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Permalink Reply by Pierre-Louis Lamballais on April 19, 2011 at 9:06am

It depend on what you want to learn. The level of knowledge a FF must have about fire is very low in comparison on research. So at this level, the fire can be seen as a perfect science. From a researcher point of view, many details on fire are not well known.
Just an example: a flame produces heat. In the vertical way, from bottom to top, the movement of air is named convection. The heat release rate of convection is of 65 to 70% of the total release of heat, as radiation (all around) is about 30 to 35%. From a FF point of view, it's enought to understand that the fire will destroy first the ceilling, Also, if you are outside, the 70% of convection will be released in the air, without effect on you, as inside, the 70% will strike the ceiliing, falling down on you and this explain the thermal effect is different.
So, for a FF point of view, 65 to 70% is a "perfect science".
For a scientist, 65,006% is not the same than 65,005%... so for him, the result are not perfect and he had to study more to gain in precision.

What we can also notice in the fire service is that, for many FF, the level of knowledge of fire and especially of structural fire dynamic is lower that the minimum level of knowledge needed. And that's a real problem.

Best regards
Pierre-Louis / http://www.tantad.com

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Permalink Reply by Pierre-Louis Lamballais on April 19, 2011 at 10:45am

Hmmm.... If the goal is to start learning, that's right. If the goal is to learn what is a fire, in order to be effective against it, I think this is not the best way.
In fact, the main challenge is not to find book or articles about fire. Just type "fire book" on Google and you get about 444 000 000 results... :-)

First, we have to select the right information (the "enought science for FF" frm "too basic" and "too high level). Eg the fire thetraedon notice in Wiki is a stupidity. It came from Platon the Greek and as never been used for explaing fire but for explaing the univers. The fire triangle is far more efficient.... if you know how to explain it which here, is not the case.

Next, you have to select the right information "for the fire ground". Time for instruction is always very short.So if you start talking of things, OK but they must have a link wih the fire ground. The free radical is one of the best thing: in 10 years of structural firefighting couse, I've not seen ONE guy being able to explain that correctly.And when I explain them, they all reply "in fact, it's easy. But it's of no use for us. "And that's right.

And in many cases, the guy don't have the link between information and fire ground. So they learn many things, prepare the exam and that's all, and on the fireground, they continue working as before.
It would be possible to say "we don't have enought knowledge about the fire so that's why we have problem". But the number of book is so important that this proove we have the information but are not able to transmit it to the fire ground.

I give flashover coure. Only to select the correct information, to validate it and to order it, for the theorical part which last only 2 hours, our team spend 1 year and a half. And as we are about 180 flashover instructor, we gain information and update the course very often to be better.

It's a hard work. A very hard one.

Regards
Pierre-Louis

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