Irene Is On Her Way

 

Well here in Central Virginia, we are recovering from the earthquake and subsequent after shocks, we are steady-looking over our shoulder and waiting on Irene to show her ugly head. Make no mistake it is full on hurricane prep mode here.

 

The video below is of Hurricane Irene as it heads through the Bahamas, and while it does not look intimidating this particular storm has the chance to be devastating. With the biggest risk being flash flooding.

 

I will be on shift tomorrow (regular duty day) and possibly part of the day Sunday (typically they hold people over depending on the severity of the storm) so here are some Hurricane Survival tips to help get you through.

 

1. Get your home life straight today. Make sure you have a plan for your significant other, children, parents, pets etc. That way you can do your job without distraction because as much as you may want to go home and check on them, you may not be able to (either call load, staffing, or impassable roadways)

 

2. Make sure your equipment is at optimal operating capacity.

 

3. Wear your Personal Flotation Device (PFD). If you even think that you might be within 10 feet of moving water, or a body of water put it on.

 

4. Bring your throw bag with you. Same as the above, swift moving water rescues are time critical, do not have to go back to the rig for time sensitive equipment.

 

5. GET OUT OF YOUR TURN OUT GEAR! You have a much better chance of survival in your station wear, all your turn out gear will do is drown you.

 

6. Never tie a rope around yourself. The only time a rope should be attached to you is if you are trying a baited rescue. This should only be attempted if you have a PFD with a detachable ring. The rope tied around you could be a significant entanglement hazard, and could do more harm than good.

 

7. If you do get swept off of your feet, remember to defensively swim. These means go to your back with your feet pointed down stream. This will allow you to navigate obstacles, and avoid foot entrapment.

 

8. Remember Reach, Throw, Row, Go

 

9. If time allows try to have upstream safeties to spot large debris that may impact your rescue.

 

10. Bring extra everything to work. Make sure you have extra pants, boots, shirts, socks, towels, etc. and put them on the rig with you, it may be a while before you get back to the station to change.

 

11. Lastly, just like with anything we do a risk benefit analysis is a must in dealing with any of these situations. As a fireman from our water rescue team said in a recent email “do not risk yourself for a body recovery”.

 

So in summary be smart out there, and make sure your home life is straight before coming to duty. Since I will be at work my posting chances may be limited for the next few days, but if I have the chance I will be tweeting (@averagejakeff).

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!

 

 

Irene Is On Her Way, posted with vodpod

We had a what?

Up until yesterday the only “Earthquake” most people had heard of around here was this guy

 His real name was John Tenta, and for a while he was the arch nemesis of such wrestlers as Hulk Hogan, and Jake the Snake Roberts. In fact one time he even did his “Earthquake Splash” on Jake’s prized snake Damien and made QUAKE BURGERS!

The point is that earthquakes do not often happen here so when they do it is a pretty big deal. Thankfully the most significant calls we had in our area were smells of gas (which was more people watching the news than actually smelling gas) and some minor building damage assessments. Unfortunately the folks in Louisa County were not as lucky, as they had several building collapse calls and their combination system was stretched thin (as was our and most other systems).

The whole point is to remain ready for anything, and to make sure you have a plan to take care of your family when you are on duty. That way you can concentrate on working and not be distracted by what is going on at home.

If anyone has any good earthquake pictures, stories, etc. send them on and I will put them on the blog.

I am still looking through my pictures and trying to find the material for the final post on roof venting so stay tuned for that. Also do not forget to follow along on twitter @averagejakeff.

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!

Yes….even more vent stuff

A few days ago I posted a video and subsequent post on Truss Roof Burn Testing. The video was intended to give you the reader a healthier respect for how fast a roof system itself may collapse when challenged by fire.

