Wednesday, February 27, 2013

NOVFA Fire School, March 9th-10th, 2013

 
Our training group https://www.facebook.com/fire.tactics.training will once again present the course "Safe and Successful Firefighting" at this years NOVFA weekend fire school held at Bowling Green State University. For further info and course catalog book visit www.novfa.org

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Knowing When to Pull the Plug

Semi-Offensive Operations

There are times when during an aggressive interior fire attack that the volume of fire involvement will overwhelm the initial handline.  During these times a coordinated with draw, while maintaining water flow, will be necessary.  Once the attack crew is safely out of the structure, crews can regroup and prepare to make a new push into the building.  Under most situations the new advance will require a larger gpm flow, either through increasing the tip size, or gallonage output, or by simply utilizing a larger hoseline.  Once the heavy fire is darkened down at the point of entry a new advance can be made.  However some incidents will require a shift in tactics to a fully defensive posture when the volume of fire is too much to be effectively extinguished or the structure has become weakened due to the uncontrolled fire involvement.


During this fire in a vacant single family private dwelling, the attack crew was forced to withdraw from the attack on the second floor due to the large volume of fire present.  The incident commander ordered a 1-3/4" hoseline positioned on the porch roof , which was a safe work platform to operate from, in an attempt to darken down some of the fire while a 2-1/2" hoseline was being readied at the front entrance.  The IC also ordered long pike poles to the porch roof to pull the ceiling in the front bedroom via the porch roof windows in an attempt to extinguish the fire that was taking hold in the attic space.  Ultimately the fire with transitioned to a defensive operation.

Friday, April 13, 2012

New-School Fire Research and Old-School Tactics: Who Do You Believe? - Fire Engineering

New-School Fire Research and Old-School Tactics: Who Do You Believe? - Fire Engineering

An excellent point is made by this author. If we don't have the staffing to compare with the "big city" departments, it's awful tough to emulate their tactics.

Can we use bits & pieces of them in our own operations? I believe we can.

There is a middle ground between "always go in & get it" and "squirt through the windows". It's up to you and your department to use your experiences, training and the huge amount of information available to us thanks to the internet to find that middle ground.

Safety and Aggression do not have to be mutually exclusive!

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Close Calls

"The most over used term in the fire service has to be "close call"!! How is this a close call? you are assigned to open up the roof and when you do turbulent smoke and fire came out.... that would be what I would expect to come out of there! If 2000 Chipmunks came out of that hole I would be a little surprised..... but smoke and fire is kinda what I expected."-Andrew Brassard
What truly constitutes a close call?  Is it a near injury, does it have to be a preventable injury or are they just part of "the job"?  Is it only reserved for near death incidents?  How do we know if the incident would have resulted in death?  Really, close calls happen everyday on the fireground.  Just some go on to be reported in some way. 
The best firefighters look at those incidents as experiences, that most time, can not be learned in a classroom or from a book.  They examine the situation and search for ways to improve their safety during operations.  Also the best firefighters pass those experiences along to their crews and others so that they can benefit from their experiences. 
 
 

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Ventilation Close Call

I was going to put up a post covering this but Jason over at the blog Working the Job has an excellent write up on it already.

http://www.workingthejob.blogspot.com/2012/03/close-one-on-roof.html