BY DENIS MURPHY AND HANK MOLLE
It’s 4:45 a.m. when your pager alerts you to a house fire three blocks from your residence. You fly out of the house, jump in your chief’s car, and wheel around the block into every homeowner’s nightmare. Heavy smoke issues from the first floor of a two-story, wood-frame Cape Cod, a common structure in the area. An orange glow is visible in the trees on the B/C corner. Neighbors and a police officer are at the scene assisting the residents exiting through the windows from a first-floor bedroom. One of your department members, who lives across the street, runs up and informs you that kids are trapped upstairs. You transmit a working structural fire with people trapped to dispatch and call for additional resources.
The first engine is out the door and en route-it will be here in a minute since the firehouse is close to the scene. The truck company is out right behind it. The troops could tell it was a job when the dispatcher signed on, and firefighters have turned out in force.
 Photo 1 by Bill Bennett |
This bread-and-butter scenario is a challenge to every unit in this nation and one that all of us face at one time or another. According to the USFA’s Fire in the United States, 1992-2001 (13th edition), one- and two-family homes accounted for 73 percent of fires, 78 percent of deaths, 67 percent of injuries, and 76 percent of dollar loss in 2001.
 Photo 2 by Harry Loud. |
Resources, time constraints, and dynamic fire conditions will dictate our actions. Before we go to work, we should have a plan of attack that we had prepared long before we got up to fight this fire this morning. Is your truck company going to shine today, or will it be “first due without a clue”?
ENGINE OPERATIONS
Our attack should consist of an engine obtaining a water supply and stretching a line through the front door to the seat of the fire. Make sure it is flowing at least 150 to 180 gpm, not only to quickly suppress fire but also to make the area more tenable. This is probably the most important action we will take to ensure the successful conclusion of this incident. Once this occurs, all other subsequent actions can take place. The interior stairs, the major path for fire extension, have been protected by the placement of this handline. With proper ventilation support, this line should be able to knock down this fire.
CONSTRUCTION AND HORIZONTAL VENTILATION
Older, unrenovated homes will generally still have single-pane glass windows with wooden frames and sashes that are easier to vent. However, balloon-frame construction and a lack of fire stopping can make fire travel rapidly. Newer construction homes have made firefighters’ job tougher because of stricter building codes and modern building materials. Some examples include higher R values for roof and exterior wall insulation, vapor barriers and foam board insulation backers on exterior wall sheathing, and thermal pane or hurricane windows. All of the above factors contribute greatly to the development of flashover and backdraft conditions by not allowing heat to exit the building.
The other factor that plays greatly in flashover and backdraft development is the contents in today’s private dwellings. For example, according to National Fire Protection Association 921, Guide to Fire and Explosion Investigations, an older, cotton-padded upholstered chair burning will produce a heat release rate of 290 to 370 kilowatts (kw), while a newer polyurethane foam upholstered chair burning produces a heat release rate of 1,350 to 1,990 kw. Factor into this other upholstered furniture, mattresses, and hydrocarbon-producing electronics, and we have all the ingredients for a fire scene disaster.
Proper, well-timed venting techniques will greatly reduce the chances for flashover and backdraft. By using these, we can more aggressively and more safely perform our interior attack and searches, and any trapped occupants will have increased survival time.
SPECIFIC LADDER OPERATIONS
This article focuses on one aspect of ladder company operations that takes on great significance at this particular operation, especially if you are the resident. Who accounts for the missing occupants on the second floor? The answer: the first due truck/ladder company or whoever is performing that role in your department.
The first-due truck has a huge responsibility here-it not only needs to provide support for the advancing engine company on the first floor but also must quickly search the second floor. To accomplish this mission, the assignment for firefighters should be prearranged and trained on regularly.
The vent-enter-search (VES for short) concept has been around the fire service since the 1970s; it is a tried and true tactic that has produced tangible results, usually measured in saved lives. VES stems from a ladder company bulletin, Ladders 4 from FDNY, which covers ladder operations at private dwellings. It basically divides a ladder company into two teams and breaks down areas of responsibility at private dwelling fires. Like any other tactic, we must practice it to attain the proficiency needed when the chips are down. Any department can use these basic concepts to implement aggressive interior search operations when compatible with fire conditions.
