All Blog Posts (3,176)

The Fire occurs at 0630 Hours on a Sunday morning.  The building is wood platform construction with a truss roof assembly.  The exterior load bearing walls are wood frame. The floors are constructed of a joist system with 2x10 joists supporting the floors.  The exterior has a brick veneer. All interior wall assemblies are drywall (sheetrock) on wood studs. There is no built-in fire protection system. Individual units have battery operated smoke detectors.  

This is a one section…

By Mark vonAppen

This will be the year that the rogues come home.

Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth. Our professional…

Here is something that a Senior Firefighter sent to a group of up and coming new hires.  Enjoy.

Being the new guy has its place and if you are truly green and have never touched a piece of hose before, it's time to keep your head down, eyes up and ears perked for any and every bit of information that comes your way.  Be a sponge.  There will be plenty of information and it could be quite a rollercoaster ride for a while.  That being said you also need to take note of what…

You have to make a few resolutions when the new year comes around. You can't go wrong with directing efforts towards mastering the basics of stretching hose…

In most departments this would be considered a suspicious package. The lack of trust between the headquarters staff and line members is one thing that will prevent progress and bog down the grandest of plans. The reception of these packages are not usually in the form of gifts however, any delivery from the chain of command will be accepted or rejected based on the previous…

I believe firefighters can be placed into 3 categories in terms of engagement and leadership.  Generally speaking: 

• 25% believe in (or pretend to believe in) current leadership staff…

Yes, yes, I know... this is just wrong. But I couldn't help my twisted self:)

Have a safe and blessed Christmas, everybody.

A tale of 'two-stories'



O' to the door, pesky thing... creaking, slamming, perhaps pinching a finger or two at times. It's just a hunk of wood over an opening, or is it? 



Now more than ever, we need to pay attention to the presence, absence and have control of the doors we come across. …

I receive a lot of emails over the course of a week. Among the onslaught of solicitations and wealthy foreigners who want to share their wealth if I'll just give them my bank account info are legitimate questions about art. The question I receive most often is "how do you come up with those crazy characters?".…

If only there was a way to "sell" it

Each and every single firefighter death is a loss not only to those directly connected with the victim but also in this vanilla brotherhood fire service across the nation. Each one should, as rightly expected, be properly mourned and remembered and when applicable have lessons from the tragedy distributed to the rest of us so…

Over the course of many years in the volunteer fire service, I noticed election for volunteer fire officers take place in either November or December of every year. Depending on your organization it may be every two years to elect fire officers. Some departments have no election and the fire officers are appointed by the local municipality or the fire chief may be elected and he or she appoints his or her fire…

Awhile back I stumbled upon a website geared towards reducing law enforcement LODD's. I have to admit, I had never given it much thought. I find myself, like so many others, caught up in the battles we are fighting in the fire service. Obviously we hear about law enforcement (LE) LODD's every now and then. I think I speak for all of us when I say it hurts just as bad to hear about an officer losing their life as it does when a fellow firefighter gets put in the ground. What struck…

 I appreciate you asking for my opinion about this video and the LA/C use of CAFS for outside initial attack.  I have used this tactic for many years and it has never failed me to gain quick control of structure fires, even when I used to be working State and Federal forest fires that involved homes and buildings. We did not have proper PPE to inter the structures until the fire was out. I was very glad to see the window tactic in the video using a straight stream of water.  It works best…

The Sunday Preach:

Got Residential Buildings? 

While not always known as 'stat' guys.... when we are, we review them to make ourselves and our team aware of 'the why' behind our need to be proficient in our operations at residential building fires... It is for US and for THEM!

These stats are from the USFA

~1326 civilian fire fatalities reported by U.S. news media between January 1, 2013 and December 12, 2013, for criteria = All Causes, 1…

Before I get into some Multi-family and Commercial buildings, let me cover a few other things.

As with all of these, "what you see is what your get"!  Its' 0630 hours on a Saturday morning.

These first questions are for the initial Incident Commander.  

1) Would you assign Search?

2) If so, what if any assignments would you make prior to assigning Search?

3) Is there anything you would want in place (additional tactics, evolutions or tools placed or set)…

I recentlyposted about Heat Release Ratesand the rookie asking the question. Here is some resource material to help you with this. Heat Release Rates must be understood in the context that we may not be in the fire compartment or we may be at a presumed safe distance from the seat of the fire, but if the fire compartment is not cooled, the Heat Release Rate that is in today's fire…