Truss Construction!!!!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Art Zern on January 5, 2009 at 10:44pm

Brick,

I'm glad the point wasn't lost. I believe that we can provide excellent, professional and aggressive fire and rescue services and....provide for the safety of our members. However, we need to do a better job of providing our members with the tools necessary to recognize changing fire conditions, evaluate building construction, assess risk, effectively coordinate the attack and make sound fireground decisions.

I fear that as trends like this take hold, the enemies of the fire service gain more ground. The right choice is not always the easy choice. I don’t want us to take the easy choice to write-off structures because we are not prepared to follow through on what it means to make the right choice. We can only make the right choice if we know that we have done everything in our power to prepare. Keep fighting the good fight. It can happen today and it is happening today all across the country.

Art

Permalink Reply by Art Zern on January 5, 2009 at 11:43pm

Jeff,

Good points. Sometimes it is very easy to identify lightweight and sometimes it is impossible. I also like your thoughts about doubling the burn time. I am wondering if we can make some generalizations? Can we consider these lightweight?
- All new single family residential construction.
- All strip malls
- All single families that have had additions built on have been extensively remodeled
- All “fast food” restaurants
- How about Type I and II commercial buildings with steel bar truss roofs?

What do you think?

To Jim’s point, if we pull-up and meet the occupant…….. We have to quickly decide if that person is creditable and weigh the value of their information. I don’t believe we can necessarily confirm occupancy based on bystanders. On the other hand, the actual occupant’s story may carry more weight. At that point, we have to quickly establish a rescue profile of the structure. The aggressiveness of a search will be determined by the rescue profile size-up.
- Residential occupancies must be searched, regardless of the time of day
- Any search above the fire floor carries a high-risk search profile

We will not conduct the search if either the interior environment is incompatible with human life or the structural integrity is too compromised to operate safely (based on construction type and burn time). To continue the profile, there are generally three rescue scenarios to evaluate:
- Known location of victim with no fire or smoke in the area
- Known location of victim with fire and smoke in the area.
- Unknown location of victim with fire and smoke in the area.

Some additional rescue profile considerations:
- Skill of searchers
- Search area to be covered
- Size of structure
- Fire conditions
- Egress areas and hallways
- Location of bedrooms
- Makeshift bedrooms such as attics and basement spaces
- Paths of access and egress

Finally, how do we determine the construction type if we are not sure if it is lightweight? We can employ our old school tactics and have the roof team make an inspection h***. The engine or truck can and should pull ceiling at the entry point. Pull some siding off the exterior wall.

Other thoughts?

Permalink Reply by Scott Kleinschmidt on January 6, 2009 at 12:28pm

First off,
Art very nice and with your permission I would like to share it with the troops.


Jim,

We have areas in the “burbs” that are entirely light weight trussed; homes, strip malls, so on. These company’s size ups will not be any different than a company in the “core” of the city. The only difference is in the tactics applied after said size up. Is this is a room and contents or a structure fire? That’s what has to be answered upon arrival. If this is room and contents how long tell it becomes a structure fire? If there is anyway, we will always try and attack the fire long enough to get a primary on any habitable portions of the house. Once that is done then reevaluate the tactics and shift gears if needed.

As for trusses, the biggest question in my mind is, are they exposed or not. I have seen structures with a tremendous amount of contents fire that was extinguished with no compromise of the structural components. I have also seen a small amount of fire with exposed trusses that have failed very quickly. Company’s have to pre-plan their response area and know this ahead of time.


Our big concern is basement fires in new construction, as almost 100% of home’s here have basements. About 80% are finished with huge “fire loads”. The flip side is most attics are completely free of fire load (storage/ clutter) because everyone stores in there basements. This can allow us to vert vent relatively easily early on… before it gets bigger than a contents fire allowing us some control of where and how it goes. I know some have said that vert venting a private dwelling is unwarranted and I would have to disagree. I have seen to many positives from doing this. (Safely)

I have seen several times where a fire either self vented or we cut a h*** early on and we lost the trusses in that section of the home and they collapsed into the fire room. Funny thing is the rest of the roof assembly was as strong as the day it was built. The redundancy with decking and wind bracing attached to the trusses is often overlooked.

I guess what I am saying is lightweight construction is to be respected not feared. Fight it smart and learn from past experiences.


Art and Brick,

We had a risk assessment drill and in this drill a chief said “maybe we should look at how we fight fires in abandoned structures, if they are abandoned then why even commit personnel to the interior?”

6 hours later an engine company on a vacant structure fire that the calling party and bystanders in the street said no one was in, pulled 2 fire victims out because they still went in and completed a primary before "writting it off"


Jim Mason said:

Ok
So we're going to take on some risk and we're going to manage the risk , if and when we are trained to do so. But even if we are not trained to do so, we'll be taking on some risk and managing it, even though we may not think of it like that without proper training. The question ( and that;'s what I usually do here) is what is the plan? If someone is on the front lawn in the attire and situation described above what should we do? Is there a investigation that we should be doing that we would not do on another type of construction style? Will certain radio transmissions help? Certain levels of fire location and extent we should say no to? A construction style"look" that we will say no to?

