Burnin' Down the House: Adjusting the way that we fight fires

Interesting article in the Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/nyregion/nyc-fire-dept-rethinking-tactics-in-house-fires.html?_r=2&hp

I think I get it. It's like not opening the hood, so that you don't allow the fire more air. Thanks for the link!

Interesting that furniture's become more flammable in recent years, or at least faster-burning.

If you'd asked me, I'd have assumed that like children's bedclothes and such, there would be a general tendency to try to make the stuff we fill our houses with safer. I mean, we should be trying very hard not to set it on fire in the first place. I just didn't expect that.

Firefighters rule. Can't speak ill of folks willing to RUN INTO a burning building to save your ass.

Good to know they question what they do and will try to improve. Get the feeling though that it will be more evolutionary than revolutionary change. As a born and raised former NY-er I know nothing changes quickly in that town. Old habits die hard.

My great-grandfather, grandfather and my dad were all firefighters.

I was told not to do it since it killed two of them and nearly got my dad.

I was also told: "If you run into a burning building to save a cat, make damn sure you find the cat, otherwise you're just an idiot that ran into a burning building".

I heard of a tactic called "positive pressure ventilation". A special fan powered by a gas engine is placed at the front door while windows / doors in the rear are opened. Fan pushes a massive amount of air through the building pushing out heat, smoke, and gasses.

Anyone else hear about this?

Another issue with new houses is weak floors. Back when joists were made of 2x12 every 16" it took a long time to burn through or break. New construction with engineered beams are just waferboard (OSB) standing on end. Burns fast and hot along with the OSB floor decking instead of hardwood planks. One wrong step and you're falling through.

Positive pressure is common practice.

The big issue with new buildings is engineered truss roofs. If one member of the truss fails, the whole truss fails. Regardless of whether it is metal or wood, it can fail in as little as five minutes in a fire. When we go to a fire in a building that is known to be truss framed, we generally do not go inside and never walk on the roof.

The article talks about verticle ventilation which like you said, is very dangerous with todays engineered trusses. Not all dept's use positive pressure as much as they can or should. We still see LODD's from putting guys on the roof and many close calls doing vertical ventilation as can be seen on youtube.

Nation wide an average of about a 100 firefighters die each year. Most from cardiac problems followed by a distant second motor vehicle accidents. I'm interested to see if there is a better tactic to come from this study, but I don't think there will be anything revolutionary that we learn.

The Charleston 9 was caused by many contributing factors such as staffing, small diameter supply line, water supply, their incident command, etc, etc. Many things have changed in Charleston since then.It takes time. New tools and techniques come and go but changing the mind set is difficult. Firefighters are like moths to the flame. We see fire and we go. But in the recent years the mindset has been slowly changing to "Risk alot to Save alot" which translates to if there are people inside then risking life to save a life is acceptable, if there is no life at risk then we extinguish the fire without putting lives at risk.

There is something we can learn from every closecall or LODD. Learning something and then implementing it doesn't happen as easy as it should.