At the “Intelligent Firefighting” workshop at FDIC 2013 Monday morning, Captain Bill Gustin emphasized size-up is ongoing process, not just performed when we first arrive on a fire.
A veteran of Miami-Dade (FL) Fire Rescue, Gustin has presented at and attended FDIC since 1996.
Size-up employs two perspectives–that of companies operating on the inside the structure, and that of the incident commander outside. When these two size-ups don’t agree, it should send up a red flag, because someone (usually the inside company) doesn’t have an accurate view of the fire or structural conditions. If the tactics and strategy employed in the first few minutes of an operation are totally ineffective and unreasonably dangerous later on, they must be changed.
A video shown of an Underwriters Laboratories test comparing a fire in a room furnished with “legacy” materials (wood and natural fibers) versus one furnished with modern materials (polyurethane and other manmade materials) demonstrated the striking difference in fire behavior. The legacy room fire took 27 minutes to reach flashover, whereas the modern furnishing room flashed over in less than four minutes. The tactics designed for a legacy fire are not appropriate for a modern fire. Fires fueled by modern materials that burn faster and hotter, and “you’re dealing with an entirely different animal,” Gustin said.
Supplementing the discussing with studies of fire growth and decay, Gustin cautioned students against overeagerness to enter a building.
“We have never been better protected,” he said concerning personal protective equipment. The drawback is a less accurate sense of the heat intensity of the fire, with the result firefighters may go farther into the structure than safe.
Gustin noted that one of the biggest mistakes that a small, understaffed fire department can make is trying to operate like a big city department. Small departments without big city resources must realize that they may not be able to fight every fire in “text book” fashion. It will be a rare event that any action will take priority over getting water on a fire.
