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Entering a Window for VES - Do You Bring the Can? Brotherhood Instructors
We're adding on to Brotherhood Instructors' latest post with an interesting question from their Facebook page:
"What do you think about taking a can in with you?"
Tools - 6’hook or pike pole & Halligan
Before making the move you want to sweep under the window with your hook checking for victims and a solid floor. Hang the hook end on the windowsill with the other end inside the window. This is your reference point guiding you back to your exit.
When entering you want to step into the window whenever possible. One leg at a time straddling the window sill keeping your torso outside until your sure you can commit. This way if conditions change for the worse you can step out. If you feel the need to go in the window head first due to a high heat condition that makes it unbearable to step in the window with your full PPE on use extreme caution. If conditions didn’t improve after taking the window this is not the place you want to be due to the high likely hood that it’s only going to get worse.
Remember you need to get yourself to the interior door and close it so you can make that temporary barrier that will give you a little more time to search. Also, if the heat is such that you can’t step in the likelihood someone is alive in that room severely diminishes. Only experience and training will help you read the conditions properly so when the time comes you are successful. That cannot be done from a keyboard.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Shareef Abdu Nur on
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As a Truck Officer, the first thing I tell the cadets is, "If you want to put out fires, the Engine is across the floor...This is Truck work over here!"
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Permalink Reply by The Beast on
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My take on this? Rule of thumb is if you think you might need it, you probably will. Remember, you can always shed gear if you have to, but making it magically appear when you really need it just aint gonna happen.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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You shouldn't think you're going to need the can when performing VES. The more you take in, the more you're going to leave behind for the fire if you actually find a victim.
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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Rule of thumb is if you think you might need it, you probably will.
Not in all cases. The purpose of VES is a rapid search, having a can not only delays ou from getting in, but prolongs the time you are in. Also the purpose of VES is search and rescue, a can is for suppression, or at least keeping a fire in check. If the room to search is on fire, you are behind the curve already and should rethink the stategy.
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Cole on
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Here's another view: Some of you have had the priveledge to work in a wonderful world of dedicated engine and truck companies staffed with 4/5 on on each company. So your answers reflect the operations familiar to you. Certianly the VES procedure IS pretty much a standard tactical procedure. IS it "wrong' to bring the can with you? IS it actually "engine" work, or can it be considered "extinguishment"? I know of some large urban department's that don't carry ANY water on the truck, not even a 'can'.
Maybe the truck job has nothing to due with extringuishmnet per se, but coming across something in which the PW (can) is capable of holding or stopping a fire from spreading, that's reason enough to add a little (2.5 gallons) diversity in your operation.
But as for VES? It is suppossed to be quick, rapid, methodical. Suppossed to be. The objective is to get into the room, find and shut the door if you can, search, and hopefully rescue. And yes, there are a million 'what if's". BUT, the door may have been left open, the fire may be in the hall, or is getting through some cheap door. Things do go as planned, and sometimes they don't. Definately going to take the 6' hook.
Time is the whole issue. Find a large, heavy victim, and your rescue isn't going to be easy. Grabbing a child and making the window isn't as challenging as pulling the 270 pounder who's wedged between the bed frame and the wall to the window while the fire is burning through the door, or into the hallway and there is no line in service. It aint a long shot either. Happened to me twice.
Can you hike up the ladder with a PW and a hook, strap the can to the ladder, clean out the window, through the can inside and enter? Yes. Can the can buy a minute or two? Yes, potentially. Will that manuever slow you down considerably? Not really. Can a minute or so make that much difference with regards to fire spread?
So it's not impossible. Maybe not ideal, but neither are the potential problems discribed above. So does that make it absolutely, 100% WRONG? Just forget the idea it is for EXTINGUISHMENT. As for maybe leaving the can behind...so what? That won't effect my desicion at all. I'd rather prevent a flash and be able to either make a rescue, search, or bail successfully than worry about leaving behind some water can.
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Permalink Reply by Pierre-Louis Lamballais on
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"After making a door out of the window and waiting a few seconds for the room to react to the air changes you have made, and if conditions permit, it’s time to go in. ".
Read that:
http://www.tantad.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&si...
Pierre-Louis
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I agree. In fact if some thinks a can is enought to fight a structural fire, I suggest them to drink a lot of beer before arrival, in order to urinate on the fire, it will do the same effect.
For your information, during the fire which take the live of Cne Marlaud in Canada, just after the flash a guy try to only stop the spread of fire with a 185 GPM nozzle. After about 1 minute, he called for a second nozzle as one nozzle directly applied to the fire was doing.... nothing!!
Regards
Pierre-Louis
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Hi,
If you write that, it's because you are on a "small fire station", no? I wrote an article about a very fast attack against a fiercy fire in Belgium in december. Team of 4, little truck, plan water.
The article is actually avaible on www.tantad.com but only in French. The translation in English is "on the tube" and will be ready this evening.
Best regards
Pierre-Louis
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I'm sure you guys/gals do a great job in your neck of the woods, but for us it is just safer and more efficient to have designated seat/job assignments.
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If that's directed at me Pierre than first let me say it sounds as if you have a bit of an attitude of superiority. No? Yeah I may have only attended a handful of fires as a spectator in the last 32 years, but I listen to what the big boys say and then use their ideas to formulate my posts.
Personally I have actually once used a water can on a grass fire, and found it to work beter than brooms. But I won't even go near a structural fire. That's something for you real guys.
I just wanted to add to the post and feel like some kind of firefighter is all.
Yes I write that froma small station...indeed. I do hope to one day be like you.
I know my place now, thanks!
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Hi Jeff,
The reply I've made was for you, but absolutly not in the way of superiority , because the thinks you say are right: the wolrd of father Xmas with 10 trucks and 30 fireman is not the law. So sorry if it's seem to be an attack, at it was the opposite.
When I start to be a FF, my instructor tells me we were using water because it' was cheap and available. At the end of the first day, all my friend "new recruit" were happy. Not me. I just think and the second day ask "If you choose water due to it's price and avaibility, why don't you choose air for extinction? It's cheaper and available". I'm not the one who know. I'm the one who want to know. That's far more different.
And years after yeras I discoverd the FF know just a little about fire but are so sure of their information that explaining is hard. And as I was from a small fire station, it was harder! The sentence indicatinf "just open and wait a few second" is know also in all countries. For basement fire, the "law" was to open the door, wait 10 second then enteras "if nothing happened before 10 second nothing will happened after". I just have to show my students, backdraft occuring 3 minutes after opening to demonstrate that, like "open the windows and wait", this is a non-sense, coming from a wrong knowledge of fire dynamic.
If we stay wih some "legend" like that, we can prove what we want to prove. If we know a little about the volume of air, the neutral plane, composition of smoke and so on, we will discoverd the VES is not a good solution. Of course some say "It can work". Yes but after drinking 2 liters of Bourbon, you can also drive a car without accident which don't prove you can do that everyday.
Actually, we are working hard on tactic and the main problem is "small team" as (as you know) everybody need to do everything, with only "some tools". Also, in big town, on the fire scene you are facing anonymous people. Not on a village. And the guys working with me on tactic are from small fire station (like me).
Read that:
http://www.tantad.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&si...
It's a well done job wih a small team.
And again, sorry for the misunderstanding as the text was "for" and not "against" what you write.
Best regards
Pierre-Louis
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Jeff, That's probably a litttle to subtle and nuanced for your core audience of one, but nicely done!
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