Here is a good video from our buddy Dale Pekel. Dale has a series of great training videos. In this video, he shows some basics about size up and reading smoke.
We have to do more of this, and like Dale says, be proactive. Train hard and we’ll see you on the “big one.”
First, let thank you all for the comments. There are no right or wrong answers, just great thoughts and ideas for us to all think about and learn from. Now, the rest of the story.
The rest of the story.
There is nothing earth shattering here, but I learned two valuable lessons on this fire.
When we pulled up on this fire, the first arriving engines were all two man cabs. We didn’t have jump seats in any of our trucks at the time. I did some digging and found out that this fire was in 1997.
The drive was narrow and we got hung up in the ditch, blocking the drive right off the bat. Luckily we had multiple trucks rolling at the dispatch and we had adequate personnel.
The first crew stretched a 1 3/4 inch line in through the side B door in the kitchen and advanced up the stairs. The first floor had no smoke or fire at this time. It became apparent fairly quickly that the initial attack was not making any progress.
We advanced a second line, a 2 1/2 inch stretch up the same stairs and made a very fast knock down. The importance of this is that we did this with less than 1000 gallons of water. Why do I stress this?
I have had debates about using large lines when water supplies are limited or late in developing. When asked about using a larger line the response is that they would not use one because they will run out of water too fast. My rebuttal is always that they may just get enough gpm on the fire to put it out before you run out of water. That is exactly what we did. Oh, and two guys handled the hose!
So, lesson 1 is big fire equals big water. If the fire is advanced enough that you will run out of water, it wont make any difference what size your line is. But, the larger line will put out more fire in that short amount of time.
While we were up stairs fighting fire, there was a crew in the living room doing some work. They had started salvage operations in the unaffected part of the house. Understand that we didn’t need extensive ventilation and we had adequate manpower. But, they stacked and covered everything in the living room and did the same in other rooms that were appropriate.
This ended up paying off big with the homeowner. As happy as they were about us putting out their fire, they were just as happy, or even more so, that we protected what had not been damaged by fire but would have been by the water. When they were interviewed by the paper they went on and on about our efforts to protect all of their property.
So, lesson number 2 is to take the time to perform salvage operations if manpower and conditions permit. It is something that is too often overlooked.
By the way, there was no basement here, but all of you are correct in assuming this until you know for sure. All of the responses were great and I really appreciate the time that you took to share.
Stay safe and be careful.
What size line would you take?
This was a fire I was on one night over ten years ago. It was a great learning fire and the tactics had to be changed for a successful stop.
I can tell you that a great deal went right this night and there were things that happened away from the fire that paid huge dividends.
If you are the first arriving unit and officer, explain where your going and what your doing. I’ll give you a little information to help you along.
-This is in a rural area, no hydrants.
-The house is old. Old newspaper and straw were found in the walls during overhaul.
-We had plenty of manpower.
-On side B there is a door that leads to the kitchen and the stairs go up from the kitchen on that side, just so you know.
I would like to see a great deal of feedback on this one. Please let me know what operations would be going on away from the fire. After I get enough comments, I will post what we did and why it worked.
As always, thanks for your continued support and use this however you want for your training purposes.
Stay safe and be careful out there.
Since day one in the fire service, we have each had that one thing that we always carry in our gear. A screw driver, pliers, wire cutters, rope or webbing. Over the years we might accumulate more or downsize to just what we need.
What do you carry on your person?
I am always curious when I hear some state that they don’t want any extra weight on them, that their gear is heavy enough.
As you can see, we recently were issued the external harnesses. We had members that complained about the weight and extra attention that needed to be paid to getting into the gear. I personally have not had any problems and I will post on these harnesses another time.
The matter at hand is “what’s in your pockets?” I have things that I always carry with me no matter what and there are some items that I would like to add and just haven’t done it yet.
I keep a 30 foot piece of webbing, two cords, wire cutters, (need new ones), regular pliers, screw drivers, a center punch and I wear a flash light on my coat. There are some items that I need to add, but for now this is what I have. For example, I would like to add a 25 and 50 foot section of 8mm rope, wooden wedges and a new pair of spring loaded wire cutters.
