January 27, 2008

• Firefighting 101

  Firefighting 101 –
  The Winter Fire

  Today it’s almost 50 degrees Fahrenheit here in east central Illinois.  But last Thursday, as I was leaving my
  apartment to go and do my radio show, the temperature was in single digits,
  with a wind chill that brought the perceived temperature to well below zero.  I noticed an AT&T employee near the alley
  behind my building.  Prior to beginning
  work on the grey box sticking up out of the ground, he was erecting a yellow
  tent around the box to keep himself warm. 
  Not a bad idea, I thought.

  Suddenly I flashed back to my sixteen years of
  firefighting.  No yellow tents for us, I
  recalled.  No little stools to sit on
  while working.  No warm thermos of coffee
  to sip.  No coffee breaks where we could
  sit in the idling truck and get warm.

  How do I convey this so that you can understand it?  Where do I begin?  I suppose the best analogy would be to the
  military.  Being a firefighter is
  something like fighting in a war, except that you don’t kill anyone, and you do
  get to go home, generally, when your 24-hour shift is over.

  Imagine a large two-story home, or an eight-unit apartment
  building, or a three-story commercial building in the downtown area.  It’s “fully involved”, as we used to say –
  firefighter jargon for the building being completely on fire from front to
  back, top to bottom.  Flames shooting out
  the windows or through the roof.  You
  have to stay there until you’re certain that the fire is completely
  extinguished.  That’s it.  Period. 
  The only way out is via the hospital, or the morgue.

  So it’s winter, let’s say 5 degrees, 20 below with the wind
  chill.  Hopefully you have your long
  underwear on already, because you won't have time to put it on when the fire alarm rings.  Then there’s your duty
  uniform.  Beyond that, there’s only your “turnout
  gear” – coat, boots, helmet, and gloves.

  The coat is made of Nomex, a fire-resistant material, and
  has a liner.  Thus it’s fairly warm in
  winter but murder in summer.  The boots
  are made of rubber lined with a felt material – either hip-high boots worn with
  a long coat, or shorter boots worn with “bunker pants”, lined pants made of the
  same Nomex material as the coat.  Bunker
  pants are much safer than the long boots without bunker pants, and they’re
  warmer in winter.  But like the coat,
  they’re murder in the summer.

  Your helmet does have ear flaps to protect your ears.  And you may be wearing a Nomex hood – rather like
  a ski mask – under the helmet.

  And then there’s your hands. 
  Gloves can be made of leather, rubber or vinyl, or simple cotton.  There may be some new materials out now.  But in my experience, no glove had  been invented that would keep your hands dry
  while firefighting.  Within the first
  couple of minutes of spraying water, your gloves would be soaking wet, and your
  fingers starting to go numb.  After
  trying them all, I settled on the simple cheap brown jersey work gloves, because
  even soaking wet they somehow retained a tiny bit of body warmth.  You would simply take them off, wring them
  out, and put them back on.

  A house fire might be extinguished in an hour or two or maybe much longer, depending on the size of the house and the degree of fire involvement.  A fire in a commercial structure normally takes longer to put out than a house fire, due to the generally greater size of the building and the heavier fire load.  A crew can occasionally be at the site of a commercial fire for 24 hours or longer.
  
  One of the factors determining how long it takes to put a
  fire out is the number of firefighters working to extinguish it.  The National Fire Protection Association
  recommends a minimum of four firefighters per “rig” (truck), and most urban fire
  departments send at least three rigs as a first response to any sort of
  structure fire.

  In my relatively small town the entire fire department consisted of only 15
  firefighters, five per 24-hour shift.  So
  our maximum possible first response to a structure fire, even in a commercial building,
  was five firefighters in two pumpers.  If
  someone was on vacation or a sick day, that left only four firefighters to
  respond.  At one point there was a layoff
  and we got down to four firefighters per shift, three in the event of a
  vacation or sick day.  I can remember
  many times when I was driving a fire engine to a fire all by myself – watching the
  traffic, running the siren, talking on the radio, the whole nine yards.  Of course once we arrived at the scene we also had far more work to do than we would have had on a larger fire department. 

  I can also remember the day when a colleague and I were on a
  rescue call, leaving the assistant chief on duty to respond to a fire in a
  commercial building all by himself. 
  There isn’t much you can do at a fire all by yourself.  That assistant chief was criticized by a city
  official for “running around in circles” at that fire…as if there was anything
  else he could do without assistance. 
  Eventually my colleague and I tore ourselves away from the rescue call
  and responded to the structure fire.  And
  eventually the rest of the department, who had been paged, showed up.  But that all took a while.

  But I’ve strayed from my topic, which was winter
  firefighting.  No warm-up breaks, no
  coffee breaks, no nothing breaks until the fire was out.  Once in a great while, if it was a big fire at night in the winter, there was one particular commander of the local Salvation Army
  who would show up with his wife in tow and with coffee.  Unfortunately I didn’t drink coffee, and he
  brought nothing else.  I couldn't drink the guy's wife.

  If it’s cold enough, you have to leave the nozzles cracked
  to allow a little bit of water to flow through the hoses at all times, or else
  the water will freeze in the hose.  And
  if it’s REALLY cold, the air in your air pack will start to freeze due to the
  water vapor that’s in the air in the tank. 
  The coldest it ever was at a fire, in my experience, was 90 below with
  the wind chill – probably 40 below without – and it felt like I simply couldn’t
  suck enough air out of my air pack.

  By the time the fire is finally extinguished you’re
  generally pretty exhausted.  But you
  still have to roll up your hose and put away all your equipment.  Then, back at the station, you have to unload
  all the wet hose you just loaded, hang it in the hose tower to dry, and repack
  the truck with fresh hose.  Once
  everything is cleaned up, including the truck itself, you’re finally free to
  clean yourself up and try to get some much-needed rest, while hoping that the
  alarm won’t ring again.

  When you get back to the station after a winter fire, you
  can take your coat off and stand it up on the floor, and it’s so encrusted with
  ice that it’ll just remain standing there upright until the ice melts, as if a
  body was still inside it.

  I’m sure being a soldier is tougher.  But firefighting is definitely a young person’s
  job.  More on firefighting at a later
  date, when I’m once again feeling a bit energetic and nostalgic.  If you want to ask questions in your comments, I'll be happy to try and answer them in my next post.

  • 4:21 pm
  • 35 Comments