Brian Brush from www.fireservicewarrior.com made the comment on that post that this may not tell the entire story, and could be used as a scare tactic to encourage people not to perform vertical ventilation. I responded to him that I thought my intent was self-explanatory, but I do not want anyone to think I am not telling a full truth, or encouraging a less aggressive fire service. What I am advocating is a more informed, intelligent, and safer operating fire service by providing preparation on the front end (training, physical fitness, wearing all of your gear). Simply put the old adage of “balls, water, and firemen put out fire” in my opinion is caveman like and is no longer acceptable in today’s fire service.

Thats is why I posted the below video. It is a joint test from NIST, and the City of Phoenix Fire Department. In the portion seen in the video they take 4 identical structures (dimension, and contents wise) and perform burn tests on them to show how long the structure would last without fire department intervention (water on the fire) They do also add firefighters weight in gear to the roof structure to get an idea of how that impacts collapse time. The only thing that changed in the study was the material used in the structural elements, and the roof covering.

You can see for yourself no matter the building material, or the roof covering the collapse times were almost identical. Remember these fires were not started in the roof structure they were started in the “living space” of a sheet rocked room.

So again what we have to do is take these results and put them into terms that impact us on the street. Do we look at these numbers as gospel, probably not, several influences could impact these numbers in either shortening, or lengthening collapse time. What we can do is take them as a baseline for the average home, and use them as a training tool.

In the average home we found in the study that no matter the construction, the contents of the room generated a large enough fire to cause building collapse around the 17 min mark from time of ignition. You take that number and look at your department and ask some of these questions.

What are our response times?

What is our staffing level?

What is our apparatus responding on a fire, and how long will it take for a full complement to arrive on scene?

Do we have the people arriving to impact a fire in this time frame?

Like I have said before the answers are different for everyone. For my full-time department with lower response time (5-7mins) I can say with relative certainty that if the situation presented itself with our staffing, and response we can do a marginal job of going to vent a roof. In my part-time department with 2 man staffing, no ladder truck, and response times ranging from 5-20mins it would be almost impossible to be succesful at venting a roof. FDNY, DC, Baltimore, Chicago, and other large urban departments will have a higher success rate, but just because they can do it does it mean we should it not in the same situation.

I do not question the skill level of a FDNY fireman, and I have learned a lot from several of those guys in classes all over the country. However what they do does not always apply to me and my department as our districts, staffing, and tools are different. While I have only vented 2 flat roofs in my career, I would venture to say very few big city fireman have vented the roof on a log cabin (which I did in the rural section of the county I vollied in).

Like I have said in previous posts, you have to perform a self assessment of you and yours and determine your capabilities, and how you do business. Maybe roof venting is not for your department, and that is ok. You then have to decide how you are going to ventilate a structure in order to control fire spread, and allow for relief to the interior crews.

I plan on having a post up within the week on some alternative methods to perform roof venting, i just have to search through the thousands of pictures I have and locate some training photos we took a few years ago.

Please feel free to leave any comments, or feedback in the comments section, email, or on twitter (@averagejakeff)

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!

 

Yes….even more vent stuff, posted with vodpod

More Roof Venting

 

Continuing on with our roof venting thoughts please direct your attention to the below video.

 

While viewing it you will see a roof prop, and 2 fireman going through a training evolution. Once the hole is cut you see the fireman “louver” the roof decking, and then make a “punch” with the hook in order to push down the ceiling below effectively venting the fire room.

 

Now while this has been an accepted practice for years, times are changing and with the economy being what it is, homeowners have started to finish attic spaces, in order to provide additional storage, or even living space.

 

Take a look at this attic interior, making the punch through this plywood, from an elevated position will be virtually impossible and that is before it is loaded with clothes, holiday decorations, and all of the other things people put in their attic. So the effort to vent the roof will have been essentially wasted as you will not be able to vent the room with fire in it, giving no relief to the interior crews, and wasting valuable on scene resources for no gain.