Flash light on the coat.
What do you carry and why? Do you have any great stories of needing any of your tools and were glad you had them?
Share your input and give us your recommendations and suggestions on what to carry and why.
Stay safe and be careful out there.
This is an incident that could turn out to be very interesting.
This is going to address the use of back up lines and when they are deployed.
I had an interesting conversation about assignments, as you could tell from the previous post.
This discussion circled around the deployment of the second apparatus on the scene. This is not a metro response where engines do engine work and so on. Rather, this is where the second in unit is assigned upon arrival.
With this picture in mind, what does your second in unit do? Does it backup the first in crew with a hand line? Does it perform ventilation? Just where do you order this second in crew and what are the tactical priorities?
I believe that there is a time and situation for using the second in unit for a back up line, but not automatically just because they are the second unit there.
What do you think and why? You gave some great insight into run procedures, so I know there will be some great conversation on this one.
Stay low and be safe.
If you pulled up on this store front or one like it, what is your first course of action?
With a fire or just a haze, one of the first things that needs to be done, with an attack line ready, is to start looking above the drop ceiling. Even if it is drywall, you have to see what is above you in these occupancies.
These types of occupancies are found in fast food establishments, sit down restaurants and strip mall type buildings. Most of these new commercial buildings are all light weight, truss, engineered lumber construction.
By lifting the tiles and breaching the ceiling, we know how far the fire has advanced before committing people into these buildings. The concealed spaces are important for initial fire attack in these situations. It might indicate that the front door is as far as you go.
You have to consider, however, that the overhang outside the front door could be compromised if fire is found in the void spaces of the ceiling. Fire could be racing through the soffit of the overhang out front. Additional weight of signs will also cause early failure of these building features.
Remember to think on your feet and be sound in your decisions. These decisions come from experience and training. So, train hard and often.
Stay safe and be careful.
Photo from the Fillmore Gazette
What do you notice that could be crucial to your decisions?
We have recently had discussions about size up, so I thought this would be a good picture to post.
If you are the officer pulling up on this one and nobody is out front, what are some immediate “red flags?”
I know this one is easy, but it just drives the point home.
What if this was a vacant house and you noted the same conditions and “red flags?” Would it change how you approach this fire?
What would be your tactics and how much would you risk as the first arriving officer?
Let’s talk fire!
Stay safe and keep training.
The Beverly Hills Supper Club was remodeled and upgraded and opened in 1971. It had previously gone through many changes and the original building had burned in the late 1930′s.
It had changed hands, sat vacant and been an off and on hot spot for several years until it was the primary club for top notch entertainment and high class amenities.
On May 28th, 1977, the place was packed with visitors that were expecting a night of glamor and star entertainer John Davidson. It is uncertain exactly how many patrons were in attendance that evening, but estimations put the number at approximately 3,000 at the entire facility with 1300 in the Cabaret Room. There were multiple events taking place in multiple rooms which were all filled to or over capacity, according to reports.
In the Cabaret Room alone, people were squeezed in and sat in aisles and ramps that would be exit pathways. Some of these ramps led to the stage and people were placed there in order to get as many people into the room as possible.
Smoke was first noticed in the Zebra Room by two waitresses sometime around 2100 hours. They noticed a dense smoke in the room and they notified management. The fire department was called within a few minutes and extinguishers were used on the fire with no effectiveness. Within 10 minutes, the fire had spread to the Cabaret Room and things would turn tragic very fast.
Here is quote from one of the first arriving firefighters about what he saw, “When I got to the inside doors, which is about 30 feet inside the building, I saw these big double doors, and people were stacked like cordwood. There were clear up to the top. They just kept diving out on each other trying to get out. I looked back over the pile of – it wasn’t dead people, there were dead and alive in that pile – and I went in and I just started to grab them two at a time and pull them off the stack, and drag them out…” , Bruce Rath, a Fort Thomas firefighter.
The results of this night were that 165 people lost their lives that night. The reports were not much different from the Cocoanut Grove fire some 30 years prior.
-Overcrowding of the facility, namely the Cabaret Room. The room had a listed occupancy load of 615 -756 people. That night, it was estimated that nearly 1300 people were in the room, almost double the allowed load.
