ROBINSON: With regard to assessing the damage, do you have a scale you use as to how you respond; is there a priority--?
LIEUTENANT JOHN LOPICCOLO: Yes--
ROBINSON: --Starting with lifesaving, and then what would go from there?
LOPICCOLO: Yeah, we use, we have an acronym called RECEO--
ROBINSON: Mhm--
LOPICCOLO: --and uh, it stands for “Rescue,” first. And we go in this order: “Rescue;” um, then we start with, second is “Exposures,” and then “Confinement,” and then “Extinguishment,” and then, um, like, what we call “Overhaul.”
So when we, when we--”size up,” I think is a better word than “assess”--when we size up a situation, that’s the order we go by, is RECEO. So, when we had a call, you know, people trapped, or, uh, structure fire, we use that acronym RECEO, and that kind of gives us, like, a guideline to go by, in that order.
Excerpted from: John LoPiccolo Oral History Interview. Born-digital recording(s) converted to mp3 format for online access in 2012 from 16bit 44.1khz WAV file archival master recording.
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