By TOM BRENNAN
After many years of listening, watching, reading, and consulting on the subject of fighting a structure fire by members of departments in which the oath of office still states that the member is sworn to protect life and property of the areas of response, I finally have to write down something for my professional sanity.
The newest trend to me is to lose sight of basic firefighting operational skills and create nightmares of strategies with multifaceted tactics supplied as if the problem confronted is new. This job called “fighting structure fire” is basically a simple process. Even in war, there are only a few Battles of the Bulge, Last Stands, and Armageddons. Yet we reinvent wheels that are “screwed on” by many who really don`t go to fires routinely or merely write (regurgitate) those unconnected facts they heard “hanging around” the fire station. The word for success and safety in many (if not most) structural attacks is to always employ the K.I.S.S. Rule: Keep It Simple (the last “S” is for a descriptive demeaning adjective for you)! Let`s look at some examples.
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Garage attached to a one- or two-story house. You go into the house and enter the garage through the door from inside the home with a charged line! Period–the end. There may be differences, such as when dynamite is stored in the garage, and so on, but that is it! There will be no trapped firefighters should the door come down. No spread to the interior after arrival. No hysterics. No critiques in major publications because of death and injuries on the scene of a simple, small-time fire. Do not go through the garage door only because it is easier.
Handline placement for most structural fires. Where are we going wrong here? One hundred percent use of preconnects at every fire has caused some of the problems. The first line must go to what appears to be the seat of the fire–and with enough hose to get there the first time. I had guys who believed that five preconnected lengths could reach the fourth floor of a frame building with return staircases. Nonsense.
The second line must be prepared to back up the first and have enough hose to stretch to the interior exposure above the fire floor.
The third line, besides staying out of the same entrance and stairs of the first two lines, must be prepared to assist with the fire problem in the most urgent location from another direction and access method–fire escape, portable ladder, other interior staircase, rope, imagination.
Forcing doors to commercial occupancy fires. Go to the door! Not anything else. Force the one that the owner uses to enter the building. Trying to open so many protected openings all at once! No wonder things don`t get done–and they say “lack of personnel.”
Taxpayer fire (strip mall to some). You know–the ones we usually lose after arrival. Find the store on fire and get in there. Use two hoselines if necessary–large-caliber stream from an engine pipe or tower ladder laid on the sidewalk. Vent immediately, vertically, ongoing by cutting over the fire (as safely as possible) and opening the rear of the fire store. Now force the door on each side of the fire store in which you will bet your check that the fire has not yet extended into the cockloft. Once you find those two stores, pull the ceilings and have engine line placements fight the fire and “pinch it off” from its horizontal spread. No fooling around with the adjoining occupancies that have cockloft fire already. Fight your way back to them after you cut off the fire. Simple.
Elevator use at fires in high buildings. Success here depends on two rules. If the fire location is above the fifth floor (your best counting guess), walk up the stairs to the standpipe connection you will use. If it is below the fourth floor, stretch up the stairs.
Rule #1: Do not use the elevator.
Rule #2: Regulate the number of personnel and the amount of equipment allowed into the first-arriving elevator. This could become a madhouse, causing elevators not to start up, setting off the alarm, experiencing many jerky false starts or worse, or starting up and failing between floors. In the meantime, you don`t have any water on the fire, and the delay related to rescuing the trapped firefighters is a disgrace. Three lengths of hose, fittings, two truck people to force entry, and one supervisor should go into that first elevator. A second supervisor here will begin overload! Someone take charge.
Cellar fires–with interior stair access. We are still reading the frustrating stories of firefighters being killed and injured just at the base of the stairs in a small private dwelling (or small multiple dwelling) cellar fire. If the fire`s location is known, the first line must enter the building and get to the top of the stairs to put out the fire without hindrance from outside. If that is impossible (untenable), that line is to hold that position at the top of the closed door location.
The second handline is to protect the first. A tandem entry from the interior may be easier. If not, protect the stair by extending to the opening and through the underside of the stair to the second floor. The second line now must have enough hose to “make” the rest of the interior.
The third handline should stand fast and be able to darken down the cellar fire from the outside only when ordered to do so by the interior handline positions (indicating that they are in a safe location). There are so many stories of cellar fires erupting into a fireball once the handline has been in place on the concrete floor at the bottom of the stairs. This is mostly rubbish. It has to do with freelancing handlines and out-of-control horizontal venting in most cases. Cellar fires are really simplest (most of them except the few nightmares). You go down and kill it. If you can`t, you don`t, and someone else kills it from outside.
Water! Get a constant supply of water immediately. Stretch a line? Sure. Use the tank? Sure. But the next priority is to establish a water supply. No additional structure loss, no deaths and injuries that should not have occurred. 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).