-For the size of the facility Kentucky law required that there should have been at least 27.5 exits for the occupant load, there were only 16.5.
-The wiring was considered inadequate and it was stated that it would have never passed inspection by an electrician who inspected the electrical work.
-There were no fire walls to prohibit the spread of fire from one area to another.
-No sprinkler system and no audible fire alarm system.
-The local volunteer fire department acknowledged that there were issues, but had not ordered any of them to be corrected. (I was unable to find out if the department had fire or building codes ordinances at the time of the fire.)
-There were reports of locked doors.
These factors are all too familiar. We see the same failures in these large loss of life fires in assembly occupancies. We sometimes take our inspections and prevention activities lightly because it is not “fun” or interesting to some. Remember these fires and the lives that have been lost because of poor prevention measures and a lack of life safety measures in these buildings.
Below are some links where you can get more information and much of the sources for this post were from the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Until next time, stay safe, do your inspections with conviction and stay low.
http://www.enquirer.com/beverlyhills/lives.html
Since posting the video on PPV, I have been sent links to many other videos on PPV, ventilation and flashover. Some were good and some not so good. This one I thought was a good video to sit down and take a look at with your crew.
There are some things that can be learned from this video. We weren’t there from the onset, but valuable information can be taken away from this video.
If you have links for videos or your own that you think would be beneficial, pass them on to us and we will take a look and post them if appropriate.
Take care, stay safe and stay low.
On May 17th, 1923 in Camden, South Carolina, over 300 people were packed in the Cleveland school.
The Cleveland School circa 1920's
They were there for a children’s graduation play that ended in tragedy. News from the small town would be known all over the country by morning.
The play was a tradition that would be the last that night. It was announced that the school would close after this school year and that these would be the last students to pass through these halls.
The building was a two-story, wooden frame building with the auditorium and stage on the second floor. The key feature of the second floor was a 30 inch staircase which was the only exit from the second floor.
As was customary in those days, oil lamps were burned when night fell. They hung along the corridor and above the stage. At approximately 21:00 hours a lamp that was above the stage fell and started a fire on the stage. There were attempts to put the fire out with coats but the fire spread to the stage curtains.
With the room being filled beyond capacity and the obstacle of chairs, the exiting of people was difficult at best. As people realized that the exit was jammed, they started jumping out of the second story windows and were severely injured. The room was dark, filled with smoke and getting hotter and more putrid.
As the stair way was full with people stuck on them, they finally gave way from the weight, spilling them to the floor below. At the same time, the upper floor was also slipping onto the floor below.
That night 77 people lost their lives at a school event that should have ended with celebration and refreshments. Instead the community was tasked with finding the bodies of those who did not make it out.
There is a reason we have fire codes and building codes. It also shows the importance of inspections and code enforcement. Over the years we have made great strides in fire prevention and fire codes. But, we have to make sure that corridors are free of clutter and that protection systems are in place and maintained.
Stay diligent and keep your community safe before the fire starts.
You can find more on this fire at http://www.scarboroughgenealogy.com/Cleveland.htm
Pictures are from the same site listed above.
Last night I had the pleasure to listen to and get in on a discussion on Art Chief Reason’s new FirefighterNetcast radio show. The show was fantastic and the content was interesting and stimulating. However, the topic that came up that really got my attention was when he and Dave dove into the subject of risk vs. benefit and safety vs. extinguishment. I know, I know, this has been beaten with a sledge hammer over our collective heads for the last year or so. But, I just can’t figure one thing out; when did it become okay to perform different risk analysis and size-ups for assumed different buildings?
Now listen, I understand that if a vacant building is leaning and crumbling you have to take a different approach, but overall, your first 90 seconds should be very similar, if not the same, on every a call. I don’t buy into the segregation of calls and how you look at them in theoretical terms. I think that this is a crash course for failure. Oh, and I get that a commercial building is different from a residential building, but the basics are the same.
