Porches are “a covered approach to a doorway,” which makes sense until you look at the older wood-frame dwellings that had porches of all sizes and at all locations. Some are vast and cover the whole house front; some occasionally cover the entire house front and one or two sides. They can be front, side and rear, so the variety is there.

Those of you who operate in a community that has residential masonry structures will not find much interest in the combustible wood porch. If you work your fire craft where most or all of the residential construction came after World War II, you aren't apt to have porches, so you are out of this work.

What does World War II have to do with the porch? At the end of it, cured wood was hard to come by. What lumber was available needed to be used inside, so sacrifice was common. In fact, so profound was the lumber shortage that most residential construction was of brick veneer. Society gradually let the porch slide as more modern design dealt them out. Attaching a garage became a higher priority.

Another sign of the times for the porch was social. In less affluent days, families sat on the porch swing or went back and forth on a glider in the evenings. Neighbors walked by and conversation was ongoing. This scene is largely gone now as we sit and watch TV.

Fires on open porches

Porches are built front, side and rear and are open or enclosed, which is when the spaces of an open porch are filled with windows. Today the big thing is the non-roofed porch or deck, but that won't be discussed here.

Because many porches are outside and open, you can't help but wonder how they catch fire. Try these causes: vandalism, revenge, arson and cooking. Yes, cooking. Although most people do their grilling in the backyard, a certain number actually have their devices on the front porch. I can't tell you why, but I have seen them at work with mother at the spatula.

In order to have a porch fire you have to have something on the porch to get it going. The wood construction doesn't combust by itself, so a fuel source has to be present to boost the fire in the first place. The source can be furniture or rubbish, either present or added at the time. Then comes liquid, mostly gasoline, either poured on or thrown in a bottle with a burning rag attached. Sadly, this practice of fire bombing has grown more common over the years.

Now let's consider a fire or two because that's what it's all about. Picture a fully involved fire on an open porch. If the house is known as a junker with no occupants, your problems are fewer because you can postpone the initial search until you get a 1I- or 2H-inch line in operation. Wade in big. This type of house usually is found in the core area with others like it close at hand. The heavy water shouldn't be a problem — the place could use a good wash anyway.

Has the fire moved beyond the outer edges of the ceiling to feeding upward on the front wall? Go with a 2H-inch line in this case because you have greater flame spread. Also, you are outside and have 21% oxygen and possibly a wind. This favors the fire, so hit hard. Get your line in close and hit the porch ceiling where it meets the wall. Chances are that if the fire is past the porch roof and gone up the front wall, it has also gone above the ceiling where it meets the wall. That area furnishes support to the porch assembly, so you must not compromise that. At this point you've tossed in a lot of water, and the fire should be a breeze from there on.

Next you go in, but try to do so by some entrance other than the front door. Use caution because a junk house has its surprises. Before putting people on the porch following the knockdown, remember that the structure is abandoned. How good is the floor that must support the weight of your people as they overhaul? How safe is the structure that supports the roof? Light up the scene so that you can make a good visual examination prior to full occupation.

Now consider a fully involved porch fire with the structure occupied, which prevents the fire from being your only concern. The occupants have lost the front door as an exit as well as the front windows opening onto the porch roof. Who knows what conditions prevail inside? Sometimes it's smoky and sometimes not. You are obliged to do a primary search as well as a secondary search, two in and two out. A small crew on arrival will have to establish priorities or violate the full spectrum of responsibility.

Use the same procedure as with a junker: the 1I- or 2H-inch initial attack line. If you're short on personnel, it no doubt will be the lesser flow. As for the application of water, make a side attack instead of a frontal attack. Put your stream in at just about the front door to sweep the fire away so that this exit is freed up. This side approach also will keep the stream from making direct contact with the front windows, which would force the hot glass to drop out at the touch of cold water.

The side approach is fine-tuning your application, but it is little used because the hustle of trying to accomplish so much in so little time with fewer hands precludes the thought. Remember you have an occupied building. Now someone has to get inside to see that fire has not entered the house. Either do it with a second line or send a firefighter in with a 2H-gallon pressurized water or ABC extinguisher. This should do it for residual fires such as curtains and window shades.

During winter months, some people keep their rubbish containers on their front porches. These containers are combustible so they contribute to the mix as an ingredient or the main course. If not discovered quickly, they can compose a good fire potential.

The Dunkirk (N.Y.) Fire Department seems to get more than its share of porch fires in the incipient stages. When the fire is burning and is of small matter, a firefighter with a pike pole precedes the line and hooks on the offending article and pulls it off the porch onto the ground. If the ground is snow-covered, the fire ends there.

Enclosed porch tips

When it comes to enclosed porches, some are full-sized while others aren't much more than an outside shelter for a main door. Bigger porches are worse while smaller are easier when it comes to fire and its challenges. Because the porch covers a door to the inside and may include one or more windows, it's just as apt to send fire in as out. An open porch has a lot of air about it and fire will burn with that air. With the enclosed-porch fire, fire can go one way or the other.

Is there a secret to fighting enclosed-porch fires? I think there is. The idea is to quickly pull the heat away from the doors and windows that open directly into the house. The method is to take out all the windows in the enclosed porch, allowing the fire the outside release that it prefers. Will this intensify the fire? Yes. But with your line at the ready you shouldn't have an extinguishment problem. You must cover the inside quickly with another line or extinguisher, and do not be in a hurry to open the inside door to the enclosed porch to keep the smoke from invading the house interior.

Keep in mind that because of the fire you have lost one or more exits so it is not without foundation to create more to bring the structure back to normal for escape. Your most difficult situation is to have the second floor occupied by a second family or more. That puts the pressure on so you may have to devote more resources to evacuation than to the fire.

Thence into your overhaul. You must investigate the wall where the porch is attached in the event that the fire is working its way up to the attic. Normally you don't have to raise more than one or two ladders at porch fires, but do not skimp on this phase.

Firefighting advantages

Porch fires are just another aspect of firefighting. There is actually some advantage in that most of them are outside so you don't have a lot of forcible entry and laddering. As a rule, one line will make a porch fire yield to your wishes. Unless you are working on a side or in the rear, the job is right there in front of you. A pre-connected line of 150 or 200 feet will require you to flake out a lot of hose to prevent kinks. In such case, if you have a trash line, it might be handier for a short-distance initial attack.

Then again, if you are in the Dunkirk Fire Department you might not need any more than a pike pole to make your first move to confine the business by getting it all overboard in a few seconds. No matter, these fires are out there and will be until new construction and building styles replace them all. It will not be in my lifetime nor possibly in yours.

I would like to add a personal touch to this tale because our family experienced a porch fire in the mid-'60s on a fall evening. I was on the other side of the city doing my chief thing at a two-alarm fire in an industrial installation. My wife noticed a colorful reflection in one of our front windows and rose to check it out. She saw a fire in progress on our front porch so she sized it up. Knowing that our apparatus was thin and the first- and second-due engines were out, she decided to handle it with in-house resources.

Her initial attack was with a bucket of water and it was a good call. It seemed as if someone piled some dunnage on our porch and dropped a match. In overhauling with a broom, the only relevant evidence was a cigar butt. That sure narrowed the suspects down! I couldn't round up the usual suspects because they were all with me at the fire. The case remains unsolved until this day.

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Prior to his retirement, Donald L. Loeb served the Dunkirk (N.Y.) Fire Department as a volunteer firefighter, assistant chief and chief. His experience spans six decades of military and civilian firefighting, teaching, and writing.