High-Rise SOG Overhaul – Leadership Lessons from Albuquerque Fire Rescue (AFR)

When Albuquerque Fire Rescue set out to rebuild its high-rise SOG, the department faced a choice that every fire service leader eventually confronts: do the work yourself, or trust your people to do it better.

Deputy Chief Clint Anderson chose the latter — and the result was one of the most operationally rigorous high-rise programs the department had ever produced.

The Problem Was Clear. The Path Forward Was Not.

Albuquerque is a high-rise city. Fifty buildings. Fifty structures that will demand an interior attack if they ever go to work. And as of the start of this project, AFR’s standard operating guidelines for those buildings had not been updated since 2011.

The hazards had not stood still in the intervening years. The buildings had not gotten smaller. The air problem had not gotten easier. But the SOG had not kept pace — and leadership recognized that gap had to close before a fire forced the issue.

Delegate the Mission. Own the Outcome.

The instinct in many departments is to solve problems from the top down. A chief writes a policy. It flows downhill. It lands in a three-ring binder.

Anderson took a different approach. He assembled a five-person working group drawn from the ranks — firefighters and company officers with direct fireground experience and the credibility that comes with it. He gave them the mission, the authority, and the time to do it right. Then he got out of the way.

That decision — trusting the people closest to the problem to solve it — is the leadership lesson at the center of this story.

Start with the Buildings, Not the Paperwork

Before the working group wrote a single line of the new SOG, they did something that most departments skip: they went into every high-rise in the city.

All fifty of them.

Pre-incident plans. Floor layouts. Stairwell access. Standpipe locations. Elevator configurations. The working group documented what their crews would actually face when the alarm dropped — not what they assumed they would face. That foundation changed everything about the SOG they eventually wrote.

Solutions That Cost Almost Nothing

The working group didn’t stop at planning documents. They identified operational problems and fixed them with the resources they had.

A hands-free SCBA bottle carry strap — nearly zero cost — addressed one of the most persistent fatigue problems on the stair climb. Patient mover protocols for unconscious victim removal gave crews a system for one of the most physically demanding scenarios in high-rise operations. Both solutions were field-tested, simple, and immediately deployable.

The message was direct: you don’t need a budget line to solve a problem. You need people who understand the job well enough to recognize one.

High-Rise Training That Meant Business

When the SOG was complete, AFR didn’t hand it out and call it done.

They built a 13-story training evolution to validate it — full gear, on air, in low-visibility conditions, with live victim rescues built into the drill. Every crew put the new protocols to work in conditions that approximated what an actual fire would demand.

That training discipline is what separates a document from a program. AFR built a program.

The Leadership Principle

What Anderson documented in Fire Engineering is not a technical article about air management or SOG formatting. It is a case study in what happens when a leader trusts his people with a hard problem.

The working group delivered because they were given ownership. The training worked because it was designed by people who understood the stakes. The program is credible because it was built from the ground up — starting with the buildings, not the binder.

In a profession where the standard of care is measured in seconds and measured again in courtrooms, that kind of deliberate preparation is not optional.

It is the job.

“Give Your People the Reins” By Clint Anderson | Originally published in Fire Engineering | Adapted for the Firefighter Air Coalition

Read:  Give Your People the Reins

The Firefighter Air Coalition provides resources, model code language, and advocacy support for departments working to improve air safety in high-rise and large-area operations. Learn more at aircoalition.org.