Before you start slamming me on this, hear me out. We are taught as company officers to size-up a call and/or building as soon as we get the dispatch. We should be familiar with our area and resources that are or are not backing us up. We should be more than competent at basic size-up skills and ideally get a look at three sides of the building before we ever get off the apparatus. We can determine within seconds and relay to our back stepper what size line to pull and give instructions to incoming units before we hit the ground.
We have heard of and there are some teaching victim profiling; determining if there is someone in the building or not and if it is survivable. While I understand what is trying to be done in regards to keeping ourselves safe, why should it be any different from your size-up and basic training as a company officer? A building is tenable or it is not, no matter if it is occupied or not occupied.
Decisions, decisions.
It seems to me that the real problem is intermingled between fewer fires, thus we have less real-world experience. The second part of this is that we have not compensated for that lack of real-world experience as a whole. The experience we cannot help, but the training has to change for company officers and improve.
The fire officer when confronted with a crisis situation pulls from past experiences to determine what he should do. Those past experiences include actual calls, education and training. We have already determined that we are all getting less experience because fires are down. The other part of this is that the training has to be meaningful and relevant.
If our training doesn’t match what we are expected to do under extreme circumstances, we will fail to make the proper decision at those times. So, when the company officer pulls up and has a working fire in any building, he is pulling from his past experiences, or lack of, to make his decision on a course of action to take. This is critical and I think it goes back to mastering the basics and being able to identify potentially hazardous conditions at any fire without trying to run down two separate matrixes based on occupied/unoccupied. That is just confusing.
When an officer pulls up to the building or situation his experience and training will kick in if trained appropriately. Whether it is a two-story, occupied house or a single-story vacant house, the process should be the same and the decisions made from the same variables identified by the company officer.
–What is showing?
–What kind of construction?
–Life safety indicators?
–Conditions at present time and where will they be in 5 minutes?
–360
–Is it safe to enter or is it not?
These seem simple, but several other factors can be determined from each of these and the company officer will make these decisions in seconds and minutes. If the building is not safe to enter, don’t enter. If there is a chance to search safely, whether occupied or not, search. If the building can safely be entered to extinguish the fire, whether occupied or not, enter and extinguish the fire. If the building is not structurally sound, occupied or not, don’t enter. Why make it so hard?
I truly believe we can over think some of this. If we have officers making bad decisions, we need to look at our training and drills. We need to look at what emphasis we put on career/professional development and make sure our fire ground leaders are competent. But, don’t confuse the issue by buzz phrases and methods that just complicate fire ground decisions.
The bottom line is that the sooner we put a fire out, the better opportunity any victims will have. Use common sense and training and past experiences to make prudent, sound decisions that take into account all factors.
I am sure that I will rub someone the wrong way with this, but I have been kicking this around for a long time and thought I would try to put in the blogosphere. So, no offense meant and train hard and frequently. Don’t complicate things, remember our mission and master the basics.
Tenable or not tenable, vacant or not.
Look for secondary means of egress for basements too.
We have all heard and been taught to do a 360 of the structure during a working fire.
There is some debate, but this is becoming common practice and there are several things to look for.
The picture is a bulk head for a basement. We have always been taught and trained to look for and create a secondary means of egress for upper floors. Well, it’s no different for basements.
When you make entry, especially if the fire has not been isolated, make sure that either you open it during the 360 if it’s not locked or that the information is relayed to the next in crew to cut the lock.
Cut the locks to ensure crews can exit if needed.
It may be as simple as cutting a padlock or as difficult as forcing a door or security bars.
It is important to create this exit to safety for the crews operating inside. It might just be what saves their lives.
Stay safe, be smart and train hard.
Do you see the problem here?
Sorry about the picture, I had to use the camera on my phone and it just didn’t turn out. Click on the picture for a larger view.
I zipped past this place about four times without even noticing.
Can you say exposure problem?
This is a fireworks wholesaler and storage facility. As you all know, fireworks are flammable and have been known to cause some catastrophic fires and explosions.
Well, as you can see in the foreground, there is a very large LP Gas tank and smaller tanks aside it.
This is obviously a tank farm and refilling station for mobile tankers.
What is not so easy to see is that the distance between the building and the LP tank is probably less than 75 feet. This is just a guess, but it is close.
This could create a huge problem and the area from which I took the picture is the four lane highway that is heavily traveled on a daily basis.
