BY TOM BRENNAN
For us in the fire service, changes in building trends, laws, and codes are intended to further ensure public safety from fire and its products. But sometimes without our knowing it, the changes can limit our tactics for successfully operating within, around, on top of, and under an occupied fire structure. Such is the case with fire escapes.
Fire escapes have been declared an unsatisfactory secondary means of egress for structures. New construction must design other appropriate means for approval. First “they” legislated out our smokeproof towers and fire towers, and now our ability to attack the fire problem (extinguishment and life accountability) from alternate means of outside entry. But urban America will have these buildings for another 100 or so years, so we will now revisit fire escapes.
How do you get to the roof using a fire escape? “Silly question,” you say? But how many of us always look up to the highest balcony to see if there is a vertical ladder that extends above it and over the parapet to the roof surface? Fire escapes on most buildings do not have to have a gooseneck ladder installed to the roof if the fire escape is on the front of the building! If that is the only fire escape on the building (rare), you will have to go another way!
What do you mean by “rare”? When fire escapes were first installed, they were considered a blight on the wonder architecture of the urban dwelling-the tenement. So buildings with one or two apartments per floor had the ironwork installed in the rear of the building. As a matter of fact, a good truck size-up point for life load in a building is that if a fire escape is on the front of the fire building, it usually means that there is another fire escape at the rear and that there are more than two apartments per floor. More than that? Maybe.
What does it mean if the fire escape balconies do not connect to each other with a ladder device or there is no way to get to the balcony from the street? Well, a couple of things. First, this is a party wall balcony installation. It is usually found in older sections of the urban experience. Occupant fire safety depends on these balconies to get occupants out of their own apartments, onto the balcony, across the building wall, and into the apartment of the attached structure! Imagine! No wonder they are not installed any longer. However, they are present and do afford an area of refuge for civilians and firefighters-AND, with a portable or aerial ladder, add a great means of alternate entry to all apartments for searching firefighters on the balcony. Remember, the people whom these constructed balconies serve are not safe on arrival and need our assistance to get themselves to the street. All windows on these balconies today are equipped with pretty strong devices to prevent unlawful access.
Where do firefighters place a portable ladder or aerial device for access to the fire escape assembly and for relief of crowded conditions of the civilians using it? The best position for the tip of the ladder or the railing of a bucket is to the least exposed side of the balcony and against the building, not the balcony railing. If the tips are slightly above the rail height, all the better. The best situation, all things being equal, is to the side of the balcony opposite the ladder with access to the balcony below or the sidewalk.
What parts of the building does the fire escape usually serve? Each fire escape system usually serves two adjacent apartments. You have two options when entering the fire apartment from the fire escape. The first is to enter directly through the apartment window of the fire occupancy. If that option is blocked by fire conditions, then it may be possible to enter the adjacent apartment and breach the wall to the fire apartment-given a serious fire condition. In any case, event, or operation, you can access the fire floor for additional operations.
If it is impossible to “make” the floor above the fire apartment from the interior, how can the fire escape help ensure that that location can be searched as early as possible? It is simple when more than one fire escape system is on the building. Find a fire escape that does not serve the fire occupancy. Use it to the occupancy located on the floor above the fire, and enter. Go to the door that opens on the public hall or stair. Open the door to the relative coolness of the landing, and cross over when you can. Force entry to the occupancy directly over the fire, the one no one below can get to! Also, you have just opened the path to an area of refuge should the rooms over the fire become untenable. [Psst. Don’t forget to report your position-for safety, of course. But you just pulled off a great truck coup. Let them hear it on the fireground (just kidding, of course!).]
What about stretching hoselines on fire escapes? Grrrreaaat! But a few rules of order and safety. First, ensure that the stairway of this combustible building (fire escapes are rarely found on noncombustible buildings) is protected by the first hoseline from the street to the fire floor. (A couple of my brothers a little farther west will disagree, but that is because they didn’t get in enough trouble yet.) Additional lines, preferably the third or more, should use an additional means of access, and the fire escape(s) is excellent. The second great practice is to keep the line advance vertical and outside the balcony. Use your imagination to figure out how to do that. Don’t forget to support the weight with small pieces of rope, hose straps. With today’s sorrowful staffing problems, we can’t afford to have a member on each balcony holding the hose to prevent it from falling to the street.
