US Fire Service- Pause for thought!

As the US Fire Service is on the cusp of embracing what I termed “Fi-Sci”- tactical Firefighting and decision making based upon scientific and engineering principles. The data & evidence provided by UL/NIST must be applied on the fireground. Now my personal expertise is providing that bridge, communicating and making accessible that information to Firefighters in understandable terms; see my textbooks for details.

What may not be apparent initially is that I have seen throughout my career the mistakes, tangents and misunderstandings that the UK made in moving towards “Fi-Sci” approaches on the fireground and in training. Now that I am here, listen to this strange accent, & I can be very, very useful in helping the US Fire Service avoid repetition of our mistakes and reduce FF line of duty deaths & increase victim survivability through effective tactics and techniques.

At one stage, in the UK, we were good. Very Good. In the late 90s and early 2000s, the UK Fire Service had an overlap of traditional “firemanship” (1970s/80s) with both the technical knowledge and experience which that bought, plus a successfully integrating “scientific based Firefighting” approach, aka “Compartment Firefighting” (CFB).

In the late 80s and 90s, innovators such as Paul Grimwood, John Taylor and innovative Chiefs of brigades such as Richard Bull, Tyne & Wear (my alma mater) and Wiltshire had progressed to a stage where compartment Firefighting and positive pressure ventilation were successfully used at the majority of working structure fires. The UK began a “standardisation” protocol, whereby Compartment Fire Behaviour Training (CFBT) operated within a documented (& legal) framework; “CFBT Guidance & Compliance Framework”.

The framework was, and remains, a document that provides parameters for safe training in this type of Firefighting, the emphasis being on legally “safe”. Contents include “training facility design”, “learning outcomes for Firefighters, Officers Instructors” and so on.

Now at the time, this was a revolutionary document and approach, smoke was finally seen as “gaseous fuel”, the symptoms of rapid fire development were disseminated, “gas cooling” nozzle techniques to reduce volume and inert pyrolysis were practised, fire development was observed. This was based around “container-based” or “single cell” training.

Now, one crucial oversight that us Limeys made was to fail to import the lesson that the Swedes teach, that is gas cooling/pulsation/fogging is limited by the factors of fire loading, compartment size & geometry and heat release rate, to mention but a few. Resultingly, single cell training in CFBT was adopted as a “panacea” or remedy for all ills, policies and procedures altered accordingly, the reduced water usage for “pulsing” and fog attacks becoming standard. Capacities got dialled down.

We became awesome at fighting low heat release fires in 400sq foot shipping containers!

A standardised approach to instruction, and the teaching of fire behaviour and compartment Firefighting is, was and always will be a good idea. However, despite the best efforts of many early innovators, brigades and FRS’s “sectioned” off various disciplines, rather than approach things holistically. A dogmatic, structured, “paint by numbers” approach became commonplace.

It is a sad indictment that Fire Behaviour and Fire Attack, SCBA (search techniques etc ) and Tactical Ventilation are still often taught as separate entities within the UK Fire Services when these are merely slices of the same pie. The lack of context has become apparent with catastrophic consequences, which I will come onto. The CFBT Instructor qualification is still based around a single cell container approach with 3 units in Theory of Fire Behaviour, Training (single cell) & PPV.

Lack of context is a huge problem. I mentioned at the beginning of this article that there was an overlap whereby Firefighters had both knowhow (having used previous approaches and having knowledge of hydraulics, flows etc ) and CFBT coming to prominence. For a short period, Firefighters were equipped with a fuller toolbox of skills, and with adept Officers, deployed very successfully, with impressive results.

However, as time has progressed, retirements abound and the vast majority of the UK’s Firefighters have limited knowledge of the technical approach pre-dating CFBT. The baby got thrown out with the bathwater and “old fashioned” approaches demonised as the domain of “dinosaurs”. Hydraulics and Water calculations became “unsexy” and “outdated”. How wrong we were.

A misconception abounds that the same approaches in a container, using very light loading (OSB, pallets) that gives nice effects , will be equally successful in an involved structure fire with 10x the heat release rate. UK Fire Services have failed generally to acknowledge that the increased fire loading of high energy items such as laptops, furnishings etc alters the burning rate and fire profile significantly, one that the water capabilities and nozzle techniques, which have been relied on for the last 20 years, simply and scientifically cannot deal with. There is a time and a place for heavy flow, solid streams, that the majority of the UK are incapable or ill equipped to deliver.

The lack of context , epitomised by teaching disciplines separately, notably “tactical ventilation” has been instrumental in Firefighter fatalities in the UK. The Balmoral Bar in Edinburgh, Scotland and Shirley Towers, Hampshire have been two glaring examples of a ventilation tactic being adopted without consideration of the effect on fire behaviour.

The UK’s line of duty death rate and public fire death rate has over the last 15 years dramatically increased! With the misunderstanding and misapplication of fire science and “Fi-Sci” Firefighting prominent! The USA MUST avoid repeating this tragic mistake.

“Water tactics (flow) and Air Tactics (ventilation) must be regarded as yin & yang….there must be both or there may as well be neither”.

Us Limeys led the world for a brief moment and started moving firefighting in a pioneering direction. The principles that the CFBT guidance and compliance framework are based upon remain ethically sound. Standardised training nationally with a full understanding of tactical Firefighting, regular hands on, practical training delivered by qualified, knowledgeable instructors is still the right approach.

But….

Failure to ensure that information is up to date, delivered in context and part of a greater “toolkit” or “playbook” is where the UK has failed. My consistency of belief and efforts to alter this, shouting very, very loudly have resulted in great personal cost to myself, unemployment & poverty. Would I compromise? No. It’s a fight that I have taken on globally and will continue to do so.

Given that the United States, Canada and other nations stand on the brink of adopting scientific based approaches, it is of the utmost importance to look to the British model and learn from our mistakes. It may be pointed that, despite the increases I earlier mentioned, the UK has a commensurately lower rate of line of duty deaths than the US, however, let me play devil’s advocate….

Reduction of personnel, firehouses and increased response times, “default to defensive” has resulted in the UK’s fire services intervening when a fire has entered the “decay phase”, generally structural failures (windows) have allowed a fire sufficient air supply and to use up available fuels. Luck rather than judgement has had an effect.

So, this Pariah is offering twenty years of brutal honesty, admission of mistakes, and exposing all the failures that myself and others have made, so that you, dear hearts, can learn from them. I also give you a way forward, so that you may drive on beyond us, for the greater good. Just call me & the others “Pathfinders”.

B