Every town and small city has several different types of buildings that the fire department protects, ranging from small private homes to large multiple dwellings. Most departments do a fairly good job of attacking and extinguishing fires in 1- and 2-story family houses, although these can be somewhat difficult fires at times if understaffed.

However, many small departments find themselves quickly overwhelmed as the size of the fire problem increases. A bedroom fire in a 2 1/2-story balloon-framed house is quite a different fire for the incident commander than a basement fire in the same building. One is a fire in a small, compartmented room that has only one level, the attic, exposed above it, which many times can be controlled by one handline. The other is a fire in a large, usually uncompartmented area with natural flues that lead to the attic and all hidden horizontal voids in between. As fire calls move from houses to bigger buildings, such as apartment buildings or strip malls, the fire problem can quickly outrun the resources.

Top priority

Are there strategies or tactics these small departments can use to stay ahead of the fire? Although many times there are different ways for a department to attack a fire, there are times when nothing will stop the fire building from being destroyed. The incident commander often is tasked with the hard-to-make decision to let the structure burn and focus on preventing the fire from spreading to surroundings.

For smaller departments, the need to prioritize fireground operations is paramount. When you don't have enough people to do all of the required tasks, then some need to take precedence. Of course, life is the number-one priority, so any occupants who are showing on arrival need to be removed. If there are positive indicators of people still trapped inside the fire building, then all available resources must be committed in that direction.

In many cases, you will need a handline to protect the searching firefighters. This may mean that another area of the fireground will need to go without water until the searches are completed. Two rules of firefighting still usually apply. The first is that more lives are saved by the proper placement of the first hose line than all other rescues combined, and the second states that the fire goes as the first line goes. A properly stretched and operated first line saves more lives and makes fire operations go more smoothly. So if there is no visible or reported life hazard, use your resources to get a handline to the seat of the fire.

Supplemental tactics

In house fires, a single firefighter may be able to get a handline into position at the front door while awaiting help. This usually isn't true for fires in larger buildings or complexes, where the incident commander may need to use all responding firefighters to get the first line into position. New York City's Bronx borough, for instance, has numerous buildings where 15 to 20 lengths of hose are needed for fires on top floors. When confronted with fires in these buildings, the incident commander usually will use the three engines assigned on the initial alarm to get the first line into position.

Usually, the first line is stretched into the front or main entrance to protect the interior stairs. If your department has only five firefighters on the initial response and the stretch needed is greater than the standard 200-foot pre-connect, there are several other stretches that may be employed. For instance, to get a line to the fourth floor in an apartment house with this limited number of personnel, use ladders or possibly a rope stretch.

With both tactics, stretch the line to the floor below through a window of an apartment in the vicinity of the interior stairs, not necessarily near the fire. This helps keep the stretch to a minimum. One point that is always important, but especially important with rope or ladder stretches, is that the firefighter with the nozzle needs to make sure that he or she maintains a working length of at least 50 feet of hose at all times. This hose will be used to actually advance into the fire area.

After addressing life hazards and placing the initial handline, the next priority usually will be securing water supply — fires can't be extinguished without water. Booster-tank water alone will get you only so far. Company officers should know how long their booster-tank water will last flowing through the different attack lines carried on their apparatus, including the use of multiple attack lines, large flow handlines like a 2H-inch handline and master-stream appliances.

A 500-gallon tank will supply a 1 1/2-inch handline flowing at 175gpm for approximately 2H minutes while the same tank being “dumped” through a truck-mounted deck gun at 1,000gpm will last less than 30 seconds. There may be enough water on the rig to knock down the fire or attempt a rescue, but a continuous water supply is needed for a successful outcome.

Sequential events

Once a positive water supply is established and the first handline is in operation, the incident commander must re-address the possibility that there is someone trapped in the fire building. Conduct searches of the structure starting with the most exposed areas. For a nighttime fire in a 2 1/2-story frame house, search the bedrooms as soon as possible. This may be accomplished via the interior or over ladders, but the incident commander must make sure that these rooms are searched.

In larger buildings like an apartment house, search the rooms adjacent to the fire as soon as conditions warrant. The apartment directly above should be next, and then the top floor apartment in line with the fire apartment, followed by those adjacent. While searching for victims, firefighters also should check for any fire extension. Keep in mind that because of staffing restraints, the time for a second or third handline to reach the upper floors may be considerable. The incident commander and the company officers conducting the search should try to anticipate the need for the additional lines and the time needed to get them into operation.

Because of limited staffing, ventilating the fire building often is an afterthought or done in limited areas. The resources and time needed to raise ladders, send firefighters to the roof and open a proper ventilation hole is considerable. Unless the fire is located in the attic or roof, vertical ventilation should take a back seat to horizontal ventilation in house fires. One firefighter with a 6-foot hook for the first floor or a 10-foot hook for upper floor fires can rapidly remove the windows and provide needed fresh air for both the advancing engine as well as any trapped occupants.

Certain types of buildings will require that the ventilation sequence be modified. For fires in flat-roofed apartment houses, roof ventilation is a priority. This initial ventilation is of the interior stairs and usually is accomplished by opening the bulkhead door or by venting skylights over the stairs. This improves conditions in the interior stairway and prevents mushrooming of heat and smoke on the top floor.

If the fire is in row frames or on the top floor, immediate opening of the roof will be required. Any skylights or scuttle covers should still be opened, but the cutting of the roof and opening of ventilation holes will be required if you hope to keep the fire to the building of origin. In all cases, horizontal ventilation will still be required, but may need to be done after the vertical ventilation is underway. Firefighters operating on the roof may be able to reach over to get the top floor windows or can use a tool on a rope to vent.

The fireground constantly challenges the incident commander to use the resources available to overcome what sometimes appear to be insurmountable odds. It's the incident commander's job to evaluate each incident, based on the type of fire and the available resources, to make decisions to safely mitigate the hazard.

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Bob Pressler, a 23-year veteran of the fire service, is a retired lieutenant with Rescue Company No. 3 of the Fire Department of New York. He created and produced the videos “Peaked-Roof Ventilation” and “SCBA Safety and Emergency Procedures” for the video series Bread and Butter Operations. Pressler has an associate's degree in fire protection engineering from Oklahoma State University.