ROOF OPERATIONS, PART 3
BY TOM BRENNAN
You arrive at the reported structural fire location. You have been assigned vertical ventilation. The fire is obviously located under the roof–a top-floor fire. Remember, one-story buildings are all top-floor fires. You need to do a couple of different things.
First, account for exterior passage to the fire building–either the adjoining building or aerial or portable ladder.
Second, ensure that a second egress will be placed for your location as soon as possible, and choose your tools. Unless you are stopped by interior command, you must plan to cut the roof. The saw has a sling, and you toss it over your shoulder. If your access is by the bucket of a tower ladder, you have time to throw a hardware store of tools inside it while it is setting up. If not, select the tools based on what you must accomplish. They usually would be a halligan-type tool (forcing doors, ventilators, skylights, scuttles) and a six-foot hook (or pike pole) to push the ceilings out of the way from the hole you cut to the fire area below.
Arrival on roof
On arrival at the roof of the fire building, you accomplish all the chores we spoke about in the previous two articles. Additionally, you must provide almost all of the horizontal ventilation to the top floor at the sides and rear of the building–again, the 25 feet of rope and the halligan pendulum. “Take” the most severely exposed window first, and continue in one direction until the windows cease to show pushing smoke or flame. Then go back and start breaking in the other direction. This may be all the interior forces need to get to the seat of the fire with the handline(s) and complete a primary search.
The cut
In “iffy” fire situations or in autocratic, nondrilling officer situations, you can communicate below. But, you did your size-up, and they are busy below you, and you plan your cut. Where? Here are a few simple rules or guidelines for beginning roof cuts on combustible structures.
Rule One
You should have been sizing up your operation from the time you left quarters. On arrival in front of the fire building, you should have decided from the smoke condition that the fire is most probably located on the upper or top floor and that it is more to the rear or front and to the side where the smoke condition appears heaviest.
On arrival at the roof of a top-floor fire, you mentally divide the roof into four quadrants. After all the openings have been taken care of and the horizontal ventilation has been accounted for, the smoke and flame conditions outside the building and showing above the roof edge will pinpoint your target for the hole.
Rule Two
NEVER cut nearer than five feet to the exterior wall of a building. The first reason is obvious: You can fall. But the most important reason is that it will en-sure that your hold will be in the center of any fire occupancy enclosure walls below you.
Rule Three
Wind is important to you only if you feel it! I have seen firefighters with the wet finger in the air. Nonsense! If there is wind, the simple rule three is to work with your BACK into the wind. That knocks off the confusing leeward, windward silliness.
Now you have your location. The saw has started. How big a cut should you make? Silly question? No! Most firefighters in this job rarely get an opportunity to cut flat roofs. When the saw starts, they tend to ride it around until it runs out of gas. The books give a poor guide because most of my classes answer “four by eight” or “six by ten.” The practical answer to this is, how do you pull the roof covering off a hole that big?
Sure, cut a three by four. But plan for an eight by ten! That means before you pull the roof covering off, put additional “legs” into the roof cut so that if you must make the first hole bigger, you will be able to get close enough to finish the cuts. If fire comes out of the hole without the legs, you will never get close enough to make it bigger. You will be forced to make a second hole–bush league and ineffective at best!
Now you must push the top-floor ceiling membrane (whatever it is) down and provide the objectives: to ventilate the cockloft (or attic), restrict the pressured horizontal spread to interior and exterior exposures, help prevent smoke explosions later, and provide great ventilation to the fire compartment below. n
n TOM BRENNAN has more than 35 years of fire service experience. His career spans more than 20 years with the City of New York (NY) Fire Department as well as four years as chief of the Waterbury (CT) Fire Department. He was the editor of Fire Engineering for eight years and currently is a technical editor. He is co-editor of The Fire Chief`s Handbook, Fifth Edition (Fire Engineering Books, 1995). He is the recipient of the 1998 Fire Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award.
