antiquefirelt

As part of our Safety Stand Down last year we brought in two personal trainers to give us a little fit test. It was an eye opener for many. We followed it with 8 weeks of 2x/week 1hr. circuit training workouts with the PT's. It was great to have 12-16 firefighters all showing up on or off duty. But alas, the money ran out and we had to make a deal to "pay to play." Still a great deal for those of us who do it. $10 per session gets you 1 hr at the station of circuit training with one PT. They come twice a week and given the low turn out the personalized motivation and assistance is great. Now on we have 4-5 guys per session. We have found that for a good many of us, it takes the regimented schedule to stay motivated. And even those who workout on their own concede they fail to push themsleves as hard as the PT does. Our PT's based the circuit on a balance of strength, balance, and cardio endurance after researching the rigors of firefighting. Of course you have to get off your butt on your own at least 1-2 more times a week to get any changes really going.

I know after we had a successful trench type rescue inside a cement plant where we used a vacuum truck, the MATF-1 USAR guy we brought in noted that he had trained with FDNY SOC on using these vehicles. Given that loose soil/trench rescue are not often successful so these truck proabably should get some sort of accerated response by any means. In our case the unit that finally worked for us was caught in traffic for 20 minutes and had to be redirected adding nearly an hour to the response. He had no PD escort or emergency lights. But two smaller vacuum type apparatus were not large enough to keep up with the product.

A note on my limited knowledge of standpipe ops. We havce a few but all in basically lowrise (5 stories) buildings. But that said, I know the code used to mandate that the system be capable of maintaining 65 psi at the highest outlest. Sometime in taller buildings this resulted in having to add PRV (pressure reducing valves) at lower points and these PRV's could be adjusted. But higher up the target was only 65 psi, therefore requiring a low pressure nozzle and really 2.5" hose to eliminate as much friction loss as possible. Newer systems I beleive have higher pressures or at least the FD can require a higher pressure at the highest point. I guess my point is, you need to know what you have in your area. If you have a lot of older standpipes you should be think 2.5" with a smoothbore. And as Johnvv points out a lot of debris and scaling rust happens in these systems potentially reducing your flow even more. And ALS is right on when he says no one should advocte not having any nozzle type available on every engine. Some situations will dictate a fog over the solid stream. Know your tools! Lastly, while I wholeheartedly agree that all firefighters should understand the hydraulics of making a good firestream, I have to admit that I'd just rather have premarked gauges and standard (tried and tested) friction loss numbers for given discharges. It's too easy for (not a career MPO) firefighters to miscalculate at 0300 hrs. and underpump the TFT or rip the knob from someones hand with too much PSI.

Your comments are well taken and I agree wholeheartedly with the overall lack of knowledge and training. We like many others won't agree on the final choice and that's fine as this debate will rage on long after us I think. What we both agree on is the need for firefighters, fire officers and MPO's to understand their jobs and tools fully. This knowledge alone is the bigget safety factor we can affect!!!

