The Social Network & Community JUST for Firefighters
Fire Through the Roof
Does fire through the roof make a single family residence modern construction an automatic defensive operation in your department?
Please include the following information in your response.
1. Your department type (Career, volunteer, part-time, or combo) Not for judgement but for perspective reasons.
2. Your Departments avg annual run load.
3.Reasons that support strategy.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by capcityff on
-
Actually my situation should be enough. My example was to point out that not EVERY fire through the roof is defensive. Nowhere did I say that EVERY fire through the rook is offensive. It was a broad generalization. You seem to have agreed so why nitpick to start an argument?
-
Permalink Reply by Don Catenacci on
-
Actually capcityff I was responding to the original poster.
Sorry that you feel I was attacking you.
-
-
No problem. Just shows you replied under me. Simple misunderstanding. Stay safe!
-
Permalink Reply by Brian Reeves on
-
Thank you. That is what I was looking for. If I had given all of the parameters you would have been able to answer yes or no. You probably would not have shared the reasons why it is not an automatic choice. This puts information out there for others to read and take something away from the discussion. That is why I started this discussion. I wanted people to share their own reasons as to why it was or was not.
Thanks for taking time to read and respond.
Stay Safe,
Brian
-
Permalink Reply by Moose on
-
Ok, guess I will be the second or third response from a small town volunteer department, I have seen just about all of the responses have been from big time career departments, so here is some perspective from my angle...
Im a Captain of a volunteer department that averages 150 calls a year...no, its no typo and your glasses are not foggy, I said 150 calls per year.
We are all rural and agricultural in my district with farmland as far as the eye can see, yet you go 5 minutes south of us and there is a bigger volunteer department averaging 500 calls a year with a SUNY campus and a lot of industrial, and store fronts in their district and we would be mutual aid to them for big fires.
Generally if we roll up to a residential occupancy, no more than 2 stories, Type V (000) wood frame (mostly balloon frame but some platform as well) and there is fire through the roof, and no life threat with all occupants accounted for, we do go defensive. But that is based solely on the fact that we have severe manpower issues and would not have enough manpower for an aggressive attack until our mutual aid arrives, which could take 10-15 minutes. So we teach our firefighters to pull the portable deck gun and blitz the fire with what we have in our first due tanks (3,000 gallons total; 2000 gallon engine/tanker and 1000 in the engine) Then we make the risk Vs. benefit analysis and go from there. But I agree with the above poster who stated most of the time its leveled anyway, so why be aggressive?? I was at a house fire in my district a year ago, we arrived on scene to a one story ranch modular style home, with light smoke showing from the rear sliding door. I did my size-up and found a small pocket of fire just inside the sliding door on the floor and moderate smoke conditions inside, all the windows intact, and the glass was hot. We did a coordinated attack with ventilation of the front windows and we found a small body of fire in a laundry room just inside the back sliding door that was loosing air, it was flashing up as we entered but we knocked it down fairly quick before it could get going good enough thanks to the coordinated ventilation. We stopped the fire in the laundry room, with moderate heat and smoke damage to the dining room (off the laundry room) and smoke stains in the remainder of the house. We felt we saved the house...only to see it sit vacant for a year and finaly get leveled by the insurance company...
So I agree, why even bother if there is no life in danger??
Good topic though and good discussion.
-
Permalink Reply by FETC on
-
Combo
Career (46) Call (15)
4 shifts of (10)
4,000 runs annually
Answer - Yes and No.
Support - Depends on the dwelling, depends on the construction of said dwelling, depends on the risk verse gain, depends if it is worth getting underneath something that is already falling down. One story ranch you are directly underneath the collapse, but on a 2.5 or 3 story and your searching lower floor for victims then things may be different. No cookie cutter answers here - we don't work in a bakery. But some safety sallies may like the cookie cutter SOG because they are scared.
I gotta ask.... because usually someone here is looking for support on an internal "axe to grind" situation or past call. So what the story behind this question.
-
-
I need to correct my post above where I said rafters are generally made of smaller lumber and gang nailed or screwed I meant to say TRUSSES.
-
-
No story. I just thought it would make for an interesting conversation. I was also interested to see what points people might bring out.
There will be more discussions to follw.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond.
-
Permalink Reply by 55 TRUCK on
-
"Why even bother?" I will tell you why we bother cause we are Firemen.
The other reason is that no structure is 100% clear of victems until it has been searched. Even if the occupents outside say it is.
Over 90% of the fires in my district are in vacants all get searched. We have homeless People, Kids, junkies etc. Most of them are arson fires.
I had a fire a few years ago in a single story ranch. Mom & dad out front said everyone was out. A few minutes later we are pulling there 16 year old son out. Luckily he just got a little smoke.
Come to find out he had been staying at a friends, they had a argument and he came back home and went to bed. His parents had no idea he had come home.
Doesn't matter fire in a vacant or occupied structure. We fight them both the same.
-
Permalink Reply by Derek J Sinesi on
-
We are Volunteer. Run 30 to 40 calls a year. Mostly mutual aid calls and usually have our trucks and guys on the scene working by the time the requesting department arrives. We are pretty aggressive in our attacks. Just because fire is through the roof it is by no means a excuse to sign off on the structure; if we did that most of the calls we go to we had better just let the trucks sit at the firehouse. I agree with 55 truck here. Just because you are told nobody is inside doesn't mean it is fact. Every structure in every part of the country needs to be searched.( Unless the floors are gone or structure is to far gone to get into) Paid or Volunteer this is what we train to do. So why would you not take time to search and try to safe what you can?
-
-
I agree with 55Truck.
Information from residents and bystanders is often unreliable. If we go with that info, don't go interior to search and later a body is found the fire department gets crucified for non-action.
- ‹ Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next ›
© 2024 Created by Firefighter Nation WebChief.
Powered by