What would you do and what are the major operational concerns you have?
On a different note, this will likely be the last post for a while because I am leaving for FDIC tomorrow. I will have my computer and will try to post something, but no promises. So, stay safe and be careful out there. If you are coming to FDIC, email me and we can exchange phone numbers and maybe meet up.
jhoevelmann@gmail.com
Take care and stay safe.
Well, I couldn’t not post this video. Brotherhood Instructors has this on their Facebook page and it is a great video. Now, before you watch it, there will be some who say “yeah, what about….” and that is fine. The point is that it gives you some good tools to work and train with.
Now, get out there and do it!
Here are four great videos showing you the differences in the kind of nozzles and set ups for high rise firefighting. If you don’t know about or visited the Brotherhood’s site, you really are missing out on some great stuff. You can also become a Facebook Fan and get regular updates.
Enjoy the videos and visit the Brotherhood regularly.
Go here to see the other videos related to this topic.
Deploy your people. You are the big boss on this one, what next?
You are the incident commander on this fire. You can deploy who ever you want where ever you want.
I am allowing for your normal response of resources. No cheating!
Don’t worry about what is going on with the personnel in the picture; pretend they are not there.
Explain your size-up and the building characteristics.
Deploy your resources accordingly through what ever a first alarm will bring you. If you want to expand your alarms, hey, have at it. Just let us know.
Sit down with your crews and work this out.
This fire came in as a house fire, unknown victims, called in by the neighbors.
Have fun with it, pass it on, and be safe.
What would you do at this point?
There is a lot already taking place here. A hose crew is at the door or inside. A guy is taking out a window or something to that effect on the D side. And someone is on a ladder.
There is some nasty smoke pushing out of this structure. It definitely is under pressure.
Time is running out for keeping this in check and an interior attack. We’ve all been here and we know how this can go.
At this point in the fire, what ventilation tactic would you use and why?
If you need to, redirect these crews and put them where you think they will make the most progress and explain your actions.
Share with your crew and post your discussion points. We always get great feedback and we know you have some goo ideas, so, let’s hear them.
Stay safe and be careful. Get yourself healthy and stay healthy.
This picture says a lot to me. I know that it is a still frame and only a fraction of a second in time, but I believe it is telling.
We have fire venting from the Alpha side upper window, and from the Bravo side near the eaves. There is no doubt that we have a good working job.
How many times do we see chaos from all parties involved when we show up to a fire like this. Adrenaline is pumping and people are excited and ready to go. Sometimes too much so.
With all of the chaos and effort to be first in, too many times we forget our assignments or tasks. Everyone can’t be first in and the other jobs are just as important.
Looking at this picture I get the impression that these are some cool cats. You have a team raising a ladder. You have a team with a hose line ready. It looks like the officer is getting his stuff on a little behind his hose crew, maybe from completing his 360. And there is a firefighter propping open the door.
This looks organized just from what I can see. It looks good and I bet they took it to it.
Know your assignments and do them. The best attack is a coordinated one when everyone is doing what needs to be done to accomplish the overall goal; safely get in and out after putting the fire out and removing all victims.
You must train this way and trust your crew for this to happen. So, get out of the recliner today and do something as a team. Ask about assignments if you have questions and train, train, train, and train some more.
Take care and stay safe.
The officer must be the one that watches for conditions.
When a crew is making an interior attack, or any task, on the fire ground, the officer must be the eyes and ears of his crew.
Although everyone is responsible for safety and identifying unsafe conditions, the officer must continually keep a watchful eye on conditions.
Too often I have witnessed the officer take the nozzle, dragging the firefighter along into a burning structure. The officer should be the more experienced person on the line; there is a reason he is the officer. ( I know that is not always the case, but, you get the point.)
I can remember being in a 3-story house with fire blowing out the rear on the first floor and making an aggressive interior attack as the nozzle man. About 5 minutes or so pass and I am right up on this thing not making much progress. The acting officer tapped me on the shoulder and said we needed to back out.
I of course did not want to, but what I didn’t see, because I was focused on the fire fight, was that we were pushing fire around the stairwell back to the front door, where we entered. Mostly because we had the wrong sized line for the amount of fire we had.