OK I'll bite ona few of these. I'm not trying to insult you or anyone, but there is a huge discrepancy in our ways of thinking. Again, I'd note that firefighters use both types of nozzles with great success every day. I just hate to see the false sense of security fog nozzle give to many who don't understnd their limitations. Your experience seems to have been positive and I assume fairly busy. Some people have not been taught properly as the instructors also have been poorly trained. Layman's theories were poorly interpreted for us and turned into the gospel for interior compartment firefighting when he clearly states in his tactics that it should not be used where there are vicims or when you'll be in the space. The mass murder on 9-11 took away one of the great myth busters on this topic: Andy Fredricks. Where is the protection? Yes, in gas fueled fires you need t move air, but let's talk interior as that's really the issue here. Second point I'd give you is the highrise blowtorch effect. Something I do not have to worry about to much, but we do have some significant winds at times. But at that point you're just pushing air against air, and how can you be sure the nozzle is enough? I guess it's better than nothing. Conversly, have a false stream (automatic nozzle underpumped) is a daily occurence. Not taking enough GPM to the fight is quite dangerous itself. A few kinks that get missed and your stream still looks great! With a SB, you know what you have when it leaves the butt. On the X-mas tree. Try this: stand off to the side and watch as the nozzle gets close to the fire. A low pressure area is created just in front of the tip, resulting in fire being DRAWN to the nozzle not pushed away. And then dip the nozzle just little bit and watch the fire be drawn over the top by the firefighters head. The serious air flow into the back of the fog pattern will pull air, smoke, heat and fire over, under and around the pattern if it finds an area to get by! Looks good in the classroom but in the street it seems we pull one of two available lines and pump them as usual not to just meet the needs. I'd rather take to much firepower and be done quicker than realize too late we didn't have enough GPM. Truer words may not have been spoken. We all tend to pass stuff off as the gospel. Thankfully firefighters tend to have good BS mteres so they need to be shown when things sound hokey. But, I truly believe we've been training using misunderstood concepts and theories for years and the recovery is slow. Many fog myths have been proven wrong in thelast few years. Good work has been done at Rockland Co. Fire Academy in the last few years doing "real world" applications and tests. Not just fire simulation computer models. This is exactly the opposite of the true fog theory. Fog was meant to be used to convert ot steam in a closed compartment. You have to have written off any victims and you don't want to be in there! This was adapted from shipboard firefighting where you cannot vent the space. Now we introduce the 1.5" line that had a 95 gpm nozzle usually flowing more like 60 gpm and yes, we had to push teh fire out of the room through the open window! That was because we used the air to move the fire and heat out rather than overcome the BTU's with the GPM. Today we understand better critical flow rates and take the proper gpm to kill the fire at the seat. This is another reason people keep talking about attacking from the unburned side still, when they should be taking the line through the front door in residential homes. Just an expensive tool used by the fog nozzle manufacturers to stay in the marketplace when FD's slowly start to realize that the cheaper SB's are better. How much air is moving with a low pressure fog? Is this safe for combating the blowtorch effect? I don't know, but I'm interested to see what has been done to research this. Read Dave Fornell's Fire Stream management handbook or look at the Rockland Co. FA's tet results. Given the same flow from a fog on SS and a SB the amount of water on the target is quite different. ????? Getting drag into shift training on WMD's I'll have to finish later. Thanks! This is a great debate.

Again, I have no first hand knowledge of the interior using the Vindicator yet. I know the size of the droplets is the main point they make on why the stream doesn't convert to as much steam as a fog. The larger droplets increase heat absorbtion at the seat as they make it to the seat vs. smothering the fire with steam like fog. On the Vindicator Heavy Attack model we have: The water passes through the quarter turn ball valve and goes straight into a cone that points back toward the valve. (I think this is the reason or action that reduces the reaction force.) As water passes the cone its forced through an orifice then into the body of the nozzle (a 10" long tube about 3" in diameter) where there's three vanes. At the base of the tube there are many holes that draw air I guess with a Venturi type action and said air is entrained into the firestream but again with larger droplets than with fog. I suspect that the conversion from Fog to Vindicator would likely be much more pronounced than switching from smootbores over to the V. Now I need a few day to take the guys out and play with this thing!

We work 24/48. When I started it was great, we rarely did alot of night calls. Bu the EMS assigned guys now are getting beat up pretty bad. They rarely get more than a couple of hours sleep. Then they go home the first day and fel like crap, the second day is normal then the third they're back to work. Our guys rotate off and on the first due ambo for a month on and two off. We're trying to get a couple of over night EMS only people to take one guy per shift off the bus and put him on the engine. That leaves them better options for rotating on and off the ambo and the EMSer's only work 12 hr. shifts (3 days, 3 off, 3 nights, 3 off) We presentaly have one EMS only person on everyday to gain back a FFer during that 12 hrs. I'd like to try the 48/96 as I know adding another shift is a pipe dream at this point.

This was one of the reports we read before deciding to give the Vindicator a whirl. Another great report on the same site is the Montgomery County MD report which has the added bonus of a great 1.75" evaluation report. Excellant test methods and information when deciding what hose to purchase. I don't know if their still doing it, but the Vindicator's makers would send out their trainer(s) to your dept. to spend a day working with the nozzles and using flowmeters to show your friction loss currently vs. with "other" hose and using the Vindicator. We didn't opt to do this for some reason that escapes me now. lfdR1: The Vindicator is basically a non-adjustable broken stream nozzle, that is designed to minimize reaction force and maximize flow at low nozzle pressure. The stream has larger droplets than fog, but is broken. The reaction force of the nozzle is less than fog or smoothbore at the same flow. You can flow much greater gpm with a higher nozzle pressure at the same reaction force. This gives the Vindicator a better range of flows while maintaining a decent stream. While you can do the same thing with a SB the stream tends to feather a bit much over 75 psi nozzle pressure. Here's the basic site link: http://00691ee.netsolhost.com/index.htm The great thing about the smoothbore is the simplicity. And while the Vindicator has the same basic number of moving parts it has the ability to get plugged up more readily than a SB but not as bad as a fog nozzle. For the most part I can live with any nozzle as long as its not an automatic! I'd take a fixed gallonage over the adjustable but just don't give me the automatic. While I trust my pump operators, I like the nozzleman and Co. to know they have a decent fire stream (GPM) when attacking a fire, and not have to rely on the pump operator to get it right.

