After reading the NIOSH Investigation report for the Line of Duty Death of Firefighte... that occurred in Worcester, Massachusetts in December of 2011, a certain amount of confusion remains.

Based on the finding by the committee performing the Investigation, the Worcester should have used VSP (Victim Survivability Profiling) to limit the exposure to risk of firefighters in searching for a victim, a victim that was reported to be in the building by an occupant, a building that historically doesn't collapse under fire conditions.

Given the scenario as outlines in the report, it is difficult to imagine a Fire Department not committed crews to search for the missing occupant. There were no obvious signs of imminent collapse, triple deckers are historically a building that can sustain a prolonged firefight, and while crews had been removed from the building, and their removal was based more on the advanced fire conditions on the third floor and attic than those on the second floor where the victim was reported to be.

This isn’t a case of a department willy-nilly committing it’s resources to search a vacant building. First of all, rarely do any departments commit firefighters willy-nilly. Departments make decisions and act based on the information they have, they conditions they find and the resources assembled to handle the incident. Unless the VSP kit comes with a crystal ball and a set of x-ray glasses, it still seems hard to fathom how it is reasonable to except a company officer or incident commander to make a snap decision that no one can survive inside that building, based on a 45 second size up done from the outside.

Yet potentially that is what we are being asked to do. We are being told that smoke kills. From the report “The effects of carbon monoxide poisoning on a victim is well known to the fire service. Due to the increased use of plastics and synthetic materials, carbon monoxide is produced in very high concentrations and very quickly in structure fires. As a result, victims die sooner than in the past. What's not as well known, but is evolving as a killer for both the victim and firefighters, is cyanide poisoning. Where carbon monoxide kills by blocking oxygen absorption in the blood, cyanide kills the body's organs. Literature reflects that a low concentration of 135 PPM of cyanide and carbon monoxide will kill a person in 30 minutes. At 3,400 PPM, it can kill in less than one minute. It's not uncommon for a fire in today's buildings to routinely produce 3,400 PPM of cyanide. Where a victim may be resuscitated from the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning, the victim may not survive the organ damage caused by cyanide poisoning.”

Fast forward to Pittsburgh, PA. Firefighters arrived on scene to find an advanced fire condition in an apartment building with an occupant stating their child was inside. Firefighters entered without the protection of a hoseline, forced the door to an apartment where the occupants had to exit through a window and rescued a six year old girl from the hallway outside her bedroom

Follow the link and read the rest on Backstepfirefighter