FIRE FOCUS
- How many handlines do you need? Start to build a needs analysis —forget the gallon formula for now.
1 st line: To the store. After getting water, see if the forcible entry problem is taken care of. If it’s effected fast, begin the attack. If delayed, protect the fire escape while awaiting entry.
2nd line: Look for a visible life hazard —if on the fire escape, protect the civilians until they are off. If not present, stretch enough hose to the second floor to handle that and to go above to the third floor if momentarily needed or to complete extinguishment later.
Brooklyn, New York, 7/90. Three-story, mixed-occupancy structure, wood frame with brick veneer. Three alarms.
Photo by Warren J. Fuchs.
3rd line: Back up the first line on the fire if necessary. Secondarily, look at the fire escape for additional civilians or firefighters exposed to the horizontally venting fire condition. Stretch enough hose to get to the third floor if necessary.
4th line: Back up the first or up to the second floor if more than one apartment. If two lines are on the interior stairs, use a second means —the fire escape or portable ladder —to get to the location.
5th line: If the four above are committed, stretch a fifth to stand by. Don’t play catch-up.
- How many truck problems are there?
- Force entry. It’s doubtful that an entry team for opening ceilings and search will be needed right after the door is forced here. These two firefighters should have a second priority. The interior stair to the second floor occupancy(ies).
- Immediate vertical ventilation from the roof level. The fire is not in the top floor, so opening all vertical shafts —skylight, scuttle, etc. —should be sufficient. Roof secondary job is to get down the fire escape to the top floor—enter and search when the fire condition allows.
- Drop the fire escape drop ladder. Visually check the balconies and windows for victims. Size up the fire condition and its exposure and probable behavior to the fire escape operation. If the fire is farther from it than apparent in this picture, ascend to the second floor, vent the windows off the fire escape, and then make a doorway out of the window you’ll enter to begin search from the exterior.
- Additional ladder (at least one) to the top floor for vent, entry, and search.
- Ascend the interior with hopes of gaining access to the third-floor occupancies.
- After his entry, assist (team up with) the firefighter entering the second floor. This is the toughest and most risk-prone position at this fire initially.
- Check rear (with ladder in hand) for alternate entry positions for search and removal.
- Second aerial position should be at the corner of the building in preparation to access any floor at both sides of the fire building.
- A third aerial device may be useful at the rear corner over the one-story extension for access to the occupied floors at that location.
You have a ladder company and two engine companies on the scene. There should be no doubt in your mind about calling two additional engines and at least one ladder company as soon as you arrive.
Photo by Keith D. Cullom.
A fast-spreading fire in an attic space, and one that includes cedar-shake shingles, can severely tax any fire department. To cut it off and extinguish it before it gets to the enclosure walls requires speed and know-how.
One of the tactics used to cut off a horizontal spreading fire under the roof is a trench cut. In the true definition of this tactic, the cut should be two feet wide and span the distance between two fire walls (excuse the expression). It effectively opens a slice in the attic or cockloft and, hopefully, redirects the extending fire to the outer air. To be effective the cut must be complete before the fire gets to it. Handlines must then be in place on the roof to assure that the fire is not able to jump the opening to the unburned portion. When all is ready both on and below the roof, the cut is opened all at once.
Extinguishment still occurs by pulling the ceilings and operating handlines from below; the handline on the roof is for control and, in this case, to prevent the most dangerous roof in America —the cedar shake—from igniting from burning embers.
Roof decks are flimsy, and in areas of no snow load are flimsier still. Roof deck collapse is common. Firefighters in Goleta wisely take portable ladders up on the lightweight roof. While operating from the ladder, the additional live load will be spread by the ladder over many roof rafters, adding a measure of safety to the operation.
Photo by Ed Heavey.
This department and its leadership deserve a pat on the back. Read the caption again; Vacant! Boarded up for months! Fully involved! Bowling alley! NO INJURIES!!!!!!
These items are lessons for all of us.
- Preplan of your district pays off. It was a vacant and boarded building for months. That brings with it many things, including additional damage from vandalism or weather conditions, frozen and broken pipe assemblies, etc.
To fight a vacant building fire, the command function must keep it like that —vacant. This means firefighters, too. Control and discipline are musts at fires such as this.
- Fully involved. Fires start small. If a vacant and boarded-up building is fully involved on arrival, you can be sure that there is a hell of a lot of structural damage that you can’t see. What of the steel within the structure? Is it at the point of failure? Where are the bearing walls? Which are the enclosure walls?
Defensive firefight! OK, now what? Do I have enough logistics —personnel, equipment, and water supply —to mount an aggressive defensive attack? Call for help. Tell them just what pieces of equipment you need, tell them where to stage or respond and to whom to report.
What are your exposure problems, both now and later? Once roofs of this size give way to fire attack, the radiant heat is only one problem. The thermal updrafts can drift huge pieces of burning embers (more like planks) over many exposures, especially in a residential community. More personnel!
- Bowling alley. Although it sounds different and is spelled differently, you may as well shout, ‘Truss construction!” Whether or not it was a factor at this fire, the large open areas that are required in a bowling occupancy demand the use of truss construction whether you can see the classic hump of the bowstring or not. Plan for collapse—not only of the roof but also the walls, as purlins, steel, or whatever move around and put sheer stress on a now freestanding wall.
- Apparatus placement, exposure protection, logistics, water supply, collapse discipline, and welfare and wellbeing of the troops are some of the incident commander’s main concerns at fires sucFi as this. This is wFiere the management principle of delegation of autFiority plays an important relief role for the commander.
Photo by Tom McCarthy.
A study in defensive exterior operations with a collapse potential planned for the fire building by the command function.
- The building, in various stages of interior collapse, is fought defensively with highly maneuverable aerial platform streams.
- Objectives at structures such as this include:
- Set up outside the collapse zone or at the corners of the structures.
- The stream should work perpendicular to the building openings starting at the lowest fire floor working upward. This is especially true opposite the weakest wall in a structure —the one with the most openings.
- What other collapse indicators can you imagine in this photo?