But, the point is, he was doing his job. Not just helping me with the hose line, but seeing the “big” picture. He was paying attention to more than just what was in front of him.
As officers on the hose line we are expected to be aware and to get the job done. On that fire it meant pulling out and going back with a larger line, which was effective.
Watch for changing smoke conditions. Look for fire behavior that may be odd. Just look at everything and stay aware. Get the job done and get back safe.
Ladder Bailout from Vent, Enter Search.
Take a look at this video and watch and listen to the communications. There is a lot to learn here and these guys were under a lot of pressure. You can just feel it how they are talking and acting on the fire ground.
Use this as a training tool and learn from the experiences of others. If you have already seen this, well, then watch it again.
Stay safe and be good to each other. : )
Check out the link to this video of a backdraft that injured one firefighter. I don’t know that there is a lot that could have been done because it is such a short clip.
But, it is important to look for the signs and read the signs of smoke conditions that could indicate a backdraft.
Let me know what you think and stay safe out there.
Check out the video above and pay real close attention to the fire behavior.
These tests were conducted as a result of some LODD that had strange conditions that were not typical in high-rise fires. NIST conducted the studies with the assistance of FDNY and Chicago FD.
The clip in the upper left is of a bedroom and normal furnishings and an average fire load for this type of apartment.
The upper right shows the same unit, but down the a hall in the kitchen area.
The lower left shows the stairwell and the lower right is the outside of the apartment room with thermal imaging.
This test shows how an apartment fire turns into a blow torch when the fire room window fails or is vented by crews. The wind blowing into the apartment creates a blow torch effect making conditions untenable.
Watch the temperatures and the velocity of the heat and fire. At around 2:20 the window fails and all hell breaks loose.
The temperature is a a thermometer imbedded in the concrete wall for the thermal view.
This is some dangerous stuff and I will post more on this and the changes that are being suggested for high rise fire tactics.
But, this phenomenon is not isolated to high rise structures. We need only to look at the fire in Houston last year that claimed the lives of two firefighters and the Kyle Wilson LODD in Prince William County to see how residential fires are affected by wind.
Stay tuned and stay safe. More on this soon. For additional details and videos go to the NIST website at fire.gov.
Vacant or not vacant: To go or not to go?
Recent discussions about vacant buildings and how we should handle them led me to post this scenario.
I have my own opinion on vacant buildings which I will post later. But, the discussion can get heated, depending on who you are talking with.
It seems most chiefs are of the opinion that vacant buildings are write-offs and company officers and firefighters want to aggressively attack these buildings and perform search and rescue if conditions permit.
Without further delay, let’s move on to the scenario.
You have arrived on the scene of this fire and it has been reported vacant. It is winter and cold outside. It is just outside of town, about 2 minutes from the city limits.
There are no hydrants but you have adequate personnel and apparatus to begin operations with approximately 4000 gallons on the initial response.
What are your initial actions and how do you approach a vacant house? Why do you what you choose and what conditions were considered?
Remember, everyone has an opinion and we can all learn valuable lessons from everyone. Also, this was an actual fire I was on. So, I can fill you in on how we did in a few days.
Let’s hear it all and stay safe.
Watch the video and pay attention to all sides of the building.
I know this is a short clip, but there is a great deal that can be learned from this video.
Were there any indicators prior to the collapse?
What, if anything, would you have done differently if you were a company officer or command?
Stay safe and be careful out there.
These two firefighters need to switch their roles. The one on the bottom of the ladder appears ready to go.
The one at the top in the window with fire above his head does not appear to have an SCBA on. At least I don’t see it on his back.
Wearing yous PPE completely and correctly is and should be mandatory.
There is fire above this firefighter and they are taking part in suppression efforts. He is at risk RIGHT NOW!
The firefighter should and probably does know better. But, that is why we need competent fire officers, to tell firefighters that get in too big of a hurry or forget, to put on their PPE.
Safety on the fire ground is everyone’s responsibility. It starts with us personally and then on to the officers.
Stand up and make safety a priority all the time. Stay safe and remember, EGH!
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