Wind-Driven Fires

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Permalink Reply by Chris Piepenburg on January 7, 2009 at 11:23pm

We had one hell of a wind driven house fire about 8 months ago. Started as a vehicle fire outside of a garage, stiff wind blew it into the garage and when the resident opened the garage to house door she got a face full of smoke and bailed leaving the door open. Fire got up in the knee wall above the garage and ran the length of the house very quickly. For a single family dwelling I have never seen fire move that fast!

Permalink Reply by Eric Hankins on January 7, 2009 at 11:24pm

We just had a fire that went three alarms here in YC last week, that was a wind driven fire. Garden Apartment style motel with a common attic. The Fire started upstairs on the northwest corner of the building with a strong 20-25 mph Northwest wind. Once the fire vented itself through the roof, it was off to the races. Thanks to the fact that we were in the middle of a regional training that afternoon, we had a lot of personnel, (including a staffed truck with 4 FF's) that normally would take close to an hour to get to on scene, at scene within about 15 minutes. Multiple lines were pulled and the roof was turned into swiss cheese and ultimately the fire went out. The two interior attack crews were driven out of the fire area more than once due to extreme heat conditions that we normally do not see...

Permalink Reply by Jeff Schwering on January 7, 2009 at 11:29pm

Art, I like the idea. When I was a volunteer, many moons ago, we had a fire in a moble home. The fire was during a thunder/wind storm, the back widow let loose, as we turned on the street, The wind blew the fire right through the mobile home, as the engine came to a stop, The Captain said jiffy, and quickly change it to Deck Gun! We watch the fire blow right through the place. One of those fires you just never forget, 25 plus years laters.

Permalink Reply by Art Zern on January 7, 2009 at 11:35pm

Gents,

As I said in the intro and each of you has mentioned, although wind-driven fires are widely viewed as a high-rise/big city issue, they can occur in any type of structure. To be sure, many of the high profile wind-driven fires have resulted in LODDs in high rises and in big cities. Lets see if there is more interest and perhaps a lead-in with some history or........

Permalink Reply by Scott Kleinschmidt on January 8, 2009 at 12:16am

Here in the land of oz, we have big buildings, little buildings, tall buildings, short buildings and every type of house in between. Wind can and has wreaked havoc for us.

And for my brothers to the south (Oklahoma) Mike W and Brian A..... they can tell you why the wind always blows from the North in Kansas.

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on January 8, 2009 at 9:19am

Let's do this. Thanks Art for the start up. Let's talk first about non-high rise wind driven fires. Then we can get to Hi rise stuff as there is stack affect to talk about as a basis for the hi rise thing. Even if we have to start another thread. The reason is we don;t want to mix apples and oranges. That has has been happening a little bit.
What do you guys think?

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on January 8, 2009 at 9:31am

Guys
This may serve us as a good basis for a non hi-rise wind driven fire discussion. It has many of the elements that we have been talkng about on the CSF page for a while. My suggestion is that we read through the investigation of this NIOSH report and find if there are similarities to what we have experinced in our own depts. What do you guys think.

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/fire/reports/face200502.html

Permalink Reply by Todd Trudeau on January 8, 2009 at 11:30am

This would be very educational for me. Not much experience with this but want to be prepared for when the time comes, because it will.

As far as the NIOSH report Jim, I didn't read to much about any ventilation other than the front door and the window on side C. Unfortunately, it sounds like these guys were operating in a horizontal chimney, coupled with what appears to be limited communication ability.

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on January 8, 2009 at 2:47pm

I think it's interesting that they couldn;t put the fire out opposite the direction of the 31 mph wind gusts that the building vented itself into. This spread the team inside and one member died from the blinding conditions that occured. I'm believe this building was filled with just a typical fire loading that can be found in any residence. One of the danger of not consdering the weather conditions when we are venting opposite the advance of the hose line is considering the weather the fire will vent into. In this particular case, the investigation seems to think the window broke out from the pressure of the hose stream. The windows may have been hot and fire-weakened to begin with, then hit with the cold water from the hose line. I believe this is called "thermal shock". The fire finally had to be extinguished by advancing from the side of a strong wind side. I think this shows that the horizontal vent FF needs to consider and report if this may occur. Usually the thing that helps the hose team the most for the aggresive inteiror attack is venting opposite the hose line.
We've had a number of these type fires that have been contained in a building, but of course, the fire can get out and start running down the block. We've got alot of balloon a frames in Chgo.

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on January 10, 2009 at 1:22pm

There have been a few fires hi rise fires that were wind driven in the last few years. Venting in a hi rise is diifficult at best. Although I wasn;t there, in the Lasalle bank incident, I believe the windows failed due to the heat of fire room. The fire was not venting out the open windows but was comming back into the building after the window failure. This is a difficult heat condition to advance a hose line into. The hallway also had a couple of turns in it with a set of double doors between the fire room and the hose connection in the stairway. This added to the difficulty of advacning to the seat of the fire. I believe this total distance of the hall from stairs to original fire room was about 125 feet. The hallway was not tenable becasue of extreme heat conditions even before the double doors after a short time.
The fire was knocked down by an exterior stream from a roof on a wing of the building. This wing of the building was 2 floors below the fire floor.




cite>Chris Sterricker said:

Jim, wasn't the LaSalle Bank fire a big wind-driven fire, or am I thinking of another one downtown? Seem to remember something about Sq 1 taking a beating in the hallway with 2 ( ! ) 2 1/2's flowing. Sound familiar?

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on January 11, 2009 at 7:51pm

Guys to start this off a little better. Can anybody or every body describe what happened on their wind driven fires? What happened and what changes did your dept have to make outside of the normal response tactics and tasks?

Jim Mason said:

There have been a few fires hi rise fires that were wind driven in the last few years. Venting in a hi rise is diifficult at best. Although I wasn;t there, in the Lasalle bank incident, I believe the windows failed due to the heat of fire room. The fire was not venting out the open windows but was comming back into the building after the window failure. This is a difficult heat condition to advance a hose line into. The hallway also had a couple of turns in it with a set of double doors between the fire room and the hose connection in the stairway. This added to the difficulty of advacning to the seat of the fire. I believe this total distance of the hall from stairs to original fire room was about 125 feet. The hallway was not tenable becasue of extreme heat conditions even before the double doors after a short time.
The fire was knocked down by an exterior stream from a roof on a wing of the building. This wing of the building was 2 floors below the fire floor.




cite>Chris Sterricker said:

Jim, wasn't the LaSalle Bank fire a big wind-driven fire, or am I thinking of another one downtown? Seem to remember something about Sq 1 taking a beating in the hallway with 2 ( ! ) 2 1/2's flowing. Sound familiar?

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on January 12, 2009 at 2:44pm

Does anyone;s dept have high rises and account for it in their high rise operations, either by SOP/SOG or by training bulletin? This is the one of the primary issues in wind -driven fires in these buildings.

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