Question on Ithe Initial Fire Ground Size Up

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Chris Piepenburg on October 11, 2008 at 11:16am

It is definitely possible to perform a better size-up to prevent firefighter injuries or deaths.

For residential the first step is to know the area that you are working in. Is this an existing neighborhood with solid construction or is it a new or rehab area with lightweight construction? Is the structure a balloon frame or are their probable stops built in? Where is the fire coming from, is it a cellar, main floor or upper floor fire? Are the windows still intact? If they are then you have a better chance of stopping that fire before flashover occurs, if not you know you are probably working with advanced fire conditions.

Commercial is a little different, you still have to know your area, but you should also know the operations that happen in the building. Is this a 24 hr operation or only daytime operations, did the call come in via an alarm company or was it by a passer-by. Sometimes it takes quite a while for a passer-by to see a fire unless it is through the roof. What are the fire and smoke conditions on arrival? Do you have pressurized smoke coming from the building or has fire vented through the roof?

Adding this easy stuff to whatever normal size-up you do should help prevent many injuries and deaths.

Permalink Reply by Brenda Tenney on October 11, 2008 at 4:34pm

Before entering and structure fire,depends on how long this structure has been burning,it could colape at any moment.We size up the scene to see from all areas,It is better to size up the scene ,Yes,this has saved many and fire fighter.We use the tag system.,,and two as and team.,more than one team,altho.
The size up points ,is very noticeable ,when you enter and scene,Maybe some one else has and better answer,I have only been on the dept about 6 years...and still learning...BT

Permalink Reply by Brenda Tenney on October 11, 2008 at 4:35pm

can be email at niteangel99@yahoo.com

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on October 12, 2008 at 9:10am

Chris
Construction is huge for survival on the fire ground. I always ask myself this : Where is the fire now and how is the fire going to move through the building? The travel of the fire defintely depends on making a conscious decision on the constrution style before this question can be answered. Really for me it's making a decision on what is happening now and then making a prediction of what will happen next. Then can we get something significant done with the on scene resources? This might only be a three FF engine company.

There are some ideas out there that pre flashover is not that much different from post flshover for FF safety issues espicially when the windows are closed during this time. Have you heard of this and what do you think?

Commercial is definetly different than residential in connection to construction along with location and extent of the fire. The use is important. Is it a marsh-mello storage house or a hardware store? A delayed response due to no one finding the fire is a big deal. What we don;t want is to get caught up in the flashover. I'm not a statistic guy but the numbers are that commercial buildings are about 4 times more deadly than residential. Do you know why and what else could we consider to stop this?

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on October 12, 2008 at 9:26am

Brenda
Thanks for responding! Generally speaking we have some collpase time factors that have been built into our size up that can be used to figure out how long we can operate inside a fire building. For stable resideintial construction styles like ordinary, balloon frame, and platform frame we figure we can generally operate inside for about 20 minutes unless 2 or more floors have fire showing upon arrival. 2 or more floors of fire showing upon arrival tells us the building has been burning longer than 20 minutes already or there was an accelerant used to start the fire. For lightweight constructon buildings we figure that any fire exposing any truss is a collpase factor and we'll stay outside. This works with the idea of 5-10 minutes of burning will cause a collapse in lightwieght frame. Does your department have anything along these lines for a size up?

I like to use a simple acronym for size up on the fire ground. It's Construction, Occupancy, Location and Extent of the Fire along with Life Hazard (COLL) . This gets me through the most critical size up factors to decide if an interior attack or a defensive operation is needed. Would this be workable on your next fire in your district? Also did you want me to email the question to niteangel99@yahoo.com?

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on October 12, 2008 at 9:46am

Barry Thanks for responding
I like to teach a very simple version of Coal was Wealth. All the points are good but I think that but Construction, Occupancy, Location and Extent of the fire, along with Life Hazard are critical to understand. These are the points that must be sized up after we spot the appartus. The rest of them can and should be considered before that. For example, do we know how we can get a positive source of water in all the neighborhoods that we protect? I think we can preplan if we aren;t sure. The height and area of the building can be seen as the engine turns the corner to the block where the structure sits. If it's extra tall or extra large our codes might make the building have standpipes and sprinklers. If it's not tall or large we shouldn't bother with installed sytems. It goes on until we get down to Const, Occ, Location and Life Hazard

I lso agree that we should slow down to really understand before we enter the structure. If we were to look at these recent NIOSH reports I think it would show that there was not a real understanding of the situation. I'm on a commitee with one of the guys that writes the NIOSH reports and we have talked that the FF deaths usually include some of the same problems of inadequate size up. Slowing down to understand before going inside is a big part of this. Does your Dept practice size up as parts of preplanning in your district? If so how well is it working?

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on October 12, 2008 at 9:55am

In the future I'd like to post some fire pictures so we can talk about what we see and what we would do first. Also I'd like to talk about some of the company officer issues that are found on the fire ground. The CO is really the person that is most critical to ensuring tht everyone goes home. together we can make this into a great leadership and decision making blog.
Stay Safe
JM

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on October 12, 2008 at 10:00am

Glad to have you with us Chris

Permalink Reply by Chris Piepenburg on October 12, 2008 at 11:14am

Jim,

I can definitely see how pre-flashover can be just as dangerous as post-flashover for the fact that there are ffs who do not have the experience or awareness to know that flashover is about to occur. When ffs are not paying attention to their surroundings they may not catch that rollover is occuring and the smoke is becoming superheated. They may see these signs as a general increase of the fire even though they may not be close to the main body.

I could only guess that commercial structures are deadlier due to the fact that they have greater fire loading, large open areas with high piled storage that can topple over on firefighters and chemical processes that add to the increase of fire. I think the key to combating fire in large commercial structures is early ventilation. The quicker we can open up these buildings the less chance we have of getting firefighters hurt.

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on October 13, 2008 at 3:51pm

Chris
You're right on with the pre-flashover porblems of members possibley not able to see that the room is going to light up. I believe this is particularly dangerous when the officer is working basically as a FF in reduced manning responses. He/she may be unable to view the development of the fire conditions to the flashover state until it is too late. I say that the burden of working safely in a smaller firefghting group is more difficult because there are less members doing more.

Venting is diffinetly the key. Let's say we are arriving on the scene of the commercial struture and we are ordered to "vent the building" by the newly promoted chief. What should we do?

Permalink Reply by Chris Piepenburg on October 13, 2008 at 4:09pm

This is where your experience as an officer and a company will have to come into play. The chief isn't telling you HOW to vent the building, he is just telling you to do it. If you take your size-up and experience of yourself and your company into play you should be able to make a pretty informed decision as to how and where to vent.

Permalink Reply by Joe Heim on October 16, 2008 at 5:01pm

Conduct a 360 and note how many floors 1 or 2 in the front doesn't mean the same in the rear could 2 or 3. Where is the smoke coming from, is it under pressure, has the fire vented itself, what is the age of the building and does it look like there were renovations done to it, what is the color of the smoke, where has the fire been, where's it at , and where's it going? And be sure to put the info over the radio so everyone knows what is going on. We use a very simple initial scene size up:

What do I got?
What is showing?
What do I want other companies to do?
Who is Command?

Hope this info helps!

Stay Safe!!!

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