FIRE FOCUS
Featuring the Photography of Steven Spak
Queens, New York. February 1991. Fire in a multifamily, attached residential dwelling. Report of a child trapped on the second floor turned out to be false. Localized collapse of the first floor injured two firefighters.
This fire officer is exiting from the second floor, the floor above the fire.
This is the most dangerous position on any fireground. It is where accountability counts most. Occupied attached-frame dwellings are America’s fast-burning killers. Coordination, cooperation, training, communication, aggressiveness, awareness, leadership, and command come into play all at once.
The fire, in a corner of the structure, cuts the fire extension problem in half and lets suppression forces concentrate only on the exposure 2 side —at least as it appears in this photo and in this case.
From the photo, we know a few things. Fire is, of course, on the first floor. Did it start there? Is it just the one room and controllable with aggressive handlines? Where are the interior stairs? Have you protected them for the search effort for life above the fire?
Assure command and the fire forces on the fire floor that a search attempt is ongoing above them. Provide secondary means of egress at as many points on that floor as possible. Maintain communication and direction to those firefighters at all times. Order evacuation dependent on size-up feedback and create an atmosphere of discipline so that the “macho attitude” does not overrule lifesafety measures.
Fire has extended to the second floor and is probably in the walls. The smoke condition pushing out of the cornice indicates it probably has penetrated the attic or cockloft space.
At this moment in time, the firefight should be offensive/ defensive. You should be able to hear saws operating on the roof of the fire building, or find out why not!
Handlines should be in place and charged on the first and second floors of the exposure and the ceiling quickly examined for extension into the attic. If fire is found, hold it there if possible, but find enough fire forces to drop back and check the second exposure, again with charged lines. The trick here is to find where fire isn’t or is controllable and then to fight your way back to the original fire building.
Playing catch-up at fires in structures like these is a loser, unless you’re into urban renewal! Set up a staging and logistics area immediately. Assure that additional tactics may be deployed immediately with at-the-ready and not in-the-station personnel.
New fori:, New York. March 1991. Multiple-alarm fire. Six-story, ordinary-constructed commercial structure. A difficult fire that originated in a restaurant kitchen and extended rapidly through building ducts.
Ugh! Here it is: the ugliest smoke in the tightest space. It goes from gray to yellowish to gray-green. Snotty, toxic, awful. While vertical ventilation is necessary, it is limited to the building openings provided. Horizontal ventilation to support the firefight is a must. Getting to the rear of structures like these is a study in imagination, aggressiveness, training, and preplanning.
What do we know about structures such as this one, just by looking at the photo and putting the fire in your district? First is that fire is on the third floor. But is it really the third floor, or is this a renovated structure with an added mezzanine on the first floor? Mezzanines are not strong and are usually a renovation. Their collapses at fires have taken many firefighter lives.
What do you know about any other renovations? Your inspection activities should have detected this and the report of the facts available at the command post. The most frequent collapse killers have been in renovated buildings.
The exposures do not seem to be a problem immediately. Why?
Look at the window line. Every building in the picture has second-floor windows at a different height. It probably means that all buildings were built at a different time and each has its own brick wall butting against the exposure’s wall. You’ll gain time here.
Accountability again. Where are all the firefighters? Are you in communication and tracking their location? Is the tower ladder here strictly operating as vent-enter-searchand-get-out, or are they preparing for a defensive/offensive attack? Do the interior personnel know?
The command system in the foreground gives a good indication that information gained by the questions above are answered and tracked. Do you have one?
Jersey City, New Jersey. April 1991. Four-alarm fire in an H-shape, ordinary-constructed apartment building. Believed to have originated in a crack cocaine apartment. Severe wind conditions contributed to rapid horizontal fire spread.
Five stories of occupied apartments at night. Fire probably has started on the fourth floor (fifth if you count the basement as occupied structure) and has extended to the top floor. Fire rarely extends down. Horizontal extension is slow on floors below the top floor but once into that floor and its cockloft is a tremendous factor in fire control.
From the picture it looks like fire has jumped the alley to exposure 2. But experience dictates that this is probably one building connected on every floor by a corridor or abutting apartmerits. This connection is responsible for the shape of the building (E, H, I, U) and a strategy-and-tactics nightmare once the fire is in the top floor.
The area described above sometimes is known as the throat of the building. Enclosure walls act as fire barriers to all floors except the top floor. Even if there are barriers separating the roof space, they are of flimsy construction and pierced by all kinds of building services and renovations. We used to call these fire walls until we kept extending through them. This throat must be protected. This can be accomplished by defensive/offensive strategies and rapid and supportive tactics. Maneuverable streams such as those from a tower ladder can be placed well within the throat of the structure for a point of operation. Interior handlines within the exposure side should be charged while the ceilings are opened.
Now is the time for the trench cut. The fire is adequately vented (look at the photo) and roof teams should have prepared to cut the fire off and support the holding effort of the nozzle teams in the exposure below. The object of the trench cut is to complete an opening in front of the fire extension from fire wall to fire wall before fire gets there. When opened it should slow the rapid horizontal fire spread and give the handlines and truck crews below enough time to stop the spread from below —not above.
Fire has continued to extend. Evacuate fire forces. Interior local collapse is a real possibility if it hasn’t occurred already. It is common at scenes like these for local collapse of two floors to cause a pancake collapse of all floors below it.
Reposition or call additional apparatus to fight this fire defensively and yet protect the only exposure at this time — exposure 2. Get logistics out of the collapse zone and respect the third dimension: the distance of the wall above the elevated streams.
Queens; New York. April 1991. Three-alarm fire in twostory strip stores with a common cockloft. Heavy smoke and fire condition on arrival. Originated in basement. Occupants attempted to control the fire with handheld fire extinguishers, resulting in a delayed alarm.
Illustrated is a defensive/offensive firefight that is effective at fast-burning strip stores, known as taxpayers. The reasons for it are listed over and over: quick entry of fire to vast open spaces above the stores — attic space or cockloft; flimsy partitions between occupancies that do not extend through the cockloft space; common cellars and sometimes renovations that breach occupancy walls; slow and sometimes nonexistent rear ventilation opportunities.
The photo is interesting because it shows an aggressive exterior firefight in the foreground while it appears that an offensive firefight is supported by ladders to the roof on the exposure side in the background.
The tower ladder in the center is operating aggressively from the sidewalk. This powerful and maneuverable stream can do wonders attacking the fire horizontally and still penetrate the cockloft from a position below it. So often we see these valuable pieces of equipment above the self-vented roof pounding the fire back into the structure. The only fire they hit is the small section that has burned through the roof. From this position the stream can “pull” its own ceiling for extinguishment and plow through partitions that separate it from pockets of fire.
