Albuquerque Fire Rescue Rebuilds High-Rise SOG From the Ground Up – Featured in FAC’s 2026 FDIC Fire Engineering Supplement

Albuquerque (NM) Fire Rescue Driver Matthew Klosterman — AFR’s 2025 Firefighter of the Year and chair of the department’s Pre-Incident Planning Committee — contributed a feature article to the FAC Supplement documenting how AFR rebuilt their high-rise program from the ground up.

AFR serves a city with 50 high-rise buildings. Their high-rise SOG hadn’t been updated since 2011. Klosterman and a team of five credible, motivated firefighters spent more than a year fixing that — and their process is a replicable model for any department willing to do the work.

“It is not a matter of if, but when, your department will face a serious high-rise fire.” — Matthew Klosterman, Albuquerque Fire Rescue

It Started at the Kitchen Table

Three captains at AFR’s downtown high-rise station started the conversation informally. That kitchen table talk grew into AFR’s High-Rise Working Group — five members with a clear mandate to modernize the department’s high-rise operations from the SOG to the equipment in firefighters’ hands.

The initiative ran in parallel with AFR’s Pre-Incident Planning Committee, which completed detailed preplans for all 50 of Albuquerque’s high-rise buildings. That foundational knowledge — knowing your buildings before the fire — proved to be one of the most valuable assets the Working Group had.

Build the Right Team First

Klosterman is direct: team selection is the most consequential decision your department will make. High-rise improvement demands sustained effort over a year or more. The people on your team need fireground credibility — not necessarily by rank or seniority, but by reputation.

“Your department probably has highly credible and highly motivated junior members who can make strong contributions to your high-rise improvement team.”

The team needs at least one strong project manager to keep things moving and at least one person who can translate ideas into a clearly written document. AFR kept their group to five members — tight enough to make decisions, diverse enough to challenge ideas and arrive at better ones.

Know Your Buildings Before the Fire Does

Detailed pre-incident knowledge shaped AFR’s SOG in practical ways. AFR discovered that FDC vandalism was a significant problem in Albuquerque — a finding that drove new equipment purchases and dedicated apparatus operator training that would never have happened without walking those buildings first.

“Your SOG must be tailored to your department and your high-rise buildings to be credible and relevant on the fireground.”

A generic SOG copied from another department doesn’t prepare your firefighters. A SOG built on real knowledge of your real buildings does.

Fight Fatigue Before the Fire Starts

Every bit of energy your firefighters burn in the stairwell is energy they don’t have at the fire floor. AFR developed a simple, low-cost SCBA bottle carrying strap that allows hands-free cylinder carry during stair climbs — a girth hitch to the valve stem, clipped to the back frame. It costs almost nothing. It works.

AFR also solved a problem most departments don’t train on until it’s too late: removing an unconscious victim down multiple flights of stairs. Their answer — lightweight patient movers — proved highly effective in departmentwide training and added almost no cost or complexity.

Train Like the Building Is Trying to Kill You

AFR’s primary training drill was a multi-company evolution: a 13-story stair climb in full gear, on air, in a low-visibility stairway — followed by deploying a charged hoseline and conducting victim rescues with heavy dummies.

“AFR firefighters would rather make mistakes in training than at 3:00 a.m. when everything is on the line.”

They also built a training video library covering everything from hose deployment to sprinkler control valve operation. The production quality didn’t matter. The content did. Those videos now anchor AFR’s ongoing high-rise training program.

What This Means for Your Department

AFR’s story is proof that a motivated team with the right process can build a high-rise program that works — regardless of how much high-rise experience the department had when they started.

Air is at the center of all of it. Cylinder management during stairwell ascents, hands-free carry for extended operations, training before the alarm sounds — these are the operational margins that determine outcomes.

The Firefighter Air Coalition put this knowledge in front of tens of thousands of firefighters at FDIC this year. Now bring it home. Print this article. Take it to your chief. Start the work.

A Historic Milestone for Firefighter Air Safety Education

For the third consecutiveyear,  Firefighter Air authored the entire Fire Engineering 2026 FDIC Supplement.

Every article. Every page. Every tactical insight in one of the fire service’s most widely read and respected annual publications — written by FAC contributors and subject matter experts, reaching tens of thousands of firefighters across the country.

This is what it looks like when the fire service’s leading voice on firefighter air safety gets the platform it deserves.

The 2026 Supplement covers the full spectrum of air management challenges facing today’s firefighter — from establishing new high-rise operations policies, to tactical solutions for high-rise and underground firefighting, hose operations and energy hazards in high-rise operations, all written by practitioners who have lived these problems and developed real solutions.

Matthew Klosterman joined Albuquerque Fire Rescue in 2018. He was selected by his peers as AFR Firefighter of the Year in 2025 and chairs AFR’s Pre-Incident Planning Committee. He served on AFR’s High-Rise Working Group alongside Battalion Chief Matt Bodle, Battalion Chief Donovan Jacks, Captain Nick Gallagher, and Captain Doug Hearon.

🔗 Read Matthew Klosterman’s full article in Fire Engineering: fireengineering.com

🔗 Explore all FAC resources on high-rise air operations: aircoalition.org