Initial training at the fire academy can be exhilarating — and overwhelming. There’s so much to learn and retain, so many topics to cover. Joseph L. Kitchen, Fire Chief of the Bath Township Fire Department (Lima, Ohio) knows it well, “To become a certificated career professional firefighter (Firefighter II) in Ohio, you must complete 240 hours of training, including hands on skills and classroom lectures.” Yet, even with that extensive number of hours, there’s always more to learn and automatic sprinkler systems is a great example. He continues, “Of those 240 hours, there’s one unit on sprinkler systems and it’s the basics — what an FDC is, what a riser is, what sprinklers do. The content is good, but it doesn’t cover firefighting in a sprinklered building when you have an activation, how to interact with the sprinkler system, and how to coordinate fire attack with the sprinkler system. That’s why our department requires all personnel to complete the modules on the FM Fire Service Learning Network starting with the Fighting Fire In Sprinklered Buildings certificate — to close the sprinkler systems training gap left after our basic Academy hours.”

Chief Kitchen believes that it’s not just the mechanics of sprinklers that firefighters need to know, they also need to understand what the goal is of a sprinkler system when it activates in response to a fire. “We are trying to save the building, not the contents. Contents in the activation area are going to get wet, but if the system was designed for the occupancy and it’s functioning properly, it’s going to help us save the building, which is the greatest loss risk,” Kitchen explains. Sometimes the building owner or management can be anxious to shut the sprinklers off, but that can be a high risk move. “That system is engineered to save the building and you need to let it do its job. The solution to saving you from conflict with the property folks is to collaborate with them before there’s ever an incident. You must know the businesses in your service area — meet the owner and manager, visit for a walkthrough to understand the business and its processes, ask questions about the hazards and the building systems, learn about access like key codes for gates, and collaborate on a response plan. Then you’ll have the relationship in place so you can write a proper pre-plan, practice staging based on that pre-plan, and bring in your mutual aid companies to practice, too. If a call does come in, seeing familiar faces at the response makes a huge difference.”

Fact-finding about the property should culminate in a detailed pre-plan for response in case of an activation or incident at the location. Chief Kitchen cautions that it’s not just fires — his department has had calls for medical emergencies and industrial accidents at large facilities that required access and familiarity with the property and its operations. Even something as seemingly small as going in the wrong gate can cost you precious time. So, his department emphasizes pre-planning and supporting that process with training and software that equips officers with the tools, knowledge, and scheduled time to go out to high risk properties. He considers pre-planning to be essential firefighting work even though there’s no red stuff requiring wet stuff. “With our large commercial-industrial base in a town of less than 10,000 residents, I think we’ve already experienced what a lot of smaller communities are going through now with warehousing, trucking, and manufacturing moving into suburban and rural areas,” Chief Kitchen says. “We have numerous industrial occupancies, including an automotive engine assembly plant and a manufacturing facility that’s 1.4 million square feet making detergent pods with plastic bottles and cardboard boxes stacked as high as you can see with an automated racking system and unmanned forklifts. No fire department should roll up to that without a preplan and training on that plan.”

Kitchen is aware that this feels like a big ask for many departments, especially small, rural, and volunteer ones whose resources and personnel can be limited. “I completely understand the fire chiefs who are thinking, ‘How am I supposed to pre-plan for all these facilities? I don’t have enough personnel or resources’,” Kitchen sympathizes. “We’ve had the same issues. We’re a combination department that’s mostly part-time. We’ve had budgets not passed. We’ve had staffing shortages. We don’t have all the latest equipment or the bells and whistles. I advise the overwhelmed chief to stop looking at the mountain and instead find one or two small things the department can do to make progress up the hill. Even if you do only one pre-plan every two months, at the end of the year you’ll have six more pre-plans than you did before.”

Chief Kitchen’s suggestions for how departments with limited resources can make progress are:

• Start with the training piece and get all your personnel registered with the FM Fire Service Learning Network using their group registration feature. Then require them to finish FM’s training modules within a realistic period of time. “After they complete FM’s modules, they won’t know everything about pre-planning and automatic sprinkler systems, but they’ll know a lot more than they did before and it will be practical things they can apply right now,” he reasons.
• For preplanning, prioritize facilities with the highest hazards, highest potential loss of life, or highest potential risk to the community’s livelihood. Even if you just stop in to introduce yourself or make a call to set up the meeting, you’ve started the ball rolling. Don’t worry about how many facilities there are to do; every preplan you complete is a preplan you didn’t have before.
• A preplan can be simple and low tech. Preplanning software is great, but if you can’t afford it, you can still use a 3 ring binder and keep it in your first due piece.
• Empower officers to do the preplanning with their crews (decentralized model). “We sometimes fall short in prevention because of so much of what we do is reacting to emergencies,” Kitchen reflects. “We aren’t used to being proactive. Preplanning can get shortchanged when resources are tight. Find a way. Divide up occupancies among shifts, send companies out to do it. FM’s Pre-Incident Planning for the Fire Service certificate is excellent and will help prepare your crews to do preplanning.”
• You can work with the business to have them do some tasks for you to help you know the facility better. Email them a basic checklist of things you’d like from them to give you the basic info about their facility and business, like an explanation of the business, site plan, gate access information, and fire protection systems specifications.
• Build a relationship with the property owners and occupants. Even if they are a little hesitant at first because they are worried about code enforcement, you can reassure them that’s not why you are there and encourage them to work with you. Kitchen advises, “When you are on a preplan visit and you see something like a coffee pot plugged into an extension cord, that’s not the time to bring that up. It sets the wrong tone. You can follow up on that later and advise them what to do improve safety and be code compliant.”
• Stay in touch with businesses. Owners, tenants, and occupancies change. If your municipality doesn’t notify you of these changes, your response plan may become out of date. Kitchen remembers one facility that warehoused dog food when they did their initial preplan. A subsequent follow up visit revealed that the facility now warehoused tires. “That was a huge change in usage and risk,” Kitchen recalls. “And the fire suppression system was not designed for tires. If you’ve got the relationship, the owner or tenant is more likely to give you a heads up or you’ll catch it during your periodic check-in…but you have to actually be doing that. Then you can help them avoid disaster by explaining the issues caused by the occupancy change.”

