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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 Jack/dt on
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Brian,
When you made the comment ",,,you will continue to populate the LODD lists..." you made a huge overstatement and which was, I suspect, the reason for 55Truck's comment in response to my post.
My conversation with you will remain civil, no problem there, but I do want to correct you in your thinking that LODDs are a result of a "cowboy" mentality.
The following stats are from here:
2010 - 87 LODD
~34% of LODD were under the age of 45 (41-45 y/o - 5.75%)
~66% of LODD were OVER 45y/o
Of the total 87 LODD, 28.89% were over the age of 60, so tell me, how many cowboys do we have that are 60+ y/o? Or do you think that maybe most of the >45y/o LODD were out of shape vollies, not cowboying, but just out of shape.
73.56% of LODD were by Stress/Overexertion, Struck By and Vehicle Collision.
~63% of LODD were a result of CVA or MI
28.38% of LODD were a result of Responding/Returning
16.09% of LODD were a result of Advance Hoseline/Fire Attack (including Wildland) and Search and Rescue.
33.33% of LODD were Career
63.22% of LODD were Volunteer
So look again at who dies most often (Volunteers), how they die (CVA/MI, Responding/Returning) and how old they are at time of death (>45) and tell me if you still really think that it's a "cowboy" mentality that is killing firefighters.
If you delver further into the stats, many of the Career LODD are from heart attack brought on by overexertion as a result of either unknown medical conditions, dehydration or possibly from CO/cyanide exposure.
I understand what you're trying to say, that a building that is totally involved is not worth the risk, but I question your idea that a building that is 50% involved isn't worth the risk. A two story home, with the 2nd floor fully involved (50% involvement) can be saved.
Regardless of the % of involvement, an adult or child could still be alive in a bathroom, bedroom or closet with the door closed. In which case and barring advancement through the door or stairs, there is always the VES option.
Again you resorted to hyperbole (and misstatement - god I feel like I'm channeling Chief Waller right now) when you said "...about going in no matter what to save a picture..." I don't believe anyone said that. What was said was that if you can do a search you can make an attack. And that the oath was to save lives and protect/preserve property. No one is asking, expecting or offering to give up their life needlessly, only that there are times when ones personal safety may take a back seat to rescue.
The "cowboy" mentality most likely is from younger, less experienced FF's who have more balls than brains, and to paraphrase a saying, 'there are reckless firefighters and there are old firefighters but there are no reckless old firefighters.
And when it's all said and done, it's still up to the Company Officer or IC to decide what course of action is to be taken. So maybe the whole thing is less about "cowboy" and more about 'leadership.'
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Permalink Reply by Moose on
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Jack, I have to thank you for making me read my posts again, and after being home and not at work, and seeing the stuff I wrote, you are correct and I owe an apology to everyone. So without further hyperbole; I am sorry for the harsh response earlier, that was uncalled for.
My response stems from a passion to keep the LODD rate down, and see more of us stay safe. My passion has been stewing for years now, after reading all of the LODD notifications in magazines and online forums. I replied before taking a breath and thinking...bad thing to do.
Here is something for you to think about though...Yes, there are a lot of heart attacks and unknown medicals, but in order to have an MI you need to be real worked up, high BP, adrenaline...see where I am going here? You are sitting at the station reading a book one minute than charging out the door to a working fire with entrapment the next, your adrenaline goes through the roof (excuse the pun with the title of the topic and all) and your heart works overtime. The "cowboy" menatality I speak of only adds to the stress of the heart. Just a possibility here that I am spinning for the discussion without proper medical data to back it up.
The scenario you present is only one of a million possibilities; Yes, if the second floor was well involved than it is possible to find victims on the first floor. But reverse that situation and anyone on the second floor has long been overcome by smoke and heat regardless of where they hide. So to keep it civil, we can argue this point (friendly) till were blue in the face, but it comes down to what the situation is, and what decisions the officer makes initially, early on in the incident. The first few tactical moves dictate the outcome of the incident im sure you agree.
To sum it all up, it depends on the situation you find when arriving on scene, how much of the house is involved, which part of the house is involved, what type of occupancy and what time of day it is, wind speed and direction, manpower available on the first in units, manpower still enroute and their ETA, water supply...I can go on and on. These scenarios we talk about are hypothetical, and without enough information or "size up" we can only add to the hypothetical situation with hypothetical tactics.
In closing, again I apologize to all, just goes to show you should never respond without thinking things out first, and after the stressfull day I had at work I probably should have never even logged in to the forum let alone respond to one.
Stay Safe
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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First off, I would say I agree that any scene and strategy and tactics to mitigate that scene will stem from what is actually encountered by crews. This should not matter if you are a rural volly dept or larger inner city, what is found by that first rig and ensuing actions will depend upon what is encountered.
In laymen's terms, there is no book out there to dictate specified response based on hypothetical situations. So yes, we get simplistic terms like "risk a lot to save a lot" aspects. Basically there are way too many variables for even the most "bread and butter" fire of say a single family dwelling, which makes a pre-dedicated strategic plan obsolete.
So when looking at the topic here, the original question was about fire through the roof, in modern construction, being an automatic defensive operation. To which the answer should be "NO".....because a simplistic scenario does not dictate what crews will actually encounter.
That said:
Here is something for you to think about though...Yes, there are a lot of heart attacks and unknown medicals, but in order to have an MI you need to be real worked up, high BP, adrenaline...see where I am going here? You are sitting at the station reading a book one minute than charging out the door to a working fire with entrapment the next, your adrenaline goes through the roof (excuse the pun with the title of the topic and all) and your heart works overtime. The "cowboy" menatality I speak of only adds to the stress of the heart
I would disagree. On does not have to be really worked up nor have a high B/P to have a heart attack. While stress can and does play a significant part in an MI, such logic base here is flawed. What is missing in those stats is the time in which an MI occurred. Let's not forget for a LODD, there is a 24 hour window. We have plenty of examples of LODDs long after a call and so forth, which makes the "call" being the contributor to the LODD arguable.
Then there is the aspect about physicals, medical screenings and so forth.....conflicting with the "take what you can get" mentality....which thus contributes significantly to many of these MI issues. Whereas a physical may identify several issues with a person, they may not have had one because they are just a warm body filling a spot because the dept needs people.....just can't afford to adequately screen them.
So quite basically, such a person could have an underlying issue that wasn't identified because no physicals nor screenings done. There could also be an age issue at hand as well contributing to such deaths and so forth.
So quite basically, believing that a "cowboy mentality" is a significant factor would be innaccurate as well. For several of the comments coming forth from such "cowboy mentality" are from those depts that do physicals yearly, run many calls, and have significant programs in place where, such an attitude is realistically a standard operating procedure.
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Hello John.
There is no set reason for MI's and any number of factors can contribute to them, so I guess we can each have our opinions, I agree with yours in so much that most of the MI's happen at the station after the call or at home many hours later. I believe what i said has some merrit though, and just think for a second, if you are all fired up and gung ho, wanting to be the first through the door, high on adrenaline...that puts stress on the heart and makes it work OT, so even if you think you are calm and controlled on the outside your heart is still working harder than you think.
Around me this cowboy attitude is prevelant, apparently around you guys it isnt...Thats where the "Think outside the box" line comes in, all fire departments are not run the same as yours, or mine, or his, and we all see different experiences and different attitudes.
I think what everyone is missing here over the over-abuse of my line "cowboy attitude" is the fact that I am just a small town USA fire officer with a desire to work with other firefighters and officers to decrease the LODD rate, and find some way to get us all home. Does that make me a bad person? I hope not. As you can see in my previous post you quoted, I apologized to everyone for hurting their feelings with my outright replies that were made in haste about the LODD lists, and I meant it, but I still feel frustrated about seeing so many of us dying, leaving families behind, to "save" a house that just gets knocked down, and save a few charred family belongings that I agree are important to try and save, but all the same, is it worth a firefighters life for a picture album? Have we realy become so immersed in the belief that we need to lay our lives on the line for another persons personal property? I still believe in laying my life down for another life, and will do so without a thought, but a photo album, or a wedding dress, or high school diplomas...None of that is worth one of our lives lost.
But that is another discussion I guess and I apologize for stealing this thread about through the roof operations.
Everyone stay safe, and to all the fathers out there or father figures even, have a great and happy fathers day weekend next week.
Moose
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Permalink Reply by Tyler R Donivan on
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volunteer
about 5,250 is what we had this past year and we are a single station
and yes it dose for us for example not to long ago we had a 1.2 million dollar home go up and we had to take a defensive attack because all we were doing basically is peeing into he wind it was working and we even used the deck gun so we had no other choice but most of the time it does automatically make it a defensive attack
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Permalink Reply by Bob Callahan on
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Career - Combo department w/ 8 FT employees and 100 volunteers; 1600 runs per year primarily EMS, MVAs and brush fires.6 stations and about 180 square miles.
Unlike the national trend, the vast majority of our new homes are site built stick and nail construction. Very few lightweight truss. For that reason we will almost always work interior of the fire is in the attic. Personally do I agree with that? No. IMO my combo department is often far too aggressive, but we are lucky in that we have significant volunteer base with very solid response, and quite a bit of experience, that almost always gives us the manpower to support that operation.
Most of the time we are able to make a stop, at least to the point where most of the interior stuff is not burned.
Volunteer Department - 5 officers, 6 Interior Firefighters and 6-8 Drivers and support personnel. l5 stations and about 97 square miles. Less than 100 runs per year with 1-2 structure fires.
Again, no lightweight residential construction. Primarily mobile homes and older construction with a very limited number of newer homes.
In this scenario we qare more likely to write off a home with fire in the attic as we are generally working with far fewer personnel, though there are cases where we have worked interior and in some cases made a stop. Given the limited resources, this type of operation is far riskier and generally simply not worth the risk to our lives.
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Bob,
Seriously, do you have a problem with firefighting? You're saying here that, DESPITE the fact that you have (along with your paid FFs) a "...significant volunteer base with very solid response, and quite a bit of experience, that almost always gives us the manpower to support that operation..." but then go on to say that, "the vast majority of our new homes are site built stick and nail construction. Very few lightweight truss. For that reason we will almost always work interior of the fire is in the attic. Personally do I agree with that? No. IMO my combo department is often far too aggressive..."
You've made it pretty clear that you have both the manpower and the experience to successfully fight an attic fire but yet, in your opinion you think it's WRONG. I'm just shaking my head here wondering what exactly it is that you think should be done. Or are you a proponent of an 'exterior only' style of firefighting?
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I am a proponent of a less aggressive style of firefighting.
To say exterior only would not be true, but there are times that IMO, my department makes entry into structures that should be fought from the exterior. Generally, we get away with it, but there have been at least 3 fires in the past 5 years that IMO we had absolutely no business being inside the structure. Two of them resulted in minor burns to 3 members.
Bottom line there was nothing of value left to save and two of the structures were confirmed as unoccupied/all occupants being out. In the case of third fire the status of occupant was unknown, but the volume of fire would have made survival highly unlikely. Just because you may have the staffing, training and experience to make entry into a structure that does not mean that the risk to your personnel is justified if there is little of value left to save and the structure is burned beyond reasonable repair. There are times where it is is, IMO, even though you may have the resources on scene to be aggressive, it's perfectly acceptable to simply apply water from the exterior and not take risks with your personnel if there is no or minimal gain to be had by doing so.
In the case of attic fires, the ceiling dropping down, even with site built stick and nail construction, is a probably and generally it will occur suddenly. IMO, even though we may have assembled 20-25 firefighters on scene with multiple tankers, interior operations often cannot be justified given the risk of injury.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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Fully career department, approximately 7K runs per year.
The incident strategy choice (offensive, transitional, or defensive) is a choice made by the initial incident commander, generally a company officer. That choice is based on preplanning, size-up, and the construction type and overall structural integrity.
If the structure is lightweight engineered construction, fully involved, and there is fire through the roof with structural collapse, it's probably going to be defensive.
If there's a little fire from a gable vent in a solidly-build structure with no signs of impending collapse and minimal involvement, then it's going to be an offensive attack.
We have SOG guidelines, but in the end, it comes down to knowing your structures, doing an accurate size-up, and being able to read the structure, the smoke, and the fire.
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Permalink Reply by Marc Hansen on
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IN REPLY TO ORIGINAL POST
volunteer -- 100 or so runs a year (0 ems)
while we have sog's (sop's, or what ever the current buzz word is) none of them state that fire through the roof is an automatic defensive fire. That decision is made by on scene personnel on a case by case basis, after size up and listening to what equipment/ personnel are making up the first alarm assignment.
IN REPLY TO ONGOING DISCUSSION
At the beginning of the year a department near here had a fire through the roof, heavily involved with entrapment. None of the firefighters got hurt during operations and the person that was trapped not only survived but has returned to work recently to continue to live a productive nearly normal life. There is no simple cookie cutter template for fire department operations as every call is unique in its own way. To do this absolutely safely every time would involve no lights for any responding apparatus (or pov), every one get a baseline medical exam prior to beginning operations, then stand outside and spray wet stuff on the hot stuff. To do things this way would nullify all of the hundreds of hours of training I (and my brothers and sisters in firefighting) have taken in ways to safely mitagate personal level disasters
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