INSIDE/OUTSIDE TEAMS
Inside team. Preferably, the inside team should consist of an officer and two firefighters, an irons man and a can man. The interior team at this fire has its hands full-it must gain entry to the structure; hence, it must have forcible entry tools. Assign a firefighter with a hook and a 21⁄2-gallon pressurized water extinguisher to this team. A six-foot hook is usually adequate for this assignment, but this may vary in different types of structures. This team must find the fire and support the movement of the line to the seat of the fire. If staffing levels are variable or low, team multiple units to form effective working units to accomplish the tasks. These tasks must be accomplished.
The inside team should vent the structure as it moves through performing search, which is coordinated with the engine’s movement of the hoseline. First-floor ventilation should also be coordinated with outside units, to enhance the movement of the first handline. Ventilation opposite the nozzle will enable the nozzle team to move toward and attack the seat of the fire, resulting in fire extinguishment as rapidly as posssible.
The interior team must conduct a primary search of the first floor as rapidly as conditions permit and relay the search results to the incident commander. Communication between the units and the IC is critical in efficiently managing any alarm. Poor communication is cited time and time again as a major contributing factor in firefighter fatalities. It is also a major factor in operations being performed in an inefficient and sometimes dangerous manner.
Outside team. The outside team should include an outside vent team of two firefighters who can access the upper floors. The apparatus operator can operate on the exterior of the building if he is not required at the turntable. The outside team should ladder the building and perform VES in the upstairs bedrooms, searching for victims. This aggressive primary search gives people who are trapped the best possible chance for timely rescue. This team has to move quickly to a position that will give it access to the second-floor bedrooms. This usually entails using portable ladders, although excellent alternatives include porches, attached garage roofs, setbacks, and aerial devices. These alternative entry choices usually offer more stable entry points-a considerable advantage when removing an unconscious civilian (photos 1, 2).
To accomplish VES, select a target area-in this case, our second-floor bedrooms. Remember, if Mom and Dad are on the front lawn, they know where their kids are. We have a high level of confidence in our reports of people trapped at this operation. We are entering this area above an advancing fire, knowing we are taking a risk, which is weighed against the anticipated benefit of removing the trapped children from the fire building. The outside vent team has to take quick decisive action to get in, search, and get out fast.
Time is something that cannot be overemphasized in these operations; true rescues occur immediately on arrival. They have to, or they are not really rescues, are they? Any fire department can remove a lifeless body after the fire is out. On first arrival is generally the best time to attempt a rescue, before the fire progresses any further. Time is never on our side.
LADDERS
The ground ladder is probably the most effective tool for venting in private dwellings. It can be used on its own to vent upper-floor windows; placed properly, it gives us access to upper floors for search as well as egress should conditions deteriorate. Ground ladders can be placed on lower roofs, which give us access to windows on upper floors. Extension ladders are an excellent choice for VES; they allow us to vary the size, which takes away much of the guesswork in “which ladder do I take?” If I’m just going to vent using the extension ladder, I can extend the ladder to a length so as to strike the window in the middle to upper half. If I’m going to ascend the ladder to vent using a hand tool and then enter, the ladder tip should be placed at or slightly below windowsill height. If I’m going to vent strictly to aid hoseline advancement, I should place the ladder to the leeward side of the window, with the ladder tip even with the top of the window. Make sure you take out the entire sash to maximize the size of the opening.
Members performing VES should be wearing full personal protective clothing. They should be operating at a minimum in pairs and ideally be radio-equipped. When using a ladder to vent a window, you must wear eye protection and you should remove gloved hands from the ladder as soon as it contacts the glass. Broken glass will slide down the ladder beams and can cut a gloved hand and bounce off rungs into unprotected eyes.
The first action the outside team firefighter takes is to close the bedroom door to isolate the room from the fire.
SECURITY DEVICES
You may encounter windows with security bars or interior scissor gates. Be proactive. On your initial size-up, take note and bring the tools necessary to attack these problems. Some tool choices are a reciprocating saw with the proper blade, a small cutting torch with a hook or strap that can be hung from a ladder, a rebar cutter, a hydraulic pedal cutter, a halligan, and a maul. Use a leg lock or ladder belt while operating on a ladder in performing these venting and cutting techniques. It can’t be emphasized enough how important it is to remove these security devices. Although you will be able to break the glass and give an effective vent, you must remember that besides trying to gain access from the exterior, interior forces are making a push and it’s always possible that conditions inside can deteriorate and members will have to look for an alternate egress. If they make it to a barred window and they can’t get out, the results can be tragic.
