep it to what actually changes decisions on scene:
- Construction & occupancy — building type, size, use, and how many people might be inside.
- Hazards — hazmat, storage, structural concerns, anything that would hurt a crew.
- Water supply — nearest hydrants and flow, drafting sites, and the fire department connection (FDC).
- Utilities & access — electric, gas, and water shutoffs; gates, lockboxes, and the best apparatus positioning.
- Contacts — a responsible party you can reach at 3 a.m.
Why the binder fails
- It's back at the station, or on one rig, when the call comes in.
- It goes stale — a business changes hands, a hydrant goes out of service, and the page doesn't get updated.
- Nobody can find the right sheet fast enough for it to matter during a call.
- Hydrant and pre-plan information live in two different places instead of on one map.
A pre-plan you can't reach is just paperwork
The whole value is availability under stress. If it isn't on the device in the cab and tied to a map, it won't shape the first five minutes — which are the five minutes that count.
Building a program that lasts
- Start with your target hazards. Schools, care facilities, large commercial, anything with life-safety or water-supply challenges — not every shed in the district.
- Put it on a map. Pre-plans and hydrants belong on the same map so a crew sees the building and its water supply together.
- Make updates painless. If fixing an out-of-service hydrant or a changed occupancy takes thirty seconds, it'll actually get done.
- Make it reachable en route. On a phone or tablet in the cab, not a binder in the office.
Leatherhead keeps pre-plans on the map and on the rig
Mapped pre-plans and hydrants — hazards, shutoffs, FDC, flow — current and reachable from any phone on the way to the call. Part of the same platform that runs your roster, apparatus, and mutual aid.
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