Interesting Fire Video

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jeff Schwering on December 8, 2009 at 4:08pm

Ok Brick, interesting works. While we don't know the whole story obviously, some things jump out and smack us in the face! Manpower, enough folks to get the job done, Attack line size, placement, and time to stretch and have water. Where is the searches? This will get us started.

Permalink Reply by Michael Bricault (ret) on December 8, 2009 at 10:12pm

-I noticed the lack of search and basic Truck work too, though I will agree we don't know the whole story and therein may lay some interesting details. Is the building occupied? Where is the first due Truck? What size and staffing level is the FD?
-We also see a great example of "Don't run on the fire ground".
-I don't want to come off as bashing on these guys. This is a "lessons learned" effort.
-The clip made me think of a Tom Brennen article in which he pointed out that firefighters have lost sight of the interrelationship of tasks performed on scene. Nozzlemen today are consumed with spraying water and do not understand why they are actually doing it.
-Locate, confine then extinguish. Confine... to protect and facilitate the search team, etc....
-I also hit on a pet peeve; if a ladder rescue is imperative to perform then it is necessary to do it properly. Raising a ladder and yelling for the victim to, "come on!" is not proper, safe pr professional. That being said I understand that there may be something going on I am not aware of in this clip. However, rescue, like everything else we do should be performed properly.

Permalink Reply by Tom Hofland on January 31, 2010 at 7:16pm

I will address this fire from my organizations point of view. We have many of these style garden apartments and this is a normal scenario. The first line is a 1 3/4" placed to push the fire into the involved unit and away from the stairs. This line is also able to extinguish fire developing on the top landing or combustible siding which threatens the units above due to the open design of these buildings. This first line will ultimately push into the fire unit for extinguishment.

The layout of these apartments is living room to the front with a kitchen and one or two bedrooms to the rear. The first truck splits. The inside team ladders the front window of the most threatened unit above and conducts a search by going up the stairs. If this is not possible the ladder may be used for entry. The outside team proceeds to the rear and ladders both the exposed units on side C. The original fire unit may then be VES through a ground level window in coordination with fire attack if there are survivable spaces. If the fire unit is written off then the Outside team VES the upper units.

If the fire was a top floor fire the outside team may be committed to the roof for vertical ventilation. The inside team will make the fire unit by whatever means possible, most frequently by VES on side C.

Tommy