FIRE FOCUS
Mount Vernon, New York, 12/90. Fast-spreading, large-area, top-floor fire in a five-story, nonfireproof, oneblock-long occupied multiple dwelling with mixed occu- pancies on the first floor. The five-alarm fire required mutual-aid response from nearby departments in Westchester County.
Photo: David Handschuh
Fires in top floors of occupied multiple dwellings of construction similar to that pictured above offer some strategic and tactical benefits, but additional problems at that location can tax any department.
- Vertical fire spread, autoexposure, and search-andremoval operations on the floor or floors above the fire are not present. The fire is on the top floor.
- Additional problems in the firefight can consist of: large, unbroken (undivided) means of horizontal fire spread; smoke and heat condition that’s heavier than normally encountered in fires below; adjacent occupancies or other apartments, rarely a horizontal extension or primary search problem for fires on lower floors, that need immediate entry, search, and examination.
- Roof ventilation activities must be continuous. Roofs first must be opened, then usually cut. Trench cutting may be employed to cut off a fast-spreading cockloft space fire —once primary veitical ventilation is accomplished.
- Horizontal venting is a must to support interior search, removal, and extinguishment efforts in much greater areas than is needed for fires below the top floor. Every occupancy on the top floor must be entered and searched once the fire has penetrated the cockloft area.
- At fires such as this one, call additional help immediately. Provide for extensive forcible entry and long, continuous roof operations with sufficient personnel, power tools, communication equipment, access and exit points, aerial devices, and portable ladders where appropriate.
- Handlines on stairs are also another problem. With all lines going to the same floor, the stairs will be jammed. Worse, advancing lines are all on the fire floor, and some of them will get tangled up, halting advance. No stair should have more than two lines on them. Use a well hole, window by rope, fire escape, or ladder.
New Orleans, Louisiana, 12/89. Five-alarm fire in the Pelican Ice Flouse, an ice manufacturing company. Fourand two-story building of heavy mill construction. Interior walls lined with cork; tanks of ammonia/refrigerant units on the roof. Fire began the morning of a big freeze that sent temperatures plummeting to below 10°F. Under control after a six-hour defensive firefight, but fire department on the scene applying water for a week. Mutual-aid companies called to respond to this fire and numerous others that had broken out around the city during the cold spell. Total collapse of the structure occurred. After cutting off electric power to the area and after the fire was under control, the electric company severed high-power lines to prevent ice buildup that would have snapped the lines and injured personnel.
Photo: Chris E. Mickal, New Orleans Fire Department Photo Unit
The New Orleans Fire Department gives us all a lesson in planning for the unexpected—the unnatural! Departmerits in the extreme northern and southern regions of the country tend to ignore each others’ severe weather conditions.
- The hazard here is quick-freezing icy surfaces that are virtually invisible (black ice); this condition must be expected, understood, and dealt with by using sand, salt, or melting chemicals.
- The heavy weight of ice accumulations and no water runoff is common in departments dealing with subfreezing temperatures every winter but may not be planned for in our southern communities. Additional weight of ice on structural members not designed for it can be an additional collapse indicator.
- Weight on overhead electrical supply lines and their connectors must be considered.
- Personnel preparedness for cold exposure is necessary: Provide for additional clothing, on-scene rehabilitation centers, early and frequent relief, and warming liquids such as tea or soup (not coffee).
- Procedures for handling frozen equipment—during the firefight, while taking up, during return to quarters, and during in-house maintenance —should be established.
- Apparatus, motors, pumps (water as well as hydraulic fluids), and air compressors require special attention and unique operational methods to prevent freezing and other related damage.
- SCBAs may malfunction because of freezing moisture during use.
- Recognition and treatment training for cold-weather injuries—frostbite, exhaustion, exposure—may easily be ignored in alternate weather locations.
Chicago, Illinois, 2/90. One-story, nonfireproof, 50- by 125-foot commercial building with a wood bowstring truss. Housed an auto painting business. A fire of suspicious origin needing three alarms to bring under control. Upon arrival, fire through roof in rear of building, with heavy smoke condition. After forcing entry, size-up factors indicated that a defensive attack was necessary. Roof collapse occurred during the firefight. Fire was under control in about an hour.
Photo: Tom McCarthy
This photo gives many lessons —limited only by our imagination and ability to “see.”
- At buildings such as this, heavy involvement can weaken truss assemblies and/or expand steel support members, causing early wall collapse and roof rafter collapse.
- The roll-down steel door is opened properly—cut! In the photo, padlocks or control devices appear to be absent, indicating a door that must be opened from the inside. Given the size of the fire, the only way to increase horizontal ventilation is to free the chain and open the door from the inside—or cut it from the outside.
- If additional venting is required, you can pull (slide) the slats of the door out from the channel toward the opening.
- Aggressive aerial platform extinguishment is ongoing at the front of the building. Respecting a collapse zone, the firefighters drop the stream to the ground to extinguish the fire and hydraulically overhaul the cockloft or truss loft, cool any steel that may be present, and extinguish the fire.
What a pleasure to view these tactics instead of the timewaster of operating these streams from above the roof!
Union City, New Jersey, 11/90. (See page 134.) Topfloor fire in a three-story, wood-frame multiple dwelling with a common cockloft (attic) space. Two mutual-aid companies were called in above the two-alarm Union City assignment. The eady-morning fire, of electrical origin, was controlled in about an hour; unfortunately, one civilian fatality occurred.
Photo: Ron Jeffers
What do you see? A top-floor fire in a three-story, attached-frame, multiple-dwelling complex.
- Fire is heavy into the corner building and in the cockloft. From the photo we don’t know if it extended into this as exposure 4 or if this is the fire building extending into exposure 2.
- At top-floor fires like this one, roof ventilation efforts will be an enormous undertaking. Communication above and around the structure must give the descriptions of conditions. An interior attack may be appropriate or may have to be abandoned, depending on conditions reported.
- The presence of a fire escape on a three-story building can give an indication to arriving firefighters that they have a multiple dwelling. Fire escapes sometimes are required if there are more than two families in residence.
- Exposure problems are cut in half as the fire starts or spreads to the last building in a row—a plus.
- Roof venting in structures such as this is continuous, depending on fire spread and interior operations. Sometimes it’s best to mount a secondary effort from the perimeter—an occupancy not yet affected by fire. Open from below and protect it while additional handlines enter buildings closer and closer to the seat of the fire, driving it back to the original fire building.*
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