SAFETY AT BUILDING STRUCTURAL FIRES
TRAINING NOTEBOOK
Although many fire departments resist the idea, a growing number of them have a speeifieally assigned safety officer. The job of fire department safety officer is arguably the most difficult of safety positions. An industrial safety engineer, for example, seeks to provide a hazard-free environment and to train employees in sale working practices for a specific function. The fire department has only limited control over the working environment, and firefighters must be trained to cope with an extensive range of hazards.
For more than 20 years, I have specialized in the hazards and problems buildings present to the firefighter. The following recommendations can help protect you from some of the hazards encountered in structural firefighting; they are not presented in order of priority I urge you to get started on these suggestions and to develop others.
KNOW YOUR BUILDINGS
Record in usable form and accumulate all the information about major and other buildings that the fireground commander might need.
Study your preplan procedures. Some preplans do not provide adequate specific information. As an example, the resistance to collapse offered by masonry walls that appear to be similar can vary greatly. Also, many preplans specify only the type of roof as flat, gambrel, peaked, mansard, etc. It is just as important to record the support system of the roof, particularly due to the hazards presented by trusses.
LIVE FIRE TRAINING
There is a fundamental lack in live fire training. By necessity it is limited to instructing students to take the punishment and hit the fire. The hazards of collapse and hidden fire breaking out of voids do not exist in the fire training burn building.
It is manifestly too dangerous to include such hazards in live training, but strong classroom presentations on this topic are necessary to prevent the students from getting the all-toocommon impression that all firefighters are required to do during a structural fire is to charge in and “put the wet stuff on the red stuff.”
CONSULTING ENGINEER
A serious fire is a completely undesigned major assault on the structure. Once the fire has been suppressed, operations should stop until a qualified structural engineer examines the structure and makes safety recommendations. The city of Champaign, Illinois, follows this practice.
Although I have no figures to prove it, it seems to me that more firefighters died overhauling half-destroyed structures than attempting rescues and searches. Since the major threat to a city is eliminated when a fire is suppressed and cannot spread to other buildings, why the hurry to complete the demolition of the building? Firefighters whose judgment is impaired by exhaustion are prime candidates for serious accidents when they pull a building apart in the dead of night.
CLEAR THE BUILDING
Every department should have a clearly understood procedure for clearing a building of personnel when an imminent hazard is detected. Be sure that the signal is audible —such as repeated blasts of air horns—and aired over all channels by the alarm headquarters. Repeat the signal until all units acknowledge, since some channels may be blocked and some personnel may be out of radio range.
The procedure used in one city permits any person on the foreground recognizing imminent danger to instruct the alarm office to transmit over the emergency radio the message “Evacuate the building.” Each unit conducts a roll call, and the results are first reported to sector command and then to overall command. The surrounding county, with which the city has many operations in common, uses continuous air horn blasts, since the radio signal might not reach all personnel.
This system is inadequate, however, since the air horns might not be heard by firefighters deep inside or high up in a building—or where noisy equipment is operating. It would be better if the city and county agreed on a common procedure that involves using both the air horns and the radio signal.
Hold drills for immediate evacuation. Firefighters sometimes are reluctant to heed evacuation orders. In one community, an acting deputy chief recognized the building named in an alarm as one he had preplanned in a fire science tactics course. He knew its hazards. When he ordered an evacuation en route to the building, two units stayed behind, arguing, “We’re hitting fire.” As he dispatched a chief to get them out, they decided to leave on their own. The last firefighter out was fatally hit by masonry.
The inexperienced may argue that it’s not macho to hold “getting out” drills. On the contrary: The proudest ships in the Navy regularly drill on how to abandon ship. “When there are no people inside a burning building, the safety of a firefighter is the highest priority,” we are reminded by Deputy Chief Vincent Dunn of the City of New York Fire Department.
Train personnel to look where they are going and not to look back during a drill. The fraction of a second gained may be vital, and tripping would be less likely. Many pictures I’ve seen show’ personnel looking back during evacuation. Also, train personnel not to hesitate when ordered to evacuate— even if the danger is not apparent to them —and teach them to leave equipment behind.
Have your personnel withdraw to a location far enough away to be safe. An interior collapse, such as that of a truss roof, can send a burst of fire out the doors and windows. A wall can fall out at least as far as its height, and deadly missiles can fly much farther.
Be sure that you have in place a system that allows you to account for all personnel on the foreground. When a collapse or other catastrophe occurs, all personnel must be assembled immediately. In paid departments the officer should have on his person and on the apparatus a copy of the riding list.
Volunteer departments have developed various systems. If departments having such a system would send a description of it to Fire Engineering, these procedures will be included in a future article.
Freelancing, no matter how well intentioned, is dangerous. All departments should have a procedure that has personnel not responding with the apparatus to report to a comand where they are assigned to specific units. A personnel pool might well be included as a unit of the staging area command.
The traditional warnings of an impending collapse —noises, falling plaster, smoke or water coming from between bricks, softening roofs or floors —are useful but not sufficient. I would add the sudden development of heavy black smoke under pressure, which presages a backdraft. The best warnings of dangers, however, are often picked up by well-trained personnel.
Assign a committee to develop maximum-time-of-entry concepts for buildings. The alarm office should track the amount of time that personnel are within the structure and notify the command officer when the assigned time has expired. At this time, it should be determined whether leaving the personnel in the building any longer is justified. This process changes the command mindset from “the building is forever” to the realization that the building’s gravity resistance system is under violent attack and its stability must be questioned. In the heat of combat, time can slip by very fast, and command may not realize how long the building has been under attack by fire.
Alert all personnel when the fire has changed from a distinct building fire to a structural fire. When the fire is attacking the structure of the building, command should announce—and all units should acknowledge —“This is now a structural fire.” All hands are placed on notice that the building is in trouble. If lightweight construction such as truss floors or roofs or wooden I beams are involved, immediate evacuation may be indicated.
Include the safe placement of apparatus in your preplans. Only place apparatus that are absolutely necessary in the collapse zone. Falling cornices and walls have torn the buckets off aerial platforms and caused serious injury and death.
Tilt slab concrete buildings particularly are vulnerable to collapse if the roof is damaged or lost. The four corners of the structure usually are not in direct collapse range. When such structures are being planned, try to get hydrants located far enough away from the building so that pumpers will not be in the collapse zone should a fire occur.
