Salvatore Ancona uses a recent response by the Bellmore (NY) Volunteer Fire Department as the perfect example of how best to respond to fires in structures of balloon-frame construction.
Patrick Agostinelli illustrates why firefighters must guard against complacency when responding to a call that appears to be similar in type to one they are called to hundreds of times a year. Even though the building in his article was vacant, it was filled with hazards that included wires in the hallway, explosives, and half-filled gasoline containers.
Daniel Fresse explains how a series of batteries charging a forklift turned a call for carbon monoxide in a warehouse to an encounter with hydrogen and hydrogen sulfide gases.
Dillon Dextradeur relates how what appears to be an ordinary response can take many turns and expose firefighters to multiple hazards some of which firefighters can learn about only through education, not training.
Mark Waters details the lessons learned and shows you how to train all day and every day—no matter your department’s location—by building an indoor training prop.
Firefighters, officers, and chiefs are accustomed to certain ways of responding. If a person calls the fire department for an odor of smoke coming from the kitchen during dinner time, the responding units will make assumptions based on the type of call and the time of day it occurs.
April 8, 2008, was the worst day of my career as well as the worst day in my department's history.
Over the past few years, I have been fortunate to attend the Fire Department Instructors Conference (FDIC) International. I learned a number of valuable lessons that I was able to put into practice at this fire.
In the fire service, we tend to focus on our mistakes and the things that went wrong. These can be important learning lessons, but we seldom point out the things that we did well.
On Thursday, September 29, 2016, at 0847 hours, a commuter train crashed into the New Jersey Transit terminal in Hoboken, traveling at more than double the allowable speed limit.