| Editor’s note: Be sure to also check out the USFA’s Web-based educational program, in partnership with the American Forest and Paper Association, on lightweight construction components. |
The fires that we are used to fighting, the ones for which our 1.75" lines and our SOPS are adequate, are not the fires that we are fighting in today’s newer, lighter construction. In these structures, we face the challenge of not just exponential fire growth but exponential fire spread, too. These fires, especially the ones that start on the outside of the house, are the ones that are sending our boys and girls to burn units all over the country. How many more of them have to be burned before we learn from these incidents and change how we do business?
I am not in charge of building codes, not in charge of sprinkler ordinances and certainly not in charge of how people discard of their smoking material and fireplace ashes. However, what I can control is the behavior of that one engine company that I ride. As for me and mine, the suggestions are simple:
1) A fire in a building of lightweight construction that begins on the outside or has left its compartment of origin is, in the words of Brannigan, a “structure” fire. This fire must be fought by removing the outside fuel. The only way to put a fire out is to put water on the surfaces that are actually burning. If those surfaces are on the outside of the house, so be it. This can be done without spreading the fire through the structure.
2) Searches must also be executed but they should be considered high risk and should only be done with the known knowledge of persons trapped or with the protection of a hose line after the main body of the fire is subdued.
3) When a fire occurs in a building of lightweight construction, the collapse of the roof should be anticipated and planned for. It should not be a surpise. The search must still go on but it should be conducted with the upmost regard for how quickly the situation will change. Invariably the situation will deteriorate faster than you can notice the change. By the time you figure out that you are in trouble, it is often already too late.
4) There is no way to know if the fire has left the compartment of origin or if it began on the outside without taking a look around. Due consideration should be given to taking a full 360 degree walk whenever there is active fire and no visible rescues. Sure it takes time to walk around the house. But it is good that it takes time. Use that time to think through your strategy, use that time to explain to your crew what the plan is, use that time to make sure that stretching a line through the front door is really the right thing to do.
5) Unless multiple companies, or well-staffed companies, are arriving simultaneously, you have very little chance to control this kind of fire from interior positions.
6) It borders on suicide to even consider the “holding the steps” maneuver if there’s a basement fire in a house of lightweight construction. The holding the steps approach is based on the notion that the first line goes to the top of the basement stairs and directs a stream into the ceiling of the opening to prevent the fire from spreading to the upper floors. While I am not sure this tactic really makes any sense, it makes even less sense in lightweight construction. The very platform on which you would be sitting is being attacked by fire and can be expected to fail quickly and catastrophically. The intent of the hold the fire maneuver cannot be effective if the fire is traveling up the exterior into the house and back down on all levels.
7) It does not matter if the lightweight comes in the form or wood or steel, or some other engineered material. They will all behave in essentially the same way. They will all fail.
8) Once the first line has darkened down the outside fire, consideration should be given to directing a straight stream into the rooms to be searched, aiming the stream at the ceiling and letting the ceiling break the stream into the kind of big fat water droplets that absorb heat and slow fire growth. I can’t prove it and there is no science to back me up, but it makes sense to me. If a sprinkler does not spread fire from above, how does my hose line spread it from above? Using this tactic might just buy the victim and the searchers some time. Remember, I suggest straight stream and bounced off the ceiling. This line is not even thinking about putting the fire out; it is about slowing spread while the search is conducted.
I ain’t anyone’s expert, but I can read — and I do read all the reports. They all say the same thing: Fire started on the exterior or quickly made it there and, fueled by the solid gasoline called vinyl siding it, consumed the house. If you think you can put that out with a hand line or two from the inside, I can only wish you Godspeed. As for me and my guys, we will put the main body of the fire out in a few seconds from the outside and then move in to mop up the stuff in the walls. We will search but with due caution and we will try to always remain aware of where the fire is, what it is doing and what our limitations are.
