Ch 15 Flashcards
(21 cards)
The greatest killers of firefighters today are
Heart attacks/cardiac.
Research definition – the perception of the elements in the environment with a volume of retirement space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future.
Reworded – not only seeing an understanding what is happening, but also anticipating the future as the situation changes.
Situational awareness
An essential element in maintaining situational awareness, the life blood of any response
Communication
Five visual indicators of collapse:
Cracks in walls, especially growing during a fire
Leaning walls
Pitched or sagging floors
Racked doorways
The presence of building stabilization features
Audible and visual collapse indicators include
Noises and sounds
Any type of movement or shifting
Smokes pushing through cracks
Lack of water runoff
Other precipitators of collapse
Overloading floors or roofs or concentrated loads
Renovations with structural compromises
Previous fire damage
Rotting, corrosion, compromised or broken structural elements
Eccentrically loaded columns
Risk analysis must be constantly considered. The relationship between risk incurred and benefits obtained must be under undertaken. Questions from firefighter injury, and fatalities always include:
Why were they were they were?
What was the potential benefit from the risks taken?
What were they doing?
Many descriptive collapse terms include:
Global/total collapse
Partial collapse/localized collapse
Progressive collapse
Secondary collapse
Pancake collapse
Lean to floor collapse
V shaped floor collapse
Cantilever floor collapse
A – frame floor collapse
Inward outward collapse
90° wall collapse
Lean over collapse
Curtain wall collapse
In a lean to floor collapse, one in the floor is
Still supported, the other end of the floor fails, creating a triangular void space
In a Dash frame floor clubs is also known as a
Tent collapse. Creates two void spaces.
NN inward outward collapse, the exterior wall fails horizontally with the interior wall folding horizontally. The top part of the building fails inward while the bottom, half falls outward.
These buildings are particularly susceptible to this topic labs
Brace – framed buildings are susceptible to inward outward collapse
A type of collapse such as a tilt wall that falls at 90°
Can be tilt wall, brick, or other masonry
90° wall collapse
In a curtain wall collapse, brick, veneer, non-loadbearing walls, or other masonry fall:
Fall straight down like a curtain
Minimum levels of competence for firefighters, dealing with building collapse are contained within
NFPA 1670 technical rescue training and operations
NFPA 1006 technical rescue personnel qualifications
The greatest threat on the fire ground because it has a potential to kill large number of people is
Building collapse.
The fourth cause a firefighter death is
Burning building collapse.
Three factors to consider by the fire officer are: age of the building, abandonment, lightweight construction
The most dangerous, parapet wall is one constructed along the front wall of a one story building above several large display windows. Because:
This wall is basically a freestanding wall.
May be vulnerable to high winds, master streams, other lateral forces.
After the fire is out, and crews are in rehab, this is the best time to
Identify all remaining safety hazards by the IC, safety officer, or company officers.
When buildings have bravo and Delta exposures attached to the main fire building,, it may be faster and safer to ladder
Ladder the exposure buildings first which gives the ventilation team a safe platform to work from.
When searching a collapse site, the order of search should be:
Surface victims first
Search all voids and spaces created by the collapse
Selected debris removal for trapped victims
General debris removal to clear the collapse site 
