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Front or rear door?
Scenario:
Working fire in front living room w/ probable victim inside (unknown location). Structure is single family dwelling, 1-story ranch-style home approximately 1300 square feet. 0800 hours. 1 front door on Side A, 1 rear door on Side C. Fire visible in living room only. Smoke from eaves and soffits of structure on all 4 sides. Do you take the first line in the front door for a quick knock down or attack from the rear and push it out the front? OVM coordinates ventilation w/ attack team prior to taking out windows. I'm interested to see your replies.
Working fire in front living room w/ probable victim inside (unknown location). Structure is single family dwelling, 1-story ranch-style home approximately 1300 square feet. 0800 hours. 1 front door on Side A, 1 rear door on Side C. Fire visible in living room only. Smoke from eaves and soffits of structure on all 4 sides. Do you take the first line in the front door for a quick knock down or attack from the rear and push it out the front? OVM coordinates ventilation w/ attack team prior to taking out windows. I'm interested to see your replies.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by chance on -
if fire is pumping from soffits and the eves more than likely its in the attic. why not place a verticle vent hole above your supposed fire room that should lift the smoke enough that you can see the first two feet off the ground. that facilitates your search and your attack and slows fire extention. if you are traing often and are comforable with your crew you should be able to cut the vent and approch from the c side to make your attack in less than 5 min. that is with a pumper crew and a truck. or in our rural area we run two pumpers on shift and are expected to preform every aspect of firefighting and all rescue ops. just food for thought
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Permalink Reply by Jason Hoevelmann on -
I agree with most here, front door. Eliminate the hazard (fire) and all will be better for everyone. Great posts and very good reasons why to use the front door. I know a lot of people that would automatically stretch to the rear because of past classes. However, since we are using the front door, we need to get somebody to the rear for checking those conditions and OVM. Stay safe.
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Permalink Reply by Brenda Tenney on -
This would require where the victims are at.It all depends how you size up the scene.
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Permalink Reply by Marc Brown on
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I would send my first company in the C- side entrance with a line, while making their way to the living room they have a good chance of finding the victim in a common area. If the victim was to be in the A- side of the dwelling ( where the fire and smoke is ) the likely hood of servival would be low due to the intense smoke. My second company would also enter from the C- side to do search and rescue, the hose team would be pushing the heat and fire out a living room window. This would create some ventalation for the search team giving them better visibility. Our dept. SOG is to streatch a 2.5 inch line to the rear door and then use our high rise pack for the attack. This removes the problem of figuring out the lengths of attack lines.
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Permalink Reply by Tim Linke on -
Truck crew to the roof, minimum 4' x 8' vent hole over living room and hallway...two guys can do this as the line is stretched and charged to the front door. Move in when ventilation occurs and put the fire out. Front door access to the fire area is the quickest and easiest way to get to it...with appropriate ventilation, the fire can be isolated to the area of origin.
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Permalink Reply by Tim Williams on -
I agree with Ray McCormick. Front door, own the hallway and blow it out the front window. Good truck crew does the search and thens pulls ceiling in fire room.
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Permalink Reply by Adam Miceli on -
We would go in the front door. I say we as this is a FD SOG, for PD's, for all the reasons Ray has pointed out, and we have shamelessly used his FE articles in the past to prove this point. We know our first due and 99.9% of the homes easily allow for front door access to the main hallway and/or stairs. The one noted exception is in single wide mobile homes, for which there is a specific exception.
Will, I think you have proven that you did the right thing by using sound judgment and valid tactics, sadly not everyone is savable and Monday morning quarterbacking can be informative, but sometimes with an outcome such as this can cause serious heartburn.
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Permalink Reply by Jason Gennaro on -
It's hard to make a decision over the internet without a pic showing all 4 sides but I'll go with most......enter side alpha for rescue/fire mitigation. There could be an issue with fire above but as long as you use a pike pole to check conditions/construction stability with an access hole you should be good to go. My opinion.
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