What is your fire doing

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What is your fire doing?

• What is it going to do??

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Flames are easy

• SMOKE tells the story!

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Why Read Smoke?

• To determine how much fire
• To determine the location of the fire
• To help predict collapse potential
• To help PRIORITIZE Strategies Tactics
• To PROTECT Firefighters from a HOSTILE FIRE
  EVENT

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What do the following things tell you about the
conditions?

• Volume of smoke
• Velocity of the smoke
• Density of the smoke
• Color of the smoke

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Lets talk flashover
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An explanation

• Normally flashover is the culmination of the fire
  growth phase and occurs whenthe ceiling
  temperature reaches around 900-1000F depending
  on the materials present in the compartment and
  the geometric arrangement.
• After flashover, room temperature rapidly
  increases to reach up to 1900F.

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'the rapid transition to a state of total surface
involvement in a fire of combustible materials
within a compartment'.
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Indicators

• Flames in the overhead
• Rollover
• Very high temperature which
• forces you to crouch low
• Smoke layer is banking down

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IndicatorsWhat do we do about em?

• Check the overhead!
• Cool the overhead!
• Ventilate!

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Check the overhead

• Upon entering a structure, use your TIC to
  determine if there is fire/heat in the overhead.
  (remember, a TIC reads surface temperature, not
  ambient temp.)
• Upon advancing through the structure, scan your
  surroundings with your TIC (6 sided look)

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Check the overhead

• Upon entering the structure
• Pop the ceiling and take a look!

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• You are in a box that is filling up with
  superheated gases and smoke.
• The smoke is dense, black, and pressurized
  causing a low visibility environment.
• You see flames dancing in the smoke
• What do you do?

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Cool the overhead

• Have you heard of Pencil the ceiling? Of course
  you have!
• The idea is to give a short burst of water into
  the overhead to allow absorption of heat, thus
  reducing the temperature in the overhead.

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Cool the overhead

• We apply shorts bursts to avoid disrupting the
  thermal balance.
• The more surface area of water contained in your
  short burst that is introduced to the
  superheated atmosphere, the more heat it will
  absorb.

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Cool the overhead

• Straight stream little surface area
• Fog pattern massive surface area in the
  droplets of water.
• Do you want to fog the overhead?

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NO!

• If you would like to avoid getting burned, stay
  away from the wide fog pattern in the superheated
  overhead.
• Instead
• Apply your straight stream into the overhead for
  penetration into the room and to allow the stream
  to break up into smaller particles as it deflects
  off the ceiling.

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Ventilate

• What better way to release the heat than
  (properly) opening the box?

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What is this smoke telling you?
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The story has been told!
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Black Fire is the term we give to High Volume,
High Velocity, Extremely Dense, Black Smoke.It
is the sure sign of impending flashover VENT
COOL are your primary choices.
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Rollover

• .An event that is typically seen to precede
  flashover by a few seconds
• (Cool the Overhead)

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Access the following video for footage of rollover

• http//longbeach.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publ
  ish_id89

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A moderate volume of grey/brown smoke under
moderate pressure.

• Grey / Brown smoke
• The carbon particles have been filtered and
  dropped as the smoke travels away from the fire
  and through the structure.
• Flashover not likely here.

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A moderate volume of black smoke under moderate
pressure.

• The box is filling with gases and heat.
• Probably not impending flashover, but we need to
  change these conditions soon.

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Flames visible with a high volume of pressurized
dense, black smoke

• Flashover conditions likely from the corner
  apartment.
• What would you do?

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Non pressurized light colored smoke.

• Pay attention, watch for changing conditions as
  you advance in your operations.

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Nothing is absolute!

• Pay attention to changing conditions.
• Are you experiencing improving conditions or
  degrading conditions?
• Look past the flames to read the story and
  predict what is likely to happen next.

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Zone 3 Training