Controlling Fire Flow Path

Note: You must refer to your jurisdictions SOPs and should not rely on these videos as your sole training.

Fires have changed significantly over the last number of decades in part due to the type of fire load in buildings.  Below is a video created by UL to show two types of rooms, one constructed from 1970s materials and one constructed of 2010 materials. It is clear fire progression has changed (and therefore our tactics need to be different too).

There has been a huge push to focus more on controlling the fire flow. This happens in part by a coordinated fire attack and ventilation.  There are some great videos around which show improper coordination of ventilation.

At 3 minutes in the video below the fire is confined to one room in the basement. At approximately 3:30 into the video a firefighter takes out all the windows and then 3:50 into the video all the rooms burst into flames.

NIST and several fire departments have done a great amount of work testing fire flows and the effect of different types of ventilation.

And another video on fire flow: