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Permalink Reply by Jack/dt on October 6, 2009 at 6:07pm

The two things that affect life safety are fire extinguishment and ventilation. Ventilation when done correctly and in concert with fire suppression removes the heat and smoke and reduces the risk to firefighters and potential victims. If you can quickly put out the fire you've just made everyone's job easier.

I understand that ventilation can't always be achieved prior to a search or for the initial attack line but to be banned from ventilating until a search has been completed seems...well I think you said it best, "Some stupid politician thought that it would be dangerous to start offensive ventilation.. ;-)"

Regardless of how we may differ in our approach to firefighting, it's reassuring to know that world wide, politicians are so much more alike. And not in a good way :)

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on October 8, 2009 at 3:41am

G’day again Sune, I’ve been reading more than writing! Australia isn’t the country you thought you’d be hearing from, but you are anyway...

It’s interesting to see just how few vehicles and crew you send to a house fire. It’s obviously successful, but so few sent! Our response is never strictly by vehicles. At least not for my service, the Country Fire Authority (Victoria, Australia), but the career neighbours we have operate differently (they work with a North American style ‘alarm’ system, pre-defined response to pre-defined calls). Normal response in my area for a reported house fire is for all possible home Station vehicles to respond plus a pumper from the next nearest Station. We automatically respond multiple Stations. That means for us our Pumper, Support (a seven seat smallish truck with extra equipment, and Tanker (a wildfire/structural pumper, not a bulk water tanker). This will give us probably about 16 of our people plus six from our automatic support. If we sight flame and/or smoke in transit or on arrival we will usually call for extra pumpers to ensure plenty of people on scene! (A confirmed house fire will have Police and at least one ambulance sent as well) A day time fire will have a smaller response simply because most of our neighbours are full volunteer Brigades, we get whoever is available. If call is in the part of our area that our career neighbours assist with, they will always respond two pumpers with 3 crew each. Do we need the numbers? Not usually, not for a house fire, but we take them ‘just in case’.

Our house structure is possibly more on the line of that in the USA than Europe. We mainly have what is called a ‘brick veneer’, a house with a wooden frame – which used to be real hardwood but is now thin pine truss construction – with a brick outer wall, non load-bearing; roof is mostly clay or concrete tiles or steel. Most houses of the past 30 or more years are open plan, so rarely will we have a fire self containing to a single room. Similarity to your methods? Yes, in that we tend to send the initial crew straight into a house with an attack line, their task being also to search as they make for the fire. If we have been advised that there are suspected inhabitants, we will attempt to send in more search crews, search or extinguishing crews are each of two people. We don’t use fans in attack, only after a fire has been knocked down; that is also when we will ventilate a roof.

The tank on the first pumper on scene is enough to start the attack, the next pumper in will always get a line to the nearest hydrant and feed the initial pumper – we will often run a feed from the second pumper to the first to allow a little more water before a hydrant is hooked up. Population complaining about us using mains water? Not an issue, by law we can take whatever water we need for fire suppression – any water from any source. No hydrant? We’ll take it from the nearest swimming pool.

Just a little more; Australia is a huge land mass (have a look at an atlas or Google Earth. Victoria is the smallest mainland State; it is something like the size of England but with a population of about 5.5 million. We are small in population, but large in fire risk – mainly wildfire risk in the summer – The south east of Australia, where I live, is accepted as one of the three worst wildfire risk areas in the world. All of our volunteers (about 60,000 of us) are qualified in wildfire, not all are qualified as structural.

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Permalink Reply by Sune Schønnemann on October 8, 2009 at 4:34am

Hi Tony..
Thanks! Great reply...

By law we can also take water from where we want, but it still makes sense to NOT piss of the population, if we can avoid it... ;-)
But it's not everywhere they do it like i said.. Some do, some don't, some never thought about it....
About the law, it states that "Any damage done by the firedepartment during work with rescue or firefighting is considered fire-damage"...
One might think that it doesn't make sense that it's a "fire damage" when we knock down a hedge or fence to make way, but the law is written like that, to make sure the insurance-companies can't run away from it, leaving the bill for us..

Most houses in Denmark are Villas/Parcel build with brick/masonry outer walls, inner walls are concrete'ish and a wooden structure supporting the roof.
A typical danish house, made up with wooden supports for the roof and the concrete'ish inner walls.. Ready to be lined with bricks: http://www.seebergeriksen.dk/CIMG2178.JPG-for-web-large.jpg

Here is a typical danish house (not the prettiest, but we're looking at the structure not the beauty) ;-)
http://multimedia.pol.dk/archive/00357/hus10_357548a.jpg
One of the biggest dangers we have is if the roof support burns away... Then the top triangular part of the end wall has a tendency to fall down into out heads...

Nice to see that we are not the only one not using ventilation in an offensive way... :-)
Due to the fact that we are only 5+1, and one having to work as the pump-guy, then we can only send in a maximum of 2 2-man teams...
Of it's needed first team goes in, second team ensures there is a water-supply and THEN goes in... Then the engineer can basically take care of the pump himself..
Ofcourse there are situations where 1-2 extra men would be nice....

But due to Denmark mainly being single-story single-family houses, it doesn't take that long to search..
Also most of the firechiefs have online accesses to the municipality databases of house-plans and so on...

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on October 10, 2009 at 2:02am

Suni, with the roof structure as shown in that almost complete building, there is no need for the frame to burn away. When some heat gets to those gang nail joints they'll heat the beams enough so that the metal plates will fall out. Metal plates fall out, down comes the roof structure. Exactly as we're facing with our houses now. I've seen a terrific view of all ceiling timber in place, but all gang nails in a line under the roof with the fallen ceiling. That ceiling needed only a strong wind and the whole lot would collapse. Either a strong wind or one firefighter walking up there...

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Permalink Reply by Sune Schønnemann on October 18, 2009 at 4:16am

Hi all..

I found this "folder"-thingy about the Emergency Hospital we have where I'm volunteer...
http://www.brs.dk/brsfh/Dokumenter/DEMH.pdf

Also, I'm working on writing a bit about the educations our firefighters get - will be online as soon as I get a day of work ;)

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on October 18, 2009 at 7:53am

That surgical unit seems pretty impressinve Sune. I don't think there's anything like that attached to our emergency services - possible the nearest equivalent would be from the Army.

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