This is not just a phenomenon on residential roofs, a lot of times commercial structures originally constructed with flat roofs add a “rain roof”

This is a picture during the construction of a rain roof, essentially what this is a peaked roof above a flat roof in order to shed rain and prevent the flat roof from leaking. However under fire conditions it may appear that this is the only roof on the structure. I remember a hotel fire a few years ago were a trench cut was ordered. The companies took the roof and spent a lot of time cutting the peaked roof only to get finish the cut and find a flat roof below them. Needless to say they did not cut off the fire spread.

So what does all this mean? Whats the point? Well the point is to fully evaluate your ability to perform a successful roof vent operation in your department. Do you have the skills, knowledge, staffing, and ability to do this? Is roof venting your best option, or is horizontal vent giving you the most bang for your buck. If you think you can vent the roof, can you do it in a timely fashion? What are your options for venting the roof?

These and many other questions must be answered prior to engaging in roof ops.

If you have any thoughts, comments, or feedback of any kind please feel free to contact us through the various forms of social media we have to offer.

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!

 

 

 

 

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Truss and Stick Built Roof Burn Tests

With the recent death of Dallas Fire Lt. Todd Krodel, and his tragic fall through a roof while attempting to vent it, I am going to post a few of my thoughts about roof ventilation. Again this is not to point fingers at anything the Dallas FD, or Lt. Krodel did wrong but to take this instance to focus on something that we may not think about everyday and reinforce it to increase or fireground operations, and safety.

I thought the video below would be a great place to start. In it you see 2 burn tests down by a students from a fire science program. You get a description of the “Truss Roof” and “Stick Built” roof construction. Then you see that during the burn tests the “Truss” failed in 5 mins, and the “Stick Built” failed in 17 mins.

While this is a great test and can give a baseline we need to take it a step further. The burn tests were conducted with class A combustibles, so is the test fully accurate of what we are facing out in the field. Go into your attic and pick out how many class A combusitbles are in your attic. While there are some Im sure it is more on the side of plastics, foam, PVC etc. which as we know have higher heat release rates and cause fires to progress faster. So the time to roof structure failure could be significantly reduced based on the involved combustibles.

Second response time and staffing play a huge role into whether ir not venting the roof is right for your department. In my career department even with 20 engines, 5 trucks, and 3 squads all staffed with 3 person crews and pretty fast response times we would be pushing it to get to the roof in time to vent a “Stick Built” type roof, with class A combustibles only involved (using the aforementioned 17 min time frame). In my Part Time department with 2 person crews no ladder truck and possibly 10-20 min response times venting the roof is not an option almost ever.

We must not only take into account what our fire is doing, but where we are, how fast we can get there, and who we have in order for this operation to be succesful.

Do you know what types of roofs are in your district? If you do not then how do you know what sort of challenge is awaiting you? Always inspect the roof structure of an occupancy any chance you get, and on a residential fire alarm, check the attic even if you do not think the problem is there just to get that look.

Stay Tuned for subsequent roof vent posts!

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!

 

Truss and Stick Built Roof Burn Tests, posted with vodpod

Richmond Va 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb Update

We are less than a month away from the Richmond Va 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb to honor the memory of the 343 firemen who were murdered in the World Trade Center 10 years ago.

Here is a letter from Lt. Mike Oprandy from the City of Richmond Fire Department and the Event Coordinator:

Thank you for registering for the Richmond
Memorial Stair Climb.  We are currently at 150 firefighters signed up for the
climb and each day a few more are added.

We are less than a month away and you know
what that means………….RALLY TIME!!!!!!

Here is my challenge to you:  All you have
to do is get one more person to get on board and register for the
climb.  If each of us gets just one more fellow brother to register
we can fill this thing up to the 343.

How awesome would that be, to have 343
Firefighter from around the state, in the state Capitol, climbing together for
the 10th Anniversary of Septmber 11th. 

So far I give props to Newport News Fire
Department.  Per capita, they are representing the most and Chesterfield County
Fire is a close second.  I have not seen anyone from the largest fire department
in the State.  Come on Fairfax, where are you???  If anyone has contacts in
Fairfax County please call them.  I sent a flyer out to them through thier
PIO.

