Not just what and how, but why!
Fire Rescue magazine Editor in Chief Tim Sendelbach recently raised a number of questions related to door control in his recent on-line article, Becoming Better Informed on the Fireground(2014). This article, has generated a fair bit of on-line discussion around the following issue: Which is a better tactic to provide a more tenable environment for … Read more
Milestone! As I was preparing to upload this post, I realized that this is the 200th CFBT-US Blog Post since its inception in August of 2008. Quite a lot has happened since then. In 2008 there were few people in the fire service focused on the importance of fire dynamics to firefighting operations. Today it … Read more
English scientist Michael Faraday initiated The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1825. These lectures which have been held at the Royal Institution in London each year since 1825, with the exception of 1939-1942 are an entertaining and informative presentation of scientific subjects. In 1848, Faraday conducted a series of lectures titles The Chemical History of … Read more
After reading National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Death in the line of duty…2012-28, I was left scratching my head. For many years I have been a supporter of the Firefighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program and have served as an expert reviewer for several reports involving fatalities resulting from extreme fire behavior. … Read more
It has been a busy six weeks since my last post with several trips to Chile and around the United States delivering seminars on Practical Fire Dynamics and Reading the Fire along with finalizing the fire district’s budget for 2014. Spending a full-day on B-SAHF and reading the fire at the Springfield Professional Firefighters IAFF … Read more
CFBT-US has just taken delivery of two Low Pressure Fognails manufactured by Waterfog AB, in Sweden. Fognails are small piercing nozzles with a flow rate of 70 lpm at 8 bar (18.49 gpm at 116 psi). Low Pressure Fognails have a maximum working pressure of 20 bar (290 psi) which will allow operation at pressures … Read more
Social Learning Last week, at the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Firefighter Safety Research Institute (FSRI) Advisory Board Meeting, we discussed changes in the fire environment over the last 40 years and also explored how to effectively roll out the new UL Vertical Ventilation on-line course. On my flight home, was checking Facebook and found several interesting … Read more
Each of the UL ventilation studies has generated a list of tactical considerations, many of which overlap or reinforce one another. It is useful to revisit the tactical considerations developed in the horizontal ventilation study and to integrate these with those resulting from the vertical ventilation research project. Download the Tactical Integration Poster as an … Read more
Recently I have been following a series of discussions on Facebook on the relative merits of compressed air foam (CAF) versus water as an extinguishing agent. Some of my colleagues profess that CAF is superior in all respects and in all applications for extinguishment by cooling. Others point to the limited ability to cool hot … Read more
The International Society of Fire Service Instructors (ISFSI) in conjunction with the South Carolina Fire Academy and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have released an on-line training program addressing firefighting operations in single family dwellings. This training program is comprised of five modules examining current research on fire dynamics and firefighting tactics and … Read more