I've got one sitting in the corner of my office waiting for some more hands on! Our crews used it in one live fire training exercise in an aquired structure, bu the hay and pallets just didn't put up enough fight to make any conclusions. Anyone using them? All the tests and data looks good, but I haven't spoken to anyone who's used one long enoigh to have a solid opinion.

Much as I hated to see the Volunteer Firefighter byline thrown on there, I imagine Doctor's, Lawyers, computer programmers, cops, etc also hate it when one of these peice's of sh*t turn out to one of them too. It is somewhat pertinent that people who hold the public's trust can also be evil. We need to do a better job of keeping the criminals out, whether they're thieves, repeat offender druck drivers or child molesters. If we want to continue to be trusted by the public we need to be better. As Irish said, how often do you hear negative comments about Coed Naked Firefighting T's or Big Johnson, or how about the FFer's out there running red or blue lights and driving like idiots? As a whole our F.S. make-up is probably similar to most of society 1% this, 14% that, and so on.

I'm might been a little harsh in my criticism John, sorry. But I find todays fire academies and classes to lack the full understnding of nozzle and fire stream threory. Not only would I pick up a fog nozzle, but that is the predominant knob in my dept. due to years of training with them. We've at least "re-trained" all our firefighters to use it on straight stream only for interior fires. We are slowly switching to smoothbores as we can show our personnel they have nothing to fear. We do this by teaching them why they should fear the fog! For us the line is: "Right is Right! Left for Lobster!(steamed that is) It's good to have an open mind and I would note that you might want to consider that many other fog nozzles are a bit "safer" than the TFT's. TFT's give you the false sense of flow with their automatic adjusting spring. It's nearly impossible to tell the difference between 85 gpm and 185. But as I said before, spin the dial to the right and forget it even moves and you'll put out lots of fire, as long as the MPO knows what to send it.

ALS is right. If you can't hold a fire with the straight stream is is highly unlikely a fog will do anyhting, in fact it will be worse given the same gmp flow. Fog streams get chewed up before they hit the seat of the fire when compared at the same gpm. And car fires? Same princliple, if you can't put it out with a SS then you're doing something wrong! Next you can do hydraulic ventialtion with a smoothbore, just partially close the bale and you'll get a broken stream. Not as effective as fog, but it works well in normal sized rooms. It looks like you should go back to school, as you haven't learned everything in eight years. Sadly smoothbores have lost favor in fire academy's due to 20 years of misuse of Layman's fog theories. It's not your fault that you're not as familiar with smoothbores, many places don't even flow a drop through them in a fire academy or at training. Can you use a fog on straight stream and put out fires? Of course, but forget that "safer" crap. Failure to understand firestreams is the true danger. Fog nozzles on straight stream work fine most of the time. Maybe not as well as smoothbores but well enough. The only time I really want a fog nozzle is when I want to move alot of air. Basically in a gas vapor cloud type of incident. And IMO the Saberjets are junk designed to be sold to departments who don't have a good handle on flowing fire streams. I'd rather have two nozzles designed to do their fire streams than that mongoloid transformer thing.

This was a common sentiment around the time the Phoenix report came out. The logic is slightly off though I'd say. So we don't have 12 guys for RIT so we say screw it and let trapped members fend for themselves? What about at an ordinary single family dwelling? Can a 2 man FAST find the member and bring a spare bottle? I took a great RIT program in Providence a few years back. One of the rotations our crews (6-8 guys) sat for about an hour and a half talking to D/C John Norman and Butch Cobb. It was a great chance to talk about what each dept. did or didn't do, why, training, etc. One small career dept. that was represented said they had no RIT due to staffing. D/C Norman asked about M/A? "No, we don't believe they have anyone trained" was the reason given. (career vs/ vol. also). So, D/C Norman asks if the M/A depts are SCBA certified? "Yes". Well, wouldn't you like 3-4 SCBA certified guys on the lawn if you were trapped? Vs. Nothing? Point well taken!!! Most of us have holes in the plan somewhere but not doing anything is just asking for trouble.