Anyway, please do everything you can to
help spread the word.  Send emails out to your departments with the link to sign
up (here it is)  http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?eventid=981020
Call your surrounding companies and departments and start talking some trash,
let’s fill this thing!!

Also, please feel free to send out the
attached flyer to everyone you know in the FD.  It is restricted to
Firefighters/EMS personnel only.

Email me with any questions michael.oprandy@richmondgov.com

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

Ok folks so here is the deal, while 150 is good it is not good enough!!! In my department alone there are 600 firefighters! Between the big 4 Metro Richmond Departments (Richmond, Henrico,Chesterfield, and Hanover) there is almost 2,000 firefighters and that is not including the smaller Tri Cities area of Hopewell, Petersburg, and Colonial Heights! Bottom line is this showing is unacceptable for all of the firefighters we have in this area.

This event is about something bigger than you, bigger than your fire department, it is showing remembrance for our fallen brothers in the single greatest loss of life in the fire services history.

If you still are not sure here is a link to my thoughts of the Stair Climb I witnessed at FDIC 2011 http://averagejakeff.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/fdic-2011-review/

Here is also a link to the video of the Firehouse Expo Stair Climb (Sorry the embedding site I use is down today) http://youtu.be/JU-wQuqVwWU

Remember IT IS NOT A RACE!! It is a tribute, a tribute to show that you will never forget the sacrifice that the 343 made so that we could live one day longer in this world. In shape, out of shape, it doesn’t matter. If it takes you 30 mins, or 3 hours that you finish is all that’s important.

If you feel like being in shape matters for this event then, tweet me (@averagejakeff), email me, or put your contact info in the comments section and I will come train with you. It is not to late to get in decent shape for this.

This will probably not be the last Stair Climb event, but there is only one 10 year anniversary, and trust me if you miss it you will be feeling the same kind of regret that I had when I watched the FDIC 2011 Stair Climb. If you are truly a firemen and not just someone who works in the fire department then you should not let this pass.

So this is a call out to all of you guys wearing the tshirts, claiming to fight what others fear, wearing those FDNY t-shirts, all of you who said that you would never forget the sacrifice that was made, it is now time to put up or shut up! Go to the website here:http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?eventid=981020 and sign up today!

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!

LODD and new training site

The fire service community is saddened with the loss of Dallas Texas Fire Department Lieutenant Todd Krodel, who died from injuries received at a fire while attempting to perform roof ventilation. Please keep the Dallas FD community, and the family of Lt. Krodel in your thoughts.

Also like with anything else information, on scene reports, NIOSH reports etc. will no doubt be published. While it is important to learn from the actions of others, it is also important to remain respectful, while expressing the various opinions that you may have.

With a little bit happier news I have been made aware by one of my loyal readers of a new website dedicated to fire service training.

Pocket Tools Training http://www.ncdoi.com/OSFM/RPD/pt/ offers a wide variety of training drills, videos, presentations, and a lot more. There is so much content on this site you can spend days and still not get through it all! So take some time and go check out the site.

Speaking of content do not forget to follow along on twitter @averagejakeff

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!

 

Do not do this

This video has been making the rounds on the various fire service websites, and I preface my remarks with, no I have never been to Detroit, yes I know they go to a lot of fires, yes I know about their financial situation and the hardships they undertake in order to place adequate crews, running equipment, and apparatus at the scene of an emergency.

But with all of that said it would seem to me that with all of those factors going against them that you would want to increase your safety, and risk assessment to another level. While experience is important, it is not everything, and it is nothing without preventative maintenance (training on current topics).

So that brings us to the video below. Taking a look at this situation it brings to mind a few questions.

1. With the fire in its current state, was vertical ventilation needed?

2. With the construction of the roof (mostly the pitch) was vertical vent possible?

3. Again with the construction of the roof, why was a roof ladder not being utilized?

4. Did the fire fighter making the roof know about the interior construction? Plainly put even with a hole in the roof, would he be able to penetrate the ceiling into the fire room?