And then the question that up's the ante still remains - if someone says my kids are trapped, then what? Double down? All in? Fold the cards? If your dept doesn;t have a plan , what is your company's plan. These are the guys that we respond with , right?
There are entire depts. that will only respond to Lightweight frame housing due to new development in the last 10 years. What do you guys?

Permalink Reply by Jeff Schwering on January 6, 2009 at 1:40pm

Art, I believe we can consider the occupancies you mentioned, light weight. What would be best for all of us is to see these builings in the construction phase, I realize that's not always possible, but my theory is be proactive. Yeah I'm not going to be the most popular LT around, when we go out, but as my buddy Billy G. says they probably don't like you anyway. In Billy's video he says,"e-mail me I'll be your friend". Love that quote. Art and Brick, of course we must seach every structure. I was taught long ago, by a captain I'd rather forget, evey building gets searched, even when you bump into a balloon full of gasoline. I think bottom line for me, is breath before you rush in. We must do our jobs, only smarter than we did 20 years ago.

Permalink Reply by Todd Trudeau on January 6, 2009 at 1:53pm

Pre-planning and training, seems like almost, if not always, everything comes back to these. And rightfully so. Our town is an older suburb with a good amount of story and a half bungalows and ranches.A large amount have rafters. We do have newer homes that do have trusses for sure.

Our dispatch info is very limited but I've been trying to get across to the powers that be, it's our own doing. What I mean is, building info can be and must be put into the system so the info can be taken from the system. Our program has a section for truss information to be available to the dispatcher, thus being available to the responding companies. WE choose not to either gather that info or enter it or both. Shame on us!

Case in point, recently we had a commercial building fire, flat roof, showroom windows in front. No verticle vent was done early and by the time it was, crews thought it would be unsafe. turns out building was old enough to have 2 X 12 wood joists instead of the open web type. Took about an hour for the roof to fail. That info should have been able to be relayed to the companies operating. We can't be expected to retain all building methods used for each piece of property in our cities, but the computer age is here to do it for us, if we choose to use it. Of course commercial property can be inspected to gather this info as opposed to residential, but getting out of the recliner and onto the streets would reveal alot of useful info too.

Does anyone have a time line when trusses were first introduced to the building trades and would this info be able to be applied to the thoughts of "is it or isn't it" truss construction?

Permalink Reply by Michael Bricault (ret) on January 6, 2009 at 2:07pm

-As I said in an earlier post, the level of aggressiveness is going to be based on actual conditions. That being said, if the building is abandoned then how did the fire start? Abandoned buildings do not set themselves on fire. And short of a lightning strike or mice playing with matches, someone got in and started the fire; either by accident or design and they still may be inside in need of rescue.
-Where I work there is no such thing as an empty building. We must factor in that abandoned structures have become homes for the homeless, drug dens for the addicted, playgrounds for inner city children and locations for clandestine drug labs.
-And it is not just an urban problem any more. These same situations are now occurring anywhere there are abandoned structures, albeit in lesser numbers in the suburbs and rural communities.
-The only time firefighters will not perform a primary search is if the occupancy's structural integrity has been compromised and/or interior fire conditions will needlessly endanger searching firefighters. The tactics selected and the level of aggressiveness will be based on several additional factors including the individual scene conditions, available resources and the experience level of the responding companies to name a few.
-Scott, your conversation with your chief was a timely conversation; I hope the lesson was not lost on the boss.
-Jeff, your right, firefighters must learn to work smarter not harder. We search everything. Whether that search happens within the first three minutes or three hours after the fire is over will be dependent on conditions. But the search happens.
-Stay safe
BRICK

Jeff Schwering said:

Art, I believe we can consider the occupancies you mentioned, light weight. What would be best for all of us is to see these builings in the construction phase, I realize that's not always possible, but my theory is be proactive. Yeah I'm not going to be the most popular LT around, when we go out, but as my buddy Billy G. says they probably don't like you anyway. In Billy's video he says,"e-mail me I'll be your friend". Love that quote. Art and Brick, of course we must seach every structure. I was taught long ago, by a captain I'd rather forget, evey building gets searched, even when you bump into a balloon full of gasoline. I think bottom line for me, is breath before you rush in. We must do our jobs, only smarter than we did 20 years ago.

Permalink Reply by Art Zern on January 6, 2009 at 6:01pm

Scott,

Thanks and help yourself.

I really like your point of assessing if the fire has extended into the structure. If it is room and contents, we don't have an issue. Again, back to my earlier point...have we trained our officers and members in reading smoke? Can they distinguish between room and contents and structure fires? Great point.

Another well-made point is that basement fires are bad news in either case if the ceiling is unprotected as it often is. The lightweight flooring system in that case is really the enemy.

