Let's talk about the Fire Service

[BRUTE]

crazy humans who run TOWARDS the fire

[henrik]

I have some questions too. Feel free to get to them whenever you feel like it or leave them hanging.
1. I understand the fire departments in the US are normally tied to municipal or county governments. How is response across borders arranged if/when needed? Is responding to a fire in a neighbouring district/town/county/state a routine thing or does it require a "political" decision of some sort?
2. Is predictive analytics a thing for the US fire service? Are there attempts to analyse past events combined with other factors to aid in preparedness planning and prevention activities?
3. (This one is really high level of course, so you may not have enough experience to tackle it.) How many times in your career have you been asked why firemen have red suspenders?

[BlueNote]

And I'm certified to install car seats in my state.

I couldn't do what you do, I get claustrophobic and forget where the fire extinguisher is when there is a small kitchen fire...

I get what you mean about the hollywood aspect, in a real fire the smoke makes things almost invisible. I remember seeing a you tube video of the station nightclub fire and was amazed at how fast the fire and smoke spread and how chaotic and difficult it must be to deal with that sort of thing.

Since you brought up car seats...

I recently installed a car seat and after reading the manual, watching You tube videos , researching on the Internet and practicing a couple of times I think it's installed properly.

I noticed after my first installation attempt that the seat had too much wiggle. They say to have a max of 1 inch of wiggle but I wanted almost no wiggle.To resolve this I put most of my weight on top of the car seat while simultaneously tightening the UAS strap. The levelling gauge is right on the money. The seat is incredibly tight now with almost no wiggle. Pic below.





Any other tips for installing the seat correctly (sounds like you have a ton of experience)?

[Fish]

If I’m not mistaken it was your time in the fire service that enabled your early retirement. What are the salaries like, how does your pension work (in terms of vesting and when you can start claiming benefits) and can new recruits get a similar deal?

Also, how does one get in? I was talking with some of the ffs in my area and the newer guys were absolutely grateful/delighted to be stationed in an area where they wanted to live. It seemed like openings were few and far between.

[Riggerjack]

Thanks for the thread. I have few questions.

How is a volunteer firefighter different from full time firefighter, not pay and benefits, but in responsibility and skills and daily routines?

For myself, I have seen the mess sprinklers left when a pressure test failed, and that factored into my decision not to install them in my house when building. Since, I have seen some interesting residential strinkler systems. Foam. Mist. Stuff like that. But do they work? If they do, are they nearly as bad as a fire?

What have you done in your own place for fire protection, and what else would you like to do?

That should be enough to start. Thanks again.

[Fish]

@ffj - Thanks for the detailed response. I found the details about the application process fascinating and was surprised at how selective it was. If it's 0.5% (=15/3000) then that's about 10x lower than the acceptance rate of an Ivy League university! Can you explain your reasons for becoming a ff? There's gotta be a story behind that.

[Scott 2]

I never lived someplace without 24/7, full time, fire protection service. I assumed it was everywhere.

[Gilberto de Piento]

Thanks for the detailed responses, they are very interesting.

The book Population:485 https://www.amazon.com/Population-485-M ... 0061363502 has a lot of stories about being a volunteer firefighter.

At some point in the past I heard a radio show where it was mentioned that people should realize that in many places if they get in an accident on the interstate they may be getting rescued by a team with limited training and equipment coming from a long distance away rather than the full time professionals with all the best gear that drivers are expecting. Apparently it is getting harder to find people to be firefighters and there is less funding than there used to be. Rural parts of the country are getting depopulated so there just aren't as many people to recruit from and tax.

If I'm not too old by the time I get out of my real job and if I find myself in a place where it is needed I'd like to be a volunteer SAR member, firefighter or EMT.

[RealPerson]

Very interesting. If your fingers aren't too tired I would love to read what things are like for a recruit after they are accepted. This is really fascinating.

[Riggerjack]

@ ffj

Thanks. I found the old Usenet link that got me started on this. http://yarchive.net/house/fire.html

It's a copy of old messages from John DeArmond, a guy with some brilliant, and some very kooky ideas. "Sometimes wrong, but never in doubt." I really enjoy reading his stuff, which is not the same as believing all I read. I can evaluate most of it on my own, but have no ff experience, and some of his Rube Goldberg devices seem unlikely to be reliable. Give it a read, and rest your fingers.

At some point in my retirement, I plan to build a vacation rental, and at that point I will need to think in terms of a sprinkler system again. That's why I was asking, but this is one of those subjects that don't get enough planning in general, so I wanted to pick your brain.

[henrik]

@ffj - thank you for the detailed responses (to my questions and others).

The problems with the public's expectations sound familiar. Here, the average arrival time for a professional brigade on scene is a little under 9 minutes (there is a lot of variation in a sparsely populated country with a few bigger towns). Not surprisingly, if you ask people, they expect that you'll be on scene the minute they've made the call. What is surprising though (there was a recent study), is that people believe professional help will reach them *faster* during a big impact serious event (think storm, flood etc) than in a normal situation. This is something to work on. After all, the simplest definition of quality (in this case of the fire service) is how closely it matches expectations.

I have another question too. You described the dispatching process for volunteers. How does it differ for professionals? Do you also get your response site and event details over the radio? Are there any tools in your trucks that will automatically get the location information and plan the route for you, plus perhaps let you do some pre-arrival planning? I'm involved in redesigning one such system at the moment, so it's interesting to see how these things are handled in other countries.

[FBeyer]

70% of all firefighters are volunteer in the U.S. Think about that for a second if you live in a rural area and your house catches fire...

I stayed in Greybull, WY a couple of years ago. The fire alarm went off every evening at some designated time.

