Intelligently Aggressive Fire Attack
The issue with most water application isn’t the nozzle. It is the nozzle man. Water is often applied based on a method and an educated guess. In many cases, firefighters have withheld water because they didn’t see flames but were being cooked by a blast furnace of superheated gases and convection currents.
We have often been told by firefighters that the reason they didn’t apply water was
* “The room wasn’t on fire” However, modern day combustibles begin to produce flammable vapors at 200 degrees Fahrenheit and the majority of the American Fire Service leaves the front door open during fire suppression. Therefore, we have fuel, heat, and oxygen; what do we suppose will occur as we advance toward the seat but fail to do anything to reduce the heat?
* “The area wasn’t hot.” In many cases, firefighters scan with the TIC too quickly not allowing the TIC to engage or switch modes from High to Low Sensitivity thereby failing to note the true level of thermal severity. In other cases, many firefighters don’t respond to gray scale as they are not trained to properly interpret the image. For example, many fire service TIC’s fail to show colorization until 500, 572, or even 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Firefighters who are looking for color as an indication of thermal severity are only seeing part of the picture. They must understand the value of all the colors in the TIC’s color palette especially gray scale and the corresponding color/temperature correlations. Moving gray convection currents are very hot and should not be dismissed or ignored, they should be cooled with sufficient & aggressive water application.
Tactical Thermal Imaging allows firefighters to direct their streams more efficiently toward where the water is needed most rather than all over or missing superheated areas. In many cases, of watching firefighters on standard training fires we have noted that firefighters only briefly open the nozzle before advancing and there is often temperatures of 800-1000 degrees still behind them. A trained crew leader can guide the efforts of the stream and ensure that superheated areas are “erased” and not merely penciled.
There are heated fire service debates on many subjects but none will strike up a fierce conversation than the combination nozzle versus smooth bore debate. The issue comes down to context and what both sides do NOT see. Both types of applications are necessary and needed within the fire environment.
What is the problem then?
Firefighters were taught not to crawl past fire…
In our training, we teach NOT to crawl past heat or superheated fuels!
We erase the heat, we don’t merely briefly pencil.
This issue is compounded as “penciling” is a tactic from our overseas brethren that we have borrowed, butchered, and completely misused. Pulsing is used to cool gases and move forward. It is not an extinguishment technique and should not be randomly tried by non-trained personnel as the masters I have witnessed those who teach it, and they are surgically precise with their nozzle technique and application. Penciling is taught to reach out and cool surfaces further away not to check the overhead temperatures as many have been taught here in the US.
Yet we consistently see firefighters across the US continuously crawl through convection ovens not adequately cooling the space.
We consistently hear radio traffic of firefighters not opening the nozzle because “we don’t have any visible fire but we are encountering high heat”
We consistently read and hear the following phrase:
“We are having trouble locating the fire”
Why guess? Why are they having trouble?
Because we consistently fail to use a device that assists us in locating the heat!
Without a thermal diagnostic tool to guide our efforts we are only seeing 1/3rd of the equation as 2/3rds of the heat energy is delivered within the infrared spectrum.
Thanks again for your support!
Instructor Andy Starnes
Insight Training LLC
Level II Thermography Certified