Ongoing Education: Key to Prevention
DEPARTMENTS
Volunteers Corner
The majority of civilian fire deaths in any given year occur in some type of residential building—often in the victims’ own home.
The fire service has lived with this statistic for years, battling these fires and removing these victims over and over again.
At a class I attended recently, the instructor addressed this subject and presented some very interesting facts. Most people who die in private dwelling fires die in their bedrooms, with the elderly, infirm, or very young accounting for the largest percentage of the total. He also noted that 90% of the rapid flame and smoke spread that traps them is due to unenclosed stairways and the flammability of the interior contents.
When these facts were given, all 150 people in the class exhaled and shook their heads. Not because they didn’t believe them, but because they did.
These men, who, for the most part, were veterans, time and time again had witnessed the unforgiving rules under which we play the fire game. I couldn’t help but wonder where their minds were wandering while the instructor appropriately paused. Perhaps some flashed back to that job that sticks in your head for life, and reexperienced that empty gut feeling that goes hand in hand with fire death. The helplessness and, of course, the anger that one feels when we realize that the strategies and tactics used in the incident were, in fact, correct, tend to eat away at us long after the body has been removed. There was nothing more we could have done. The victim may even have been dead before our arrival. Yet, somehow, our self image of a person dedicated to saving life was somewhat shaken.
Perhaps others were thinking of their own homes. How they’re laid out, the construction or remodeling techniques that were used. And, of course, the flammability of the contents.
Years ago, content flammability was limited mostly to natural products such as wood, paper, wool, linens, etc. Today, we find every room of our houses being invaded with synthetics— the rugs, the furniture, the clothes on our backs, even the toys our children play with.
Flammability of plastic products is a very difficult thing to pin down. According to the HANDBOOK OF FIRE PROTECTION, “… It is virtually impossible to assign a single, meaningful, fire test value to a plastic group.” It further states that “… Tests should be designed to show how each product will perform under ‘end use’ conditions.” Some plastics melt and drop quickly during a fire, which will increase the amount of combustibles exposed to fire in a specific time period. This phenomenon also adds to the flame spread problem; and, along with flame spread, we naturally have smoke spread.
The toxicity of plastics, while burning, has been the source of many arguments over the years. But what we seem to forget is that carbon monoxide is usually the most abundant and most lethal gas given off in any fire. Carbon monoxide is produced by the incomplete combustion of a carbon based substance, and in this category we find not only natural materials, but polymeric materials as well. Smoke is the killer; and smoke is produced by heating flammable materials.
If you believe this, then you must look at the new time/temperature curve that has now become more of a spike than a gradual rising slope. What does this mean? It means that things are burning faster because of increased flammability or because of the lack of mass, or both. Regardless, if the time/ temperature curve is now a spike, combustibles are being heated, burning, and producing fire gases at a faster rate than they did before.
Although I realize that some volunteer fire departments protect what might be considered small cities, for most of us, our fire and life loss problems lie in the private dwelling. Why is this? Could it be that people who buy houses don’t want them to be constructed fire safe? Is it because local codes allow homes to be built that are not fire safe? I think it’s a little bit of both.
Consumers want houses that are light, open, and airy, with a feeling of “flow” from one room to the next, from one floor to the next—certainly not one that’s compartmentized.
Some codes allow for substandard construction practices, such as permitting builders to panel a room directly over vertical wood studding. And, of course, there will always be the Saturday carpenter (the homeowner), who feels that anything he does inside his own home is his business only.
Can we change the way people conceive a home? Probably not. My own home is considered open, light, and airy, with an unenclosed staircase to the bedrooms on the second floor.
Well, then, how about the codes? In my experience, I have found codes to react mostly to disasters. The people who write and dictate the law usually do not have first-hand fire knowledge and unfortunately do not engage the services of those who do.
Is there anything that we can do to help reduce the number of residential fire deaths besides bettering our strategies, tactics, and procedures to fight the fires in these structures?
Our arguments and pleas for stricter building codes most times are lost to those lawmakers and politicians who can speak for hours and say nothing.
So, what can we do? Who can we reach with our message of fire safety? The homeowners. The very people with whose lives and property we are entrusted to preserve and protect.
Last month, one week was set aside as fire prevention week. Most fire departments visited local schools and again told children not to play with matches. Many of us had open house at the local fire station and discussed fire safety with those adults who we could corner before they took their youngsters over to the big red truck.
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VOLUNTEERS CORNER
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But how many of us have a valid, ongoing fire prevention program? How many times a year is correspondence sent to each home in our district to keep our neighbors abreast of fire safety tips or new products (such as dual smoke detectors, both ionization and photoelectric) that are available at reasonable costs?
Do we give the community a feeling that we are a closed club or a place where they can come to openly discuss fire safe home improvements and/or other fire related questions?
The list of homeowner safety tips is endless. And keeping your handout literature as short as possible (under one page) will ensure reading, comprehension, maybe even dialogue.
The fire service has only one of two ways to return tax dollars (or subscription dollars, if that system is permitted in your town): The first is to fight the fires; the second is to educate your neighbors so that they don’t have a fire. I prefer the latter.
