Just over a year ago I had the idea to develop a blog focused on compartment fire behavior and firefighting. A bit of work on the technology side and I made my introductory post on 8 August 2008. That month the CFBT-US web site had 2900 page views, this past July the page view count was in excess of 24,000 with 4400 unique readers. While this is not a huge readership in terms of the total number of firefighters in the world who have English as a language, it shows significant growth.
Accomplishments
At the start of this adventure, I set a goal to post twice weekly (Monday and Thursday mornings) and for the most part have managed to keep this schedule. Dominant themes have included:
- Reviews of books, training programs, magazine/journal articles, and conference presentations
- Case studies based on National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and agency reports on significant incidents, injuries, and fatalities
- An ongoing series of posts examining the B-SAHF (building, smoke, air track, heat, and flame) organizing scheme for fire behavior indicators and reading the fire
- B-SAHF video and photo based exercises in reading and interpreting B-SAHF indicators to predict likely fire behavior and the impact of tactical operations
- Examination of extreme fire behavior phenomena such as flashover, backdraft, smoke explosion, and flash fire with an emphasis on understanding the underlying causes and influence of tactical operations on fire dynamics
- Discussion of research on positive pressure ventilation and wind driven fires conducted by the National Institute for Standards and Technology
- Identification of the potential learning opportunity presented by systematic investigation of near miss, injury, and fatality incidents
- Discussion of the importance of deliberate practice and the concept of the need for 10,000 hours to master your craft
Hopefully you have found these posts useful in developing your understanding of compartment fire behavior or have motivated you to take action and share your knowledge of our profession with others. I have benefited greatly from the thought process and effort of writing on a regular and systematic basis.
As a reference, I have prepared a printer friendly Compartment Fire Behavior Blog Index in portable document format (PDF) which includes the date, title, URL, and brief synopsis of post content.
I Need Your Help
Your comments and feedback are important to making the Compartment Fire Behavior Blog better. If I write something that you do not agree with or think that a concept could be expressed more clearly, please comment or question!
The Way Forward
I am currently working on a loose editorial calendar to help guide my writing over the next year. Several important themes will continue:
- Case studies and lessons learned
- Reading the fire and B-SAHF exercises
- Practical fire dynamics
- Review of books, magazine/journal articles
- Fire control and tactical ventilation
If there are topics you think should be on the list, please provide your input as a comment on this post.
My next several posts will get back to study of the B-SAHF scheme with a look at Heat Indicators and continuing examination of flashover. As I have been looking back over the last year, I find that I have taken two distinctly different approaches to sequencing posts. Some topics have been addressed in successive posts (e.g., case studies and discussion of wind driven fires) and others have alternated between several different topics (e.g., B-SAHF and flashover). From my perspective, each has its advantages and disadvantages. If you have a preference or opinion, please let me know!
Thanks for your readership and participation,
Ed Hartin, MS, EFO, MIFireE, CFO