Permalink Reply by Mike Walker on January 6, 2009 at 9:19pm

and that's why WE call him Chief Zern!

Outstanding Post

Let's take a vote: Who thinks Art's post should be subitted for publication?

I vote Hell Yes

Permalink Reply by Scott Kleinschmidt on January 6, 2009 at 9:25pm

Very much so

Mike Walker said:

and that's why WE call him Chief Zern!

Outstanding Post

Let's take a vote: Who thinks Art's post should be subitted for publication?

I vote Hell Yes

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on January 7, 2009 at 9:21pm

As always this page moved very quickly. I can only post on the days I'm NOT at the fire house.
I read all the points and we is a sharp group of FF's on CSF.
I think the point of identifying truss construction falls into the operational part of dealing with it (more later). We have alot of truss construction in Chgo but also the the Rehab stuff. It's been going on for many years here. There's an article on it from F/E Jan 04 called "Preplanning Residential Dweling Fires"

There's three times to consider trusses in residential construction.
New
Added floor space - this can be LT WT Frame
and the Rehab Zone - Anything standing in an area that used to be poor and now or recently had people with money moving in to work on the housing. Anything in these type of nieghborhoods should be considered truss until investigated further.
Anything commercial should be considered to have truss until further confirmed. For these places, any fire in the truss should make us get out. Everyone should be looking for it and can report to command. there are no lives to save buit our own it commercial. Is it sturtural or content s, it'll be harder to tell with the combustibles in a commercial occupancy. The TIC is good then.

I say dealing with this is an operational, rather than a size up thing, becasue I believe just the way these things are built must be constantly investigated as we move deeper inside.
For any building, we need to pull ceiling, but not just at our entry point near the fire seat. We should have FF's enter at least another point points to pull ceiling there too. What is found should be reported on the radio and compared quickly. The reason for the mutiple points is that construction styles can change from side to side, front to back. As in additons of truss construction on orignal ordinary housing or even commercial occupanies. This should be done by SOP/SOG and not an order of the IC. Finding truss in the ceiling will often tell us if there is truss holding the floor. A FF going around to the rear to do this will often find that the fire is below the first floor, and again should report.

Buildings with "I Joints" should also have ceiling pulledas we continue further inside because they will have some compartmentation to them and may be starting to collaspe where they are exposed but we may not know it until we get to them as we advance.

There are going to be times when smoke obscures the ceiling pulled. The TIC can be used to look thru it for heat. For me, this is when the TIC is most useful for truss size up. We're not looking through the walls but through the holes in them. If it's decided to move in deeper, the ceiling should contiue to be pulled from a kneeling posiotion , if possible. Again, construction styles can change as we move deeper. If the fire has breached the the ceiling in the kitchen while we are moving deeper, we need to know.
For a quick knock down a 2 1/2 could also be considered.
I like VES for obvious rescues above the ground floor in these buildings rather than the stairs.

Permalink Reply by Jim Mason on January 8, 2009 at 9:45am

It would not be bad for a dept that has some influence with the building dept to insist that any truss built building with a basement must be built with an outside basement entrance so we can examine the conditons below and even attack the fire from this point of entry without having to cross the first floor to find the interior basement stairs. Outside entrances are going to be cheaper to build as new than sprinklers and they are not going to stop using Lt Wt frame construction techniques.

Any FF going around to do the 360 should also open basement windows to get a read on the smoke and heat conditions below the first floor, then report. This is so the engine doesn;t fall through the floor as they advance. When there is no life (but ours ) , the fire is below grade with only an interior stair way to the basement and the smoke tells us structure rather than contents it would seem that the attack should go defensive.

Permalink Reply by Tom Hofland on January 28, 2009 at 2:54am

Wow this has been a great post,

I think you are on to the solution Jim. Every building may have dangerous components. All interior crews must sound the floor, pull ceilings, kick a h*** in the wall...

I would also add my thoughts:

1) Send enough members to attack, vent, search, and support a timely interior operation which should be over in 10-15 minutes from the initial dispatch. It will be over before it falls down.

2) Get the roof and cut an inspection h***.

3) Aggressively vertically ventilate these buildings. We only have a limited time, don't wait to see if we really need to. The nice thing about these buildings is that the trusses are covered in a light decking which is rapidly opened up with a chainsaw, can be "felt" with a sounding tool and will fail before the trusses providing an early warning to us.

4) Push for a fire code requiring dry wall protection for basement ceilings. In my jurisdiction this is a big problem. Most of our near misses involve falling into residential basements. This is not a lightweight issue for us but is still worth focusing on since it is the second leading cause of traumatic death at residential fires according to NIOSH LODDs.

Every fire started in the basement, is balloon framed, has unprotected steel components, and is in the attic... until proven otherwise. Its our job to prove otherwise while simultaneously attacking, searching, venting, and supporting an aggressive interior operation.

Tom
RFB - PTB

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