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FAST training

A Firefighter Assist and Search Team (FAST), also known as a Rapid Intervention Team (RIT), is a special team that comprises two or more firefighters dedicated solely to search and rescue of other firefighters in distress. FAST shall have no other purpose during an incident. Multiple alarm fires require multiple FAST teams.

Through the late 1960s and early 1970s the London Fire Brigade introduced RIT procedures using EATL and EASE equipment (Emergency Air Transfer Lines & Emergency Air Supply Equipment). This consisted of designated firefighter search & rescue teams (termed Emergency Crews) stationed at SCBA control entry points, equipped with emergency SCBA specifically designed to be worn by unconscious, injured or trapped firefighters.

Fire Departments should utilize a Rapid Intervention Team (RIT) at all structure fires with good reason. More fire fighters die in residential occupancies than in any other type of structure fire and are typically the most common type of occupancy that fire fighters encounter. Both the NFPA and OSHA have requirements for some type of RIT at structure fires. These standards requiring that a minimum of two fire fighters be standing by outside in full protective equipment, while other crew members are working in a hazardous atmosphere, are the result of a series of incidents where fire fighters became lost, trapped, or disoriented while fighting a structure fire without a RIT present.

Each FAST member shall be equipped in the customary manner prescribed by standard operating procedures (SOPs), including full turnout gear, SCBA and PASS (PASS-Personal Alert Safety System) alarm, and shall also have a portable radio that uses frequency from the fireground frequency, but available to the Incident Command Officer at the command post. Additional equipment for each FAST member includes, but is not limited to, hand tools, hand light and search rope.

FAST, or RIT members also carry a bag known as a RAT or Rapid Air Transport bag which slips over SCOTT, MSA, and DRAEGER SCBA bottles and holds an extra mask to tap into the bottle to provide and downed firefighter with air.

The FAST concept is not universal, with many fire protection agencies training all personnel in rescue duties. Rescue teams are then designated based on apparatus order in the dispatch to a call in which SOP's require that rescue teams be held at entry points. This is the basic concept of the "two-in, two-out" rule.