FIRE FOCUS
(Photo by E. J. Haley.)
Let’s share some size-up concepts. What do you think you see?
- Private dwelling, wood frame, 2 1/2 or three stories (depending on how you count the attic).
- Fire is located on the second floor front-at least from our point of view.
- It has possible extension to the third floor by autoexposure.
- Is the third floor occupied? The fire escape is a giveaway. The nighttime life hazard in this building is difficult to account for (at best). The other signs of an occupied attic include air-conditioners, curtains, biinds, open-screened window, and thermalpane windows.
- What is the window to the right of the firefighter on the portable ladder? It is danger! Windows in structures like this that are in the “half plane” of the other window line almost always are windows lighting the stair to the second floor. Note such a window as an indicator of stair location, but don’t enter it!
- How deep-seated is this fire? You don’t know without information from inside. It simply could be one front room with extension to extremely combustible exterior siding that looks worse than it actually is. An additional handline used with caution and experience on the outside will be able to control this exterior siding fire quickly and not disturb the aggressive attack inside.
(Photo by Ron Jeffers.)
What do we know about the structure in this photo? Use your imagination, or you’re just looking at someone else’s top-floor fire with firefighters on the fire escape of exposure #4.
What about the fire escape? First, we have a multiple dwelling (more than two families). With two or fewer families, the codes don’t require a second means of egress (it’s still a private dwelling). And owners won’t go to the expense and the ugliness of installing one on their own. If this is the only one on the building, you have one family per floor and the apartments run from front to rear around the public hall. If there also is a fire escape on the front, the floors are split, and there are at least two families per floor—maybe more. In buildings just a little wider, these balconies may bridge two apartments and serve one or more windows of each.
Fire escapes provide an excellent means of alternate entry to the fire apartment, and if you are on the correct one, you’ll be in the area of greatest danger—to the trapped civilian and to yourself. This is where the saying “Vent, enter, search” is vital and for real. Here is where the real rescues are —behind the fire and opposite the nozzle. If you want to get in, it helps to have the nozzle team know your actions. Once water starts, your position will become unbearable.
Prepare —take out the window to the fire apartment that is off the fire escape first. It lets the occupancy “blow” without compromising your position or your ability to at least feel inside the sill. This action also redirects the flame path as you create a second draft to the room in front of you. After you make what amounts to a primary search, withdraw to the fire escape and increase ventilation for the interior crew moving in your direction.
Remember, if you want to be in that “rear-of-the-fire” position, come from below. You can always go up at a fire, but you can’t always come down (in this case, from the roof).
(Photo by Ed Bosanko.)
Garden apartments and condominiums are springing up all over the country. Districts that have had only singlefamily private dwellings are becoming urban living areas. The problem is that the demand breeds construction features that contribute to fire catastrophe.
Some of these structures are “lumberyards of toothpicks”—defying gravity. Every floor is a cockloft or truss loft of small-dimension open lumber that causes horizontal spread like wildfire on every floor. The fire breaks virtually are nonexistent in many communities. If they are to be effective, they must separate totally. Areas at the ends of the overhangs or eaves many times are not protected and act as “fuses” to an attic fire or to exposure to a fire venting below it.
In our Southern communities, the common stairs to the apartments are open and perform a horizontal fire break —except for the covering overhead, that is. The attic space or cockloft extends over this open fire break and easily extends fire to otherwise safe areas.
The insanity of continuing to allow wood shake roofs on these structures in some of our communities contributes greatly to making a simple apartment fire into a true conflagration approaching fire storm dimensions.
Fire walls that extend only to the underside of the roofing material are another joke as far as we are concerned. Some municipalities have knuckled under to building interests in allowing “fireproof” plywood to replace the fire wall extending through the roof. This practice poses a danger to firefighters by placing a deteriorating roof surface beneath their feet.
Watch these construction nightmares in your district. They go up so fast and are covered virtually overnight. How come?
Another collapse situation. The collapse is over and should have been planned for. But now what? Look at this fireground. How many problems do you see? How would you handle them as a company officer? As an incident commander?
First, what of the collapse zone? Is it established and respected? To accomplish that, you need discipline and training. If the firefighters understand the importance of the safety zone, it will be less of a problem.
The wall still standing is the weakest wall—the one with the greatest number of openings. The collapse zone —at a minimum —should be an area equal to the height and width of the remaining wall. Is the apparatus operating from a safe area? The best areas from a safety and aggressive attack standpoint are the comers of the building—or what were the corners.
What of secondary collapses and collapse hazards? Look at this sidewalk bridge. How long will it be there? How will it fall —straight down, to the left, or to the right? Will it pull safely out of the structure holding up on the other side of the street, or will it pull the front of that building down, too?
Look under that bridge. Where do those electrical service lines go? How many poles will the falling bridge pull down? Are they only on that block?
Remember, the urgency of this fight is over. The building is a total loss —garbage. The brand problem is reduced because of collapse. We are in a surround-and-drown mode: Surround it from areas of total safety, control one hazard at a time, and keep your imagination going to outguess the building’s behavior under the fire and the secondary collapse problems.*
(Photo by John Hayes.)