I also cannot remember the exact policies as the original few articles I read detailed. But, I'd say that while having previous knowledge of the inside of the building may be nice, how long before these guys are ready to work as the RIT? If they've done other interior jobs then are assigned to RIT, aren't they beat? This also does not take care of the first 15-20 minutes when the majority of our jobs are the most dangerous. Also, in my view I think I'd like the dedicated RIT to conduct the search and then direct a more conventional crew in with specifically needed equipment to facilitate the extrication. I agree we're much better off than ever before. We take a much more proactive stance on being ready to rescue our own, as well as training our FFers on how not to need RIT and then finally truly training and equiping ourselves to rescue firefighters.

I don't like the "On Deck" rule for some of the same reasons I don't like seeing the FAST reassigned. The original FAST crew has the best situational awareness because they have been developing and evolving their plans while watching the incident from the time they arrive. Another crew must start over evey time. The "0n Deck" principle can change RIT many times in an incident. To me this diminishes the RIT's capablities. I want guys who are assigned to be fully functionaly aware. They've see the fires growth or hopefully stop, they've seen crews entering and exiting, they are more familiar with the scene. In fact isn't Phoenix's "On Deck" basically what everyone did before RIT/FAST? The IC always had a crew on standby ready to go to any task. So Phoenix tags a name to it and we go backward from assigned, trained RIT to the next company in is "on deck"? I don't buy it.

Like I said, I'm comfortable assigning tasks to the FAST that can be dropped. That is to say they are not critical to the moment. The requirements are that they can not tax the team too hard and they cannot require them to be on air or far from the tool cache, and the assignements may only ne done after a full FAST size-up. But most of us do not have enough people to do all the things that need to be done during a good active interior firefight. By the time I had enough people to throw ground ladders, remove bars and maintain a decent FAST on the lawn the fire would be out or have gone defensive! Sure they will be slightly less rested, but ready to respond nonetheless. For many of us the reality is that we can't afford to have 4 trained firefighters standing fast (pun intended) on the lawn, when they can be doing proactive things to help ensure they're not needed. Again, I must stress their immediate ability to drop whatever they're doing, retrieve the requisite tools from the prepositioned tool cashe and go to work as the rescue team.

I think we need to decide on what "put to work" means. I don't agree with putting them on a line, having them on air or on any task they can't drop at any moment. I do think the RIT/FAST can be proactive: Removing bars on windows throwing ground ladders for upper floor egress taking door or ensuring proper egress points are available. These tasks should be second to a RIT/FAST size-up and tool caching. But these tasks can prevent the RIT/FAST from being activated for trapped firefighters.

I have no idea of the political implications in this case, but I do work in a combination FD with a paid chief, 3 paid A/C's, 3 paid lt.s and 11 paid fire/EMS personnal and then we have another 25-30 call firefighters. We run 2500 or so incidents a year including 65% EMS. I cannot imagine having a volunteer Chief. The number of telephone calls and meetings our Chief and in actuality our A/C's handle, is ridiculous. The public wants access to the Chief regarding a huge list of things. Our line supervisors cannot give most of the answers these people seek, nor do they have time to. I can imagine the Mayor's office wanting to have access to a Chief as needed, not when his/her FT job allows. Not to mention the popular vote election of Chiefs is a cancer of the fire service. What are the qualifications? Does the Chief have any skill in dealing with career staff? Does he/she understand FLSA, Union contracts, legal issues, etc. ? We actaully hired one of our call (volunteer) fire captains to be the paid Chief (not the first, we had paid chiefs since the 1950's). He clearly was better than many other paid chief's who applied, in qualifications, knowledge and vision. and yes, there are times when his practical provate sector approach clashes with our Union municipal employee rules. But in all we're much better off than many other combo depts I'm familiar with. This is obviously not the case most of the time, but it is possible. The Fire Chief's job is not a Union position. The Chief owes nothing to the union and if anything is immedaitely put in an adversarial position. Trust me, given the political climates and financial constraints a paid Chief will be forced to try to maintain service using volunteers over more paid staff everytime. The only way to get more paid staff is to prove that you need them for safety and/or better service. If you are a volunteer worried about your status, then look at the quality of the services you and your dept. provide. Todays taxpayers expect trained professionals to come to their emergency, quickly. If you can provide that, then you should have nothing to worry about. If you frequently cannot get a truck out of the station quickly and staffed to work, then you should be worried. Lastly, regionalization will not come at a lower price. It will be service driven, when the taxpayers decide they are willing to pay more for what they see as better service (quicker response times, more accountability, more services).

