What Would You Do? Four-Story Apartment Building

By Skip Coleman

Please view the above video to see three exterior and one interior view of the building. It only lasts 30 seconds. This fire occurs in a four story apartment building.

Assume you are responsible for initially establishing command at this fire.

Other units responding are what your department would send on a report of a fire in this occupancy type.

Answer the questions below or in this worksheet (PDF) or make your own strategic, tactical, and task level questions to answer.

Can crews safely effectively enter and work?      Yes        No

Could there be savable people inside?                  Yes        No

Will you allow offensive (interior) operations?  Yes       No

First assignment:___

Second assignment:__

Third assignment:__

Fourth assignment:___

For fire attack:  size of line (control)__  : Taken in from and taken to:  (confine)_   

For ventilation:  How_

For search:  How_

For back up: How___

Give us your thoughts on initial strategies and tactics on the comment section below or at our Fire Engineering page on Facebook.

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Skip Coleman: Firefighting RoundtableJohn “Skip” Coleman retired as assistant chief from the Toledo (OH) Department of Fire and Rescue. He is a technical editor of Fire Engineering. a member of the FDIC Educational Advisory Board; and author of Incident Management for the Street-Smart Fire Officer (Fire Engineering, 1997), Managing Major Fires (Fire Engineering, 2000), Incident Management for the Street-Smart Fire Officer, Second Edition (Fire Engineering, 2008) and Searching Smarter (Fire Engineering 2011) and 2011 recipient of the FDIC Tom Brennan Lifetime Achievement

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