Enhanced Effectiveness of Fire Fighting Tactics Project

Firefighting is hazardous. In 2008, the fire departments in the United States responded to more than 500,000 structure fires. These fires resulted in approximately 2,900 civilian fatalities, 14, 900 injuries and property losses in excess of $14 billion dollars. In addition, more than 36,000 fire fighters were injured on the fire ground. This project will demonstrate through the use of measurement science the dynamics of fire behavior in a structure and provide guidance on non-traditional means to mitigate the fire hazard in the structure in a manner that provides optimum safety and effectiveness for the fire fighter. The project has three key focus areas; ventilation, suppression and technology transfer to the fire service.

Objective: Improve the safety and effectiveness of firefighters through improved knowledge of fire behavior in a structure. Develop ventilation studies (strategies) which enable firefighters to determine if adding additional air to a structure will provide cooling as intended or if the additional air will result in fire growth. Demonstrate non-traditional means of fire suppression including applying water into the structure from the exterior prior to the traditional “interior attack”, as a means of improving the fire environment for the fire fighters and persons trapped in the structure by 2014.    

What is the new technical idea? The three main objectives of a firefighting operation are life safety, fire extinguishment and property protection. Most fire departments have standard operating guidelines for achieving these objectives, which vary from department to department because they are based on the experience of the department leadership, the organization of the department, and the resources that each department has to respond to a fire. As a result, the actions of the fire fighters may not be driven by fire science but by tradition and experience.  

As an example, currently fire suppression operations are termed “offensive,” if the fire fighters advance a hose line into a building to attack the fire, while a “defensive” operation would be to apply water streams into the building from a safe distance away from the building. A recent study on wind driven fires in structures, conducted by NIST in cooperation with the Fire Department of New York City, the Chicago Fire Department, the Fire Protection Research Foundation and New York University Polytechnic, demonstrated alternate means of reducing the fire hazard for both firefighters and building occupants by using new tools to control the fire from the floor above or the floor below the fire floor. Hence a good defensive operation became a great offensive operation. This study has made the fire service aware that the traditional approaches that have been taught over the years may not provide the best working environment for them nor the best outcomefrom the fire incident.  

While fire science has made significant improvements in both measurement and prediction, much of the work has focused on the fire behavior in a single compartment, not in structures. Measurements are needed to determine the capabilities and limitations of fire fighting techniques in real scale structures to provide a basis for adding to the operational tools on the fire ground and to provide firefighters with the knowledge to predict the outcome of their tactics.   

What is the research plan?  The project has three key focus areas; ventilation, suppression and technology transfer to the fire service. The fire service defines ventilation as the removal of heat and smoke from a burning structure while introducing cooler, cleaner air. Traditionally this would be done with vertical ventilation - by making an exhaust vent in the roof and providing air inlets by opening doors or breaking windows. Another method is horizontal ventilation, where only windows are vented. Given the fuel rich environment found in structures, these actions may actually enable the fire to reach flashover at a faster rate increasing the hazard. Therefore a study documenting the fundamentals of natural ventilation of a real scale residential structure is required. The objective of the task is to examine the exhaust and inlet vent sizes needed to safely cool and raise the hot gas layer interface height within the structure. The initial phase will be conducted with natural gas burners. These experiments will then be modeled with FDS/Smokeview. Once validated for these experiments, the model will be used to assist in the design of the second phase of ventilation experiments with real furnishings as fuel. The results will be used to provide guidance to fire fighters on their ability to ventilate a structure with a favorable outcome. For example, the exhaust vent size required based on the volume of the building and the volume of the building filled with smoke. Other factors which fire fighters need to take to account prior to venting a building include smoke color, speed, wind conditions, fire location and fire size.  

Suppression operations have been conducted from the interior of the structure as