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If you want to compare seriously two methods, you must ask someone who is "pro" to demonstrate and tell you why, and then ask someolne who is "con" to do the same.
Here what I see are two guys, doing one method the wrong way, in order to "proove" it's bad. Like if I was driving a motorcylce eyes closed, so falling down and saying "You see, it prooves motorcycles are dangerous". It seems to be a common practise to proove some technics are good, only by demonstrating opposite method the wrong way. If you want to proove something is good, you must tell why and not by trying to fool the students such a way.
Here are two videos. First is the "progression" part of the attack, to come from the entrance to the seat of fire. The second is a method of attack for underventilated fire.
So why? You must use the pistol grip because is create a reaction right angle from the reaction force of the nozzle. Like when you are on you Harley: you dont have the handle in the same direction than the body of the moto, but right angle. You must have the arm straigh in order to open the nozzle completly, especially when using fog, because the quality of the fog patern is better when the nozzle is full opened. This allow you to move the nozzle from top to bottom left, right and so on. See the second vidao, the guy have absolutly no difficulty to change the direction of the steam. You must be on your knees (two) for many reason. First, studies demonstrate than, in case of problem, if you are on your knees, you will stay, so you will open wide your nozzle and protect your. If you are only on one knee, you will stand up and get burn by the hit smoke layer, try to run, loose you nozzle and that's for you the beginning of the end.
Also, you gravity center, on two knees, is lower and you get better stability, and be able to see just over you. The other FF must not touch you because if he touches you, he will compress the air protection under your gear and you'll get burned. If he want to talk to you, he just knock on your helmet and talk to you by avancing to your ear.
Best regards
Pierre-Louis
Chris,
Lots of great comments posted here... But I highly recommend taking the engine co. H.O.T. at FDIC next year. They will let you use all kinds of hand lines, pistol or non pistol and you can decide. They also give some GREAT tips for the backup crew members. If you a new guy or a 25 yr guy I recomend going to this class. The guys are great and you can try and ask lots of questions.
After taking that class and learning some new ways to hold and handle hand lines I now never use the pistol grip. I have been showing our other firefighters and they also are moving away from using the pistol grip even though we still have them on all lines.
Hope this helps
Brennan
And I will tell you straight up that if you used either one of those methods in attacking the training fires we had in the mobile homes we did live fire training in a couple of weeks ago you would have gotten burned and chased from the building.
We were advancing down the hallway to the end of the trailer where the main body of fire was located. There was NO ventilation and the fire was coming down the hallway and over our heads. We had to flow water, and KEEP FLOWING WATER, into the overhead to allow us to move down the hallway. We used straight streams and I have no doubt whatsoever that if we had used a fog pattern of any kind we would have gotten steam burned. How do I know? Because the nozzle mistakenly got opened on fog a couple of times and the stream INSTANTLY turned to steam and pushed all the heat and smoke down on us making the advance even harder .
IF you have no active fire over your head pulsing can be a viable tactic to reduce heat and help to prevent the heated smoke and gasses overhead from igniting. I see no advantage to the pulsing/pencilling type of attack over the straight stream/smoothbore up down all around style of fire attack. At the vey least the up down all around attack eliminates the need for changing patterns repeatedly in the heat of battle.
I am not suggesting you change a thing. I am however suggesting that in the type of construction and fireloading we generally deal with I believe the up down all around, or the brief sweep of the ceiling with a straight stream/smoothbore and then directly to the heart of the fire with that same pattern is more viable.
Stay safe my Brother.
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