The average age of the local volunteer ff was in the 70's or 80's. The alarm went off because if the volunteer ff couldn't hear the alarm anymore, they couldn't be part of the fire brigade

[jacob]

It's kind of fascinating that people are interested in what I kind of take for granted.

Maybe this will be another book in the making.

Actually, I think insider views are fascinating. I will admit (and many will laugh now) that my main preferences for watching anything on TV is when it's about other people working and how they go about it. People fishing, digging for gold, dirty jobs, undercover boss, ... It's a way to learn about what people tend to spend most of their lives doing. So, I like to watch reality TV, but what could be more interesting than that? Fictitious superheroes?!

It's the kind of stuff "they don't teach in school" (but really should!)

[jacob]

Question: Why are Halligan bars/tools so expensive. It seems like it's just a fancy axe-crow-bar-something combo... so why three-figures? Alternatives?

[Riggerjack]

I've seen the foam fire system in use. BF Goodrich Aerospace hanger 3 had a dozen or so 737 sized aircraft in the hangar, in varying stages of disassembly, when a mechanic tried to force a three phase power cable into the connector. If it won't go, hammer it, right? Until the sparks and fire fly, then the foam kicks in, everywhere.

BFG has a huge above ground water tank to support their foam system. Without connected power or water, the system will fill the hanger with 5 feet of foam. And toolboxes, and opened up airplanes... Let's just say that 1200 mechanics we're spending a day recovering toolboxes and cleaning tools, and the building remediation experts spent days cleaning up the hanger and drying it out. I don't know the details of what happened to the planes. BFG is in the aircraft refit and rebuild business. They routinely strip planes down to individual components, refurbish the components, then reassemble. If you have ever seen a frame off restoration of a classic car, they aspire to the level of work these guys do. But these are the same guys who can't get hired at Boeing, and sometimes hammer connectors together.

In any case, since it was an electrical fire, the foam is likely more damaging than the fire. But since we are talking about airplanes, anything that keeps them from being damaged is worth it.

I've seen brand new sprinklers destroy brand new rooms. I did a job for UWW, and one of the last inspections is a life safety test, where the fire alarms and sprinkler system is tested. Broken glass at a sprinkler head on the second floor. Fortunately, the guy running the test saw pressure not rising as expected, and shut down. One small office went from complete, to stripped to the studs, and concrete. There was no point in trying to clean it up. Fire sprinkler pipes are just black iron pipes, covered in a dirty oil inside and out, then filled with water, then released at pressure. The walls and floor were covered in water, oil, and rust. Again, a small fire would be less damaging.

I'm sure a real fire would be more damaging than these examples, if for no other reason than these examples were system overkills. I don't want to give the impression that fire suppression is as damaging as fire, it's not. But in the few examples I have seen, I was blown away by how bad they were. And that's something rarely talked about.

[George the original one]

Pretty certain fire sprinklers are for saving lives rather than assets [as in insurance companies can calculate rates for losing assets, but not so much for lives lost because "courts"... self-insured owner-occupants have different value systems]. Not sure on the foam, other than it is for containing fuel fires.

[henrik]

Thank you once again.
I'll give you some time to rest and others a chance to ask their questions before continuing:)

[henrik]

Haha, you could have just replied "I have my own air pack and a garden hose" and looked way cooler:)

Are smoke and/or CO detectors mandatory in the US?
Do fire brigades make preventive home visits, for example where social workers or someone else have alerted of a serious fire hazard?

[jacob]

@henrik - According to the ordinance/building permit of my city (a random Chicago suburb), the rule (enforced by fines) was to have 1 CO monitor for each level of the house (we have three levels) and 1 smoke detector in each living room and each bedroom (kitchen and bathroom excepted). Since a bedroom, here, is defined as any room with a closet even if there are no beds, we have six detectors total (some are combined smoke(*)/CO)---four of which are practically within arms length of each other(**). But rules are rules. However, when the city showed up to inspect us [when we bought the house] they didn't bother to count. This only happens when ownership changes hands. It's not like there are regular inspections.

(*) Also note smoke can be detected either by ionization or by light. It's best to combine. Light smoke vs. dark smoke. ffj can probably explain the difference.

(**) It's cheap life-insurance though. We also have two extinguishers. One in the kitchen and one in the bedroom. Also one in the car for engine-fires.

I'm 90% sure that the local fire dep. will show up and inspect for free if we ask them.

PS: Last year, a house just up the street a few houses from me burned out its 2nd floor. Apparently some contractors had left a halogen light on and that had either fallen over and/or ignited something. At least that's the story. Lots of trucks showed up and it stank for hours (burning a house is more toxic than burning wood) so I had to switch off the central heating (temps in here dropped to 12C but it was either toxic heat or no heat). I saw one firefighter getting wheeled out on a stretcher. They had an ambulance on standby (sitting right outside my doorstep) early on, just in case, I presume.

PPS: @ffj I was always taught [Denmark] not to show up as spectator/possible help when firefighters/cops/ambulance was already there, but here in the US I note that any accident always gathers a crowd. So what's the official policy/recommendation on this? If the pros are already there... would you rather have more or less or no civilians hanging around?

[George the original one]

@henrik - Oregon's smoke detector & CO monitor rules for homes are enforced at the time of sale. The owner can ignore them before/after the sale, but at the time of the sale the things have to be in place and operational. Generally it is outside concerns (lender, insurance, realtor) that nix deals if the detectors are not in place... considering how cheap the detectors are compared to the price of the home, few are willing to jeopardize the deal. An all-cash deal without a realtor/insurance can work around the rules.

I'm trying to remember if the rules are law or just recommendations for homeowners... the rules are definitely law if the home is a rental and a landlord will find it expensive if the landlord is not complying.