A CASE FOR AN EXTINGUISHER
RANDOM THOUGHTS
You’re in the hallway. It’s hot as hell and getting hotter. You can’t see a thing—but you don’t care. You’re good in smoke, you’re trained, you’re experienced. “Get to the seat of the fire first” is your mental and disciplined goal. Two bedroom openings face each other at the end of the hallway. One is fully involved and flame is pushing across the opening to the uninvolved room. It’s 2:31) in the morning, and you’re sure there arcvictims. What do you do?
Another scenario: l ire is in possession of most of the first-floor apartment at the end of a public hall in a multiple dwelling. You are with the second truck to arrive, and you have been assigned to the entry and search team. The engine is moving through the apartment —slowly, but in obvious control. You get acknowledgment from the firefighter you told that you are going above the fire, and up you go. You get to the apartment directly above.
You force entry. The layout forces you to start inside a narrow entrance-wav that brings you past a hall closet and then through the kitchen, living area, and finally to the bedrooms i-lames are pushing up behind the baseboards and through some of the loose cracks between the oak flooring, and the closet is involved.
I he door is swung open away from you, and flames now separate you from your objective. The mythical “Wet me down, I’m going in.” while always false, certainly is not within uiur bag of tricks now. What do you do?
The 2′ -gallon pressurized water extinguisher is the most overlooked and most valuable piece of equipment you can take into the fire building during the early stages. Those of you who have had a chance to use it knevw what I mean, and those of you who have scoffed at it for years should try it. It knocks down a hell of a lot of fire!
In the first scenario, aggressive operation of the extinguisher can drive the flames of the bedroom back and, in some cases, momentarily darken down the room itself. New for your first objective: Isolate the fire, gain some time, reduce the risk — close the door! Without the availability of the extinguisher, your choices are to keep backing out until the handline is in place and controlling the situation or to go another way. If you still doubt the power of the tool, tryit at your next live burn.
In the second scenario, you have a small nuisance—the flaming closet is in your way: between you and your primary search, between you and the people, between you and a rescue. Here is where the team concept pays. Hit the closet with the extinguisher stream, pass the opening, and shut the door. Leave the still-charged extinguisher in your partner’s control to assure your return and ability to escape to the safety of the public hall.
The extinguisher also is effective for those small wastebasket fires on upper floors of office buildings. Besides. your only other choice at these “rubbish fires” is to await the arrival of the engine, the standpipe hookup, the stretch, and the use of too many gallons of water. The delay even may bring the extra alarm assignment and the press to what was a small, insignificant fire on arrival.
Speaking of high-rises, most residence building fires are mattresses and furnishings. Once knocked dewn by the hoseline of the engine company. what next? Remove the piece of smoldering mess to the street. Your choice here certainly is not out the 35th-floor window. It is either down the stairs or in the elevator. Here is where the “stuff” can hit the fan. All of us have been in the embarrassing and dangerous condition of having a smoldering mattress “light up” on the way down to the street. Embarrassment can lead to disaster, as fire could cause us to abandon the effort, ignite the interior stair furnishings (smaller buildings), and wreak havoc on the “routine” fire operation. Your extinguishing team now is a floor or floors above a second—and more threatening-fire condition.
Send the water extinguisher with the removal team. It will be able to maintain control of a rolled mattress throughout the removal process.
A few words of caution, however, before you adopt the procedure. First, the “can” must be operated upright. If your first attempt is to use it from a crawling position with the “can” lying on its side on the floor, you’ll get some water, but the air will expel rapidly, and you w-ill have more than a gallon left but no air to push it out.
At first, the extinguisher is a pain to carry, but it won’t be after you realize howeffective it can be—and you, therefore, can become. Install a sling on it so that you can hang it from one shoulder until it’s needed.
Another tip is to increase its hitting power and expand its use. Add a cupful of AFFF solution to the water before capping and charging the device. It increases the extinguishing power of the water and helps to extinguish by impacting the fourth side of the extinguishment tetrahedron— chemical chain reaction interruption.
The AFFF also makes the extinguisher effective for small oil-burner fires in private dwellings. Put your finger over the nozzle and spray the flame and oil source w-hile others try to recover and get the foam line or foam extinguisher.
We found this device to be so valuable that we carried it even on arrival as a second or greater alarm truck—if we were still in the offensive mode, that is.
