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Fire Through the Roof
Does fire through the roof make a single family residence modern construction an automatic defensive operation in your department?
Please include the following information in your response.
1. Your department type (Career, volunteer, part-time, or combo) Not for judgement but for perspective reasons.
2. Your Departments avg annual run load.
3.Reasons that support strategy.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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1. Career Dept
2. 10,000
No, fire through the roof does not constitute a defensive response. The problem with making such a simplistic example like this to predetermine strategy does not account for the overall picture. As such there would be variables such a size of the structure, number of stories, location of fire, rescue potential, and so forth. Just because fire is through the roof, does not mean the entire structure would have to be written off with a defensive strategy.
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Permalink Reply by Brian Reeves on
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Those are the parameters that i was looking for in the discussion. However, I didn't expect I would get an answer like yours right off the bat.
Oh well.
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Permalink Reply by Dave on
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1. Career Dept
2. 2500 (single hall)
While I agree with John in principle, the risk vs benefit analysis would have to show more benefit other than being able to save the rest of the house. It seems, at least around here, that even if we are aggressive and save the stucture, the bulldozer comes in the next day and knocks the whole thing down anyway. Then we wonder why we risked anything.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
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1. Career / All Risk FD
2. Several thousand annually and comprised of an All Risk preparedness...
3. Life safety is always an issue, a vented fire means you may have better visibility inside to perform search functions and extinguishment. Our culture tends to lean toward aggressive interior attack tactics. Standing outside of the structure and writing off the structure is uncommon.
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Sorry, I didn't give any info on myself when I posted this.
My Department is Career. We do about 4000 runs/yr.
I started this discussion just to see what some of the discussion points would be. I can't say that there is anything on here that I disagree with.
Amount of fire, location of fire, occupants and their location if known, construction type are all factors that would have to be considered.
A lightning strike that started an attic fire would not necessarily condemn a structure.
So I do agree with John in that it is not a death sentence for a structure to have fire through the roof. But, I also agree with Dave. If there are no savable lives, then what are we risking ours for? If this structure is going to be dozed and rebuilt, then we should not risk our lives for property or lives that are already gone.
I would like to thank you guys for taking time and participating in this discussion. If you have more, please feel free to share it. Also, look in the future as I will post more. I like to put things out there to get people, as well as myself, thinking and revisiting topics.
Thanks again,
Brian
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Permalink Reply by Carl Burney on
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My poc department is pretty quiet in my town. We have our share of alarms and burn complaints but I can think of only 3 structure fires in the past 2 years. We do mutual aid to other towns around us so we've probablty been to about 10 structure fires in the past 2 years.
Ours is a risk vs benefit strategy. If the structure is not saveable then there is no point risking men to go in to be heroes for saving...nothing. If the fire venting through the roof is the only factor one uses in deciding strategy then cutting holes in the roof makes no sense. a self-venting fire just means you don't have to climb up to the roof and cut a hole yourself.
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200K runs a year? Seriously?
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Permalink Reply by 55 TRUCK on
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From Jan 1 2012 to March 31 2012 my Engine co. did 1,084 runs.
We have 48 Stations & 7 Battalions.
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Permalink Reply by capcityff on
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Career - Run about 180,000 runs per year.
Definitely not. If the attic of my house started on fire and the fire department didn't go in because it was through the roof I would probably kill someone because the department gave up on an entire house over something small. There's plenty of times we show up with fire through the roof though and can have it extinguished in minutes.
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Permalink Reply by Don Catenacci on
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Career, about 6000 calls a year.
POC #1, between 50 aqnd 100 calls a year
POC #2, roughly 200 calls a year
The situation you pose is not clear enough to give a definite yes or no answer. In a house with an old style construction, rafters and a ridge board, the roof will generally stay in place far longer than a truss roof. It has to do with construction, but almost as much to to with lumber dimension as well. Rafters are generally made up of much smaller lumber and gang nailed, or even glued, none of which adds to its life in a fire.
Generically I would answer that fire through the roof is not an automatic defensive fire. Size of the fire, how much of the attic space is involved, crew on hand, all play into it. The majority of fires could probably be cut off by rapid ventilation and getting in ahead of the fire and pulling ceiling and killing the fire.
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