The Veterans Two Cents

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Permalink Reply by Engine 32 Capt. on January 17, 2009 at 2:27pm

I'll start. Not really a 'war' story per se, but it might help someone out in the future.

We have an apartment complex which, for awhile, was notorious for kitchen fires due to electrical issues. The fires would typically spread into the attic fairly rapidly, which would turn a kitchen fire into a pretty decent fire involving 4 or more units.

During one of the most recent fires, we found that some of the units have had extra sheet rock added to the ceilings in an attempt to keep fires from spreading into the attic so rapidly.

This particular fire had started in a bedroom, and had self-ventilated through the bedroom window and was getting into the eaves. We knew on arrival that we would have fire in the attic. We about beat ourselves to death trying to open up a double layer of 3/4" sheet rock. What made it tough is that most of the fire went out the window and the ceiling was virtually uncompromised.

The lesson we learned was to soak the sheet rock once the fire was knocked down. Once it softened up from the soaking, it made it much easier to pull it down, exposing the bigger body of fire in the attic.

Hope this helps down the road...

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Permalink Reply by Engineco913 on January 17, 2009 at 7:08pm

haha, been there, done that. Had a double layer 5/8 firerock on the ceiling a couple of times. (2 hour fire barrier) as you stated the fire will flashover blowing the windows out and extending above anyway. Go figure

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Permalink Reply by Engineco913 on January 17, 2009 at 7:14pm

Try before you pry. How many times do we as firefighters hear this? At one particular multicar MVA we were served a lesson by a probie at O dark thirty or so. We arrived on scene to find 2 cars, a pickup truck and a semi involved in a MVA on the interstate. Upon arrival all occupants other then one were self extricated from the vehicles with a variety of minor injuries. While we were assesing patients and checking the vehicles for more victims we had a probie yell over we had an entrapment and unconcious victim in the front car. We proceded to pull a set of spreaders and cutters and had another line run with the extra spreaders. We got to the car and the LT tried the door handle on the passangers side with 0 success. My partner and I on the drivers side checked the driver for injuries through the glass whil my partner pulled the handle of the door. Magically, the door sprung open causing both of us to lose our balance and land on our rear ends.
Morale of the story..... Try before you pry. We were saved a lot of work thankfully but time was lost when we pulled tools. Luckily this person was transported to the ER where they were released 24 hours later.
I still am reminded about taking a seat on the job during an extrication.

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Permalink Reply by Engine 32 Capt. on January 17, 2009 at 9:34pm

Nice. I have a similar story involving a car on fire. The fire was pretty much in the engine compartment only, and the Rook decided to smash the drivers door glass with a Halligan. After literally bouncing the tool off of the glass repeatedly, the officer on the engine walked up to the door and pulled the handle. It opened.

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Permalink Reply by Engineco913 on January 17, 2009 at 9:41pm

Gotta love it. :)

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Permalink Reply by Bobby on June 15, 2009 at 9:31am

any one who has been through ff1&2 has learned but maybe not tried the hydrolic ventilation, we usually have a very limited water supply so this doesn't get to happen on interior, but during clean up on a mutual aid call I was ale to use it and man it was great. what had happened is i was on the nozzle trying to soak the ashes and hitting a few hot spots and had another hose line on the other side of the structure, as both teams would hit the different spots lots of smoke would change direction and usually head for me, by simply changing to a med to wide fog pattern (which is why i love the fog nozzle over the smooth bore) for just a few seconds it pushed the smoke away from me for a few minutes so i could switch back to straight stream for the clean up, the other guys didn't know about this so they ate smoke till the gentle wind pushed it back at me. plus by only doing this for short periods it conserves water.
speaking of conserving water, a very large misconception is that it takes alot of water to fight fire, while have abundant amounts of water is wonderful you don't have to flow 150 gpm out your nozzle, usually 90 or some times less will do the same thing all though before others jump on me about this the higher numbers do allow for greater reach, but when inside you can reach across a room just as easily with 60 gpm and knock out the fire just fine. plus the less water damage the better the P.R. and again let me state again that if you need more then use it but you may want to try to use a little less when possible believe me, it works

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Permalink Reply by Daniel J. Graham on August 20, 2009 at 2:33am

It should be noted that with a fog nozzle, the amount of steam generated is the same as with a smoothbore nozzle. The issue lies in that because of the smaller particles of water (more surface area to absorb the heat) , the water will vaporize into steam almost immediately. Because of the hydraulic principles the fog nozzle operates on, in a closed room that steam will rise to the ceiling, roll back to the wall, and down on top of the nozzle team. Anyone who has ever had this happen to them knows that yoda ears is a painful experience, and the burns can be much more severe if the conditions are right. In addition, because the water is immediately vaporized, the majority of your flow will not reach the seat of the fire, so the team is actually wasting water because it is not attacking the source of the heat in the room. (And by the way, changing the pattern on an adjustable nozzle does not change the flow rate - it is based solely on pressure which should not change). I am working on an article for Fire Engineering on this exact topic, so I'll be sure to keep you posted.

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