What about nozzle training?

Even if the group seems to be "asleep", I hope some of you, as US FF, would be able to answer.

For me, the main job of a FF is to attack the fire. If someone call the fireservice, this is because of fire, so the job is to attack and kill it. Of course you must save people but the main "subject" is fire. To kill the fire I use water, and to flow water I use a nozzle. So, I think that I must know the way to use a nozzle. So I must train in order to be able to change flow rate or pattern in the dark, I must train to know the distance at which I can flow water, I must train to be able to cool without producing too much steam and so on.
So, I train.

On the other side, when I have a look at US training video, at discussion in forum about training, and also at the subject you can post in, on internet US FF forum, I see nothing about nozzle. In many cases, you can post messages in subject like "RIT", "Ventilation", "Save yourself", "LODD" and so on, but if you want to post a message about nozzle, you would face a "little" problem as there is no opened subject about that.

I tried to seach on firechief, fireengeenering, firehouse and so on about article about nozzle techniques but found nothing.
On the other side, US forum are full of accident histories and of messages about LODD and full of "survival" techniques as if the goal was to go into dangerous place to see if surviving would be possible. And if you delete all the articles about LODD, RIT and accident, and delete all commercial adds claiming to offer the best to "survive" you would see your FF Magazines would have only front and back cover.

My question is: do you really train on firefighting or do you train in order to survive, due to the fact that the lack of firefighting training put yourself in great danger? And in that case, why don't you do real nozzle training? No one teach you? It seems not to be intersting?

Thanks a lot for your answer
Pierre-Louis

0 members like this

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ian wilcox on August 27, 2011 at 3:04pm

i don't know much about pencilling,but when we go for live fire training we learn about nozzles and flashover how to cool the room,how to hydraulic ventilate the building,how to get the nozzle to do what we want it to do to accomplish our end goal,that is why we train!sure every department in the U.S.A and Canada will have different protocalls for different things as well as other fire departments in other parts of the world, no one is 100%right and every ones training is different all that matters is that you do the best you can within the scope of your training and don't get hurt no one is better than anyone else we all go out to get the job done in the end

Permalink Reply by Pierre-Louis Lamballais on August 27, 2011 at 5:18pm

Hi Ian,

Thanks for your reply. In fact, i've made a research about the use of nozzle. For years this is a "battle" between US and non-US FF. It makes me a lot of time to understand the fact that, our questions are certainly not the right ones.
In order to consider the question from an other point of view, you just have to take the drawing of a house, like we can find on Google. When there is a fire in the bedroom, we can be sure that, from the entrance door, we can't see the fire.
Everywhere around the world, when you see the fire (eg when you are at the door of the bedroom), we ALL do the same. We flow water to the fire using direct attack, we flow water to the ceiling to use indirect attack, or we flow water to the wall and surface to create steam to under-oxygen the fire (combination attack). Some times, the name change, but the way to do is the same.
The difference is, in fact, from the entrance door to the door of the bedroom; how to deal with the very hot smoke which is "protecting" the seat of fire. The US way of doing is to break window, use fan and extract the smoke. The Eureopean method consist of no-ventilation, no-breaking of window, but use of nozzle, using a technic named "pulsing": low flow rate, fog pattern, and very small burst of water in the hot smoke layer to cool it and disminish it's flamable limit.

So maybe my question need some changes: how do you train and use nozzle? And what nozzle technic do you use? What pattern, what flow? And for what?

Best regards
Pierre-Louis

Permalink Reply by Leland Lavender on August 20, 2015 at 4:53pm

There is no better training for the types of nozzles then actually getting out and playing with it. Some places like to dry run a drill which is great and all but the training seemingly always "Stop's at the door" so to speak. Finding out nozzle reaction, GPM Limits, and what restricts/helps your attack is something you can't watch a video on. get out and train with your guys.

Also, Penciling, and the use of whats called "3D' Fog application is something you might want to search on. but again there is no way to master a skill you never practiced, no matter how "good" you feel you are.

p.s. Challenge your Engineer to come up with these specific trainings involving fire lines, Nozzles, and apllication. it would be good practice for him/her being the next in line to step up and lead.