After the fire is extinguished, surely there will be time to have informal and formal critiques of what occurred. There’s also a strong possibility that some research may explain “how” and “why” things occurred. This process will often provide us with more information that can affect or change our standard operating procedures or shed light on the products we encountered on fire.
Winter weather can bring cold temperatures to many areas of the country, which puts a strain on heating appliances. Many people have secondary devices such as fireplaces and wood stoves inside their homes. These provide additional heat and lower heating costs. Unfortunately, many of us are going to encounter a resident who cleaned out the ash and embers from these devices and placed them in a container outside—and close to the dwelling—before going to bed. Or maybe a resident had the outside chiminea blazing away too close to the house and it started a fire. It’s not uncommon for us to arrive and find a large volume of fire running up the outside of the dwelling.
Vinyl siding (polyvinyl chloride, or PVC) is said on multiple Web sites to be fire resistant and, because its structural makeup includes chlorine, it is more difficult to ignite, needs large amounts of oxygen to burn, and will burn more slowly than wood. But let’s add a windy night with a pile of firewood on the wood deck of a home that has a fire started by the ashes, and we all know the rapid flame spread and coverage we’ll face on arrival.
Beneath the siding, we sometimes encounter foam insulation and oriented strand board (wood particleboard bonded together with flammable glue) or plywood sheathing, which can contribute to flame intensity and spread. When we add a vinyl soffit to the mix, the perforated vinyl pieces under the eaves of the home that allow air to circulate in the attic to prevent mold and mildew, we have another avenue of smoke and flame spread into the dwelling. (A soffit is the material/section beneath the eaves that connects the outer edge of the roof to the exterior wall of the dwelling.)
When the soffit fails and allows fire to enter the attic space, we can encounter a host of problems. Many attics are used for storage or have heating and air conditioning units in them. Fire entering the space will encounter a large fire load and cause the small gable end vents to become insufficient avenues for smoke, gases, and flames to exit. Some departments will use an aerial, tower ladder, or portable ladder to access the gable ends and rip off the decorative vent from the dwelling to enhance ventilation. They may even run a saw down through the siding and sheathing to create a larger opening to vent the building from this location.
If you encounter aluminum siding, peel it away to lessen the chances of the material binding up your saw. You can cut this hole and use a hoseline to attack the fire in the attic from it. Remember, access to the attic can be difficult to locate in smoke conditions on the top floor; and a scuttle in a closet might not be large enough to allow access for a member wearing a self-contained breathing apparatus. If roof access is easy to achieve, you can cut open the roof from an aerial, tower ladder bucket, or roof ladder. This helps members pulling ceilings on the top floor by allowing smoke and gases to lift.
In some instances, you’ll encounter fully floored attic spaces and won’t be able to access the fire. Then you have to locate the scuttle or pull-down stairs or find another avenue to attack the fire.
Recent studies have shown an alternative option of fire attack for attic spaces. If you remove the soffit with a hook and put an exterior hoseline into this area, the water stream can penetrate and extinguish the bulk of the fire, which is normally the wood framing and underside of the roof sheathing. This method of suppression will not work if the dwelling has solid wood soffits.
When you encounter fires that run up the exterior of the home, don’t be surprised if you find people sleeping in their beds because the fire hasn’t entered the home and set off a fire alarm or smoke detector. In some cases, smoke conditions on the upper floor of the dwelling have been almost nonexistent. Meanwhile, a raging fire has already entered the attic. Make sure you search the areas that usually contain the bedrooms. The time of day is no longer our main consideration for whether to search. More and more families are taking care of elderly or ill family members at home than ever before, and people can be trapped at any time of the day.
Another important feature of the exterior fire on arrival is the immediate identification of it. A 360° size-up will give us a good indication of the fire’s intensity and extension to the attic or an exposure. It will also tell us whether a first-floor addition is the initial source of the fire. Also, with vinyl siding, a fire can vent from a window and run the exterior of the home. Firefighters searching on the floors above must realize this and not be haphazard when venting windows so they don’t pull the fire into the room they’re searching. Another important consideration for incoming engine companies is that if a hoseline hasn’t been stretched for exterior fire extinguishment, you may get assigned that duty. We must knock down the source of the fire, especially if it started on the outside and penetrated into the structure.
MICHAEL N. CIAMPO is a 38-year veteran of the fire service and a lieutenant in the Fire Department of New York. Previously, he served with the District of Columbia Fire Department. He has a bachelor’s degree in fire science from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He is the lead instructor for the FDIC International Truck Essentials H.O.T. program. He wrote the Ladders and Ventilation chapters for Fire Engineering’s Handbook for Firefighter I and II (Fire Engineering, 2009) and the Bread and Butter Portable Ladders DVD and is featured in “Training Minutes” truck company videos.
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