5. Why was a taller ladder not deployed?

6. Why after the first fall was this allowed to continue without some added elements to ensure safety?

These are just some of the questions that I though of while watching this video. While Detroit may have fought 100 times the fire of every other firefighter on the planet, I can honestly say to all of the young firefighters out there do not take this as an example of what to do. The only reason this did not lead to a serious injury is luck.

This in no way is advocating not going in, not venting roofs, not searching etc. What this is saying is that lets do it the right way and maximize our safety, so that if something does go wrong the chance of survival is increased.

Feel free to leave your feedback in one of the many various forms of communication we offer (comment section, email, or twitter @averagejakeff)

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!

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Why no problem with this?

I have been sitting on this topic for a while and feel it is finally time to share my thoughts or at least ask the question that I have been trying to answer in my head.

In the video below we see a Mass Casualty drill. As most of you know during any Mass Casualty (Drill or otherwise) we use a triage system to sort out the dead patients from the live ones, and the ones who are most significantly injured, from the “walking wounded”. In order for the system to be efficient, a minimum amount of interaction between patient and provider takes place basically focusing on Pulse, Respirations, and Mental Status. How the patient presents in these categories indicates to the provider what Triage category the patient is being placed in, and indicates to the porters (stretcher carriers) who to get first, second, third, or last.

So here in lies the question. If we are ok with doing that, and saying that someone is dead, or that you do not need definitive care right now, than why are people up in arms about Survivability Profiling?

Think about it the concept that Capt. Marsar from the FDNY promotes is not all that different from a Triage. We pull up tot a fire building, and after a short interaction with it we determine, where are resources would be best utilized, based on building construction, fire conditions, and staffing.

I have heard the argument that Survivability Profiling is like “playing god” with people’s lives. Well that is exactly what we are doing on the EMS side with Triage, we are basically determining who lives and who dies in a matter of seconds. Yet one practice is universally accepted and one is met with scrutiny.

No is Survivability Profiling the end all of the fire service? Absolutely not, EMS pundents would argue that no Triage system is 100% effective either. They are however tools in a tool box that can be applied when needed. I have said time and time again that I use survivability profiling more to tell me were to start my search, not a determination of who is dead and who is not. If a fire is blowing out of a room, I’m going to start in the adjacent rooms, and search the fire room once the engine has made a stretch. This gives me the chance to help people who I know I can help, versus someone who may be beyond my help.

Anyone else have an opinion? Leave yours in the comments section, twitter @averagejakeff, or email.

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word and STAY SAFE!

 

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August Drill Of The Month: Ladder Fall

While things are still busy at the house, I wanted to put this video up on the site. It is one  have seen several ties but it is a true example of even when you do everything right on this job things can still go wrong.

Not saying this guy had done everything right but for the most part he had gone up to rescue a victim that was in trouble in a fire building, sure some stylistic differences, and tactics might be used but at the end of the day this guy was doing the right thing.

The victim he was removing was conscious and just needed assistance, but as you see even in this scenario things still went horribly wrong, causing the victim and fireman to have significant injuries.

The only way to lessen our chances of things going wrong is to control the factors of the equation that we can. We can control our skill level through training, we can control our level of protection by wearing all of our PPE, we can control our physical fitness and fire ground performance by working out, and we can control our safe arrival at the incident by driving appropriately and wearing seatbelts. Will doing this stuff make things 100% safe, no way but by allowing ourselves maximum safety,fitness, and skill level we can lessen the chance of things going wrong and increase our survival when they do.

So this month focus on a serious self assessment. Are you operating safely with maximum PPE protection on every run? Are you physically fit to perform all of the tasks on the fireground? If not what are you doing to fix these problems?

Leave your responses, comments, or questions in the comments section, twitter, or email. Also do not forget to follow us on twitter www.twitter.com/averagejakeff

As usual thanks for reading, spread the word, and STAY SAFE!

Ladder Fall, posted with vodpod