Once you have removed bars or gates from windows, transmit this information along with the locations from which the devices have been removed-for example, “bars have been removed from second floor side C.” This transmission lets interior forces know there is an egress in the rear toward which they can work.
DECISION TIME
We are often asked, “How do you know when to enter a window and when not to?” It is not a skill that can be taught effectively in a classroom. The firefighter at the window at a specific fire has absolute ownership of that decision. That is, none of us can tell you before an incident what to do because of the huge amount of variables that exist at every incident. The firefighter at the window makes that decision based on his experience and training. Only an experienced firefighter who was actually with you at that window can critique your actions.
BASEMENT FIRES
Basements can be the most challenging areas to vent. Generally, the number of windows is limited, and they may be small, sometimes less than two square feet. If there is an outside entrance, such as metal hatchway doors, we can force those to help. Sometimes, we need to get creative and cut a hole in the first-floor deck to allow heat and smoke to escape the basement. We would need a smoke ejector at the closest window, pulling smoke out of the house. We need a charged line to protect the first floor should fire extend up through this hole. Never operate a line into the hole if members are attacking the fire at the basement level, or you can push fire and steam into them, causing burns and cutting off their egress.
Remember, if you choose to cut flooring, make sure any carpeting is pulled up and removed from the area you want to cut. Not doing so will cause carpet threads to wind around the arbor of the saw and eventually bind it up. Operating forces must be informed of the vent hole, and the area must be blocked off so members don’t take the express to the basement.
SKILLS
That these tasks must be accomplished quickly should reinforce the fact that all the skills we need should have been mastered before we arrived here this morning. What are some of those tasks?
• Laddering. Ladder selection, carries, raises, tip placement, climbing, and operating from are all required.
• Forcible entry. We are going to force the window to the bedroom and enter it.
• Ventilation. Taking out this window is going to ventilate the fire; we are going remove everything in this window.
• Search. After we gain access, we have to search this room.
• Rescue. If we find our victim, we have to remove the victim down the ladder to EMS. Move an unconscious victim from floor or bed up to the windowsill to firefighter on ladder. There is no time for rope or hoisting systems.
Mastery of these skills and other fireground tasks will happen only with constant and realistic training. The more we sweat in training, the better our chances of accomplishing our mission when we encounter tough situations like our fire today.
• • •
The successful outcome of a serious rescue problem requires all of the players at different levels of our organization to perform their job assignments in a reliable and efficient manner. If the chief has confidence in his units’ abilities to accomplish basic tasks in priority order, he can command with confidence. If the truck company is confident that the engine will move the line and extinguish the fire, the crew will be able to address the victims trapped on the floor above with greater efficiency.
The confidence to perform in an aggressive fashion comes with experience and training. There is not much we can do about experience, but we can train as realistically as possible. This keeps us sharp and ready to perform the tasks required of us every day. Company officers in every fire company owe their members nothing less. Chief officers are just as responsible for making sure officers are training hard and performing on the fireground in an acceptable manner-it’s called leadership. ■
■ DENIS MURPHY, a 32-year veteran of the fire service, is assistant chief instructor of the Nassau County (NY) Fire Service Academy in Old Bethpage. He is the commissioner of the North Bellmore Fire Department, where he served as a captain and an EMT. He served 23 years with the Fire Department of New York, where he worked in some of the busiest companies in the city and recently retired as the captain of Squad 288 of the Special Operations Command. Murphy was involved in numerous FDNY training projects, taught at its fire academy and rescue school, was involved in the development of the squad companies in 1998, and worked for the Commissioner’s office on special projects. He was a member of FEMA USAR NY-TF 1.
■ HANK MOLLE, a 30-year fire service veteran, is deputy chief instructor of the Nassau County (NY) Fire Service Academy in Old Bethpage and a member of the North Bellmore Fire Department. He served as a captain with Freeport Fire Department Truck 1 and was a founding member and captain of the department’s dive team. A 24-year veteran of the Fire Department of New York, Molle served in some of the most active units in the city, including more than 15 years in Special Operations units, and was a founding member of Squad 288. He has served as an instructor at the FDNY Fire Academy and its rescue school.