Are you trying to sell us on a 21st century Tot-finder iniative? You realize the first Tot-finder program was banished after all the people moved or kids changed rooms. How will we know if the Tot finder was placed there by the current tenants? If you don't have verification from the parents would you not look in the room with the sticker on it? Sorry to be so skeptical, but we still find Tot-finder stickers on apartment windows and once and awhile people ask for them.

We have a Home Depot in our first due area. I reviewed and oversaw the construction as our depts Life Safety Code person. We too, were concerned with high-rack storage, multiple places where flammable and combustible liquids are tored and the overall size. I can say that they do have a full sprinkler system that extends down into each level of each rack where paints solvents and other flammable/combustible liquids are stored. They have an active safety program that mandates they quickly evacuate the store if the alarms activates (try getting a local lumber supply house to do that). It seems that they understand that they have deep pockets and a lot to lose if someone is hurt in their stores, way beyond the cost of the bricks and mortar, so they are fairly amenable to any proactive safety issues you bring up. We got them to install 2 extra hydrants and pre-ordinance Knox Boxes by just mentioning themat one meeting. They also understand that we see evacuating and ensuring the building is clear is our primary and really only concern. We explained that with the wide open high ceiling, exposed bar rack trusses and fireload that if the sprinkler doesn't have it controlled, its gone! If the place is truly blacked out to the floor with smoke, forget it. Something is very wrong to get that condition given the total cubic footage! In fact three shifts ago we responded to the Home Depot at 0200 hrs for a report of strong odor of gas outside. We found the 8 underground LPG tanks went into a sigle line underground to the building. The pipe was compromised underground during the snow/ice rain storm due to heavy erosion. Thankfully a single quarter turn ball valve shuts down all the gas at the source. Immediate alleviation of the issue with no gas inside. Luckinly the gas was never in a high concentration according to our CGI's (one 4 gas meter, 1 cruiser parked within 20 ft. of the problem!) Anyway Home Dept personel were tehre very quickly and were very easy to work with. They we on the problem by sun up.

Just can't seem to get excited about wildland fires. As far as I'm concerned if I wanted to use a shovel at work I'd go to DPW! Or use a broom, I'd be a janitor. Now if you cut down the trees, saw them up neatly, nail them all together and cover them with something, then it catches fire? Damn right, I want to be there! I'm just glad there are some folks that enjoy wildland so I don't have to. Thanks guys.

We started buyng Ponn Conquest after reading a few studies that suggest it actaully is far superior to all other brands in every category (except price). Its not as expensive as Hi-Combat but isn't low end either. I believe we're paying $3.50/ft. The best test I saw was done by Montgomery Co. MD. Fire. you can find their tet results on the Vindicator Nozzle website: http://www.vindicatornozzle.com/Testimony/...%2520Report.pdf Look at section #6 The Conquest had the best results for kink resistance, abraision, fricition loss, burn through, etc.

Can you give us a short run down of what the specs are: pump, tank, preconnects, hose bed, rescue tools, seating, etc.? Speccing a rescue engine right now and we're studying as many options as possible.

FAST is grossly under utilized in our area. On the other hand, auto iad and mutual aid is over used. Duriong my last shift a dept. to our south called in 4 m/a depts for a strucutre fire. At least two of these depts. sent 2 peices to the fire. Lateer the "host" dept. brought a bunch of SCBA bottles to our station for refill. The Capt. that brought them reported they had a mobile home fire! It was hard for the guys not to laugh in his face! In excess of 6 engines for a single wide mobile home fire! In the paper the next day it was reported that the fire destroyed the $13000 valued 1968 mobile home! For this 5 depts responded light and sirens from up to 15 miles! This is a tradgey waiting to happen! When will people learn to be realistic about what can be accomplished. Sadly this shows the lack of understanding of a true risk/benefit analysis which must include every part of the response, not just the fireground.

Yes. The Roto-ray on our new tower only is engaged when the transmission is in gear. We feel that it does have a significant benefits as it is completely different from any othe vehicle warning lights, therefore it gets attention! And it does! We gets tons of comments about it. Of course this is the first unit in our area to have Roto-ray so it stands out (Red White Green)