Chief Kitchen has one more secret for resource-challenged departments, “Fire protection systems are your partner because they are doing suppression for you. You can do the basics with a small number of personnel and the first due resources you have. Check the panel. Confirm there is a fire and where it is. Confirm that the sprinkler is flowing water as designed and is appropriate for the occupancy and contents. Confirm the sufficiency of the water supply to the sprinkler system and connect to the Fire Department Connection. Station a firefighter to monitor the main valve. Station a firefighter to monitor the pump. And let the sprinklers run! That will usually give you enough time to formulate a plan and staff it so you can successfully contain and suppress the fire.”

According to Kitchen, the heart of blue collar America has a lot of unique hazard large buildings, whether it’s electronics warehousing or energy generation or minerals processing or manufacturing lines. “The approach to responding to fires and other incidents at these properties is completely different than a ‘normal’ run to a house fire that’s our bread and butter,” Kitchen emphasizes. “We can’t ignore the commercial and industrial properties. That’s courting disaster. They may be low probability events, but they are incredibly high risk. And if you lose one of those properties even if there are no injuries, the impact to the community in terms of economics and jobs takes it far beyond one lost structure. We must value preplanning and training for these non-residential occupancies or it will catch up to us. On the scene of an emergency is not the time to be learning about the site plan, building construction, operations, occupancy, and goods.”

Chief Kitchen has seen the difference FM Fire Service Learning Network training has made in his department. He views the training as vital to everyone even if you don’t have industrial or high density commercial. Every jurisdiction has schools, hospitals, shopping centers, restaurants, and other buildings of public assembly. FM’s modules apply there as well. “Here’s my pitch you can feel free to steal to convince your higher ups that the FM Fire Service Learning Network training is worth it,” Kitchen offers. “FM is a leader in engineering and research specifically in the use of fire protection systems in commercial and industrial buildings. FM uses science, engineering, and technology in conjunction with real world application and collaboration with fire departments from all over the world to build the best training that they can. Their modules bring that learning to you from their research labs and their experience in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, and more. Why would you not take advantage of that free expertise in their modules to close the training gap we have between learning the components of a sprinkler system and actually knowing how to preplan for and use it to your advantage at a response to a protected property. The training is concise, professional, well-produced, and gives you what you don’t get at the Academy. And it costs you nothing. Why wouldn’t you require it?”

About Chief Joseph L. Kitchen

Joseph L. Kitchen, OFC, is Fire Chief of the Bath Township Fire Department. He joined the department in 1990, as a volunteer. He served six years as lieutenant and was appointed to the position of Fire Chief in April of 2002. Chief Kitchen holds numerous certifications, including Level II firefighter, fire officer III, paramedic, fire investigator, fire safety inspector, ACLS, PALS, GEMS, PHTLS and PEARS. He is also a HAZMAT / weapons of mass destruction technician, assistant fire service instructor, and EMS continuing education instructor. Chief Kitchen is a graduate of Bath High School, Apollo Career Center Public Safety Program, and Rhodes State College. he holds degrees in both Emergency Medical Services and Technical Studies / Fire Science. Drawing on his background is in industrial firefighting, planning, and emergency response, Chief Kitchen works closely with major corporations including, Ford Motor Company, Procter & Gamble, Dana Corporation, PPG/Meto-Kote Corp., Nickles Bakery, United States Plastics, and Nelson Packaging Co. He is the President of the Ohio Fire Chiefs’ Association. Chief Kitchen also serves on FM’s fire service advisory board.

Chief Kitchen volunteers for the Lima Rotary Club, Salvation Army, West Ohio Food Bank, and Allen County’s Safe Community Coalition and Health Department Emergency Preparedness Committee. He speaks to Bath Township students about leadership, careers, and decision making as well as teaching fire safety and training school staff in emergency preparedness and fire prevention. Chief Kitchen has won numerous awards, including “Fire Officer of the Year” from the Ohio Department of Public Safety, Rhodes State College “Outstanding Alumni Award,” and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Lima Memorial Health System. Chief Kitchen resides in Bath Township where he enjoys attending live music venues, concerts, collecting vinyl records, and cheering for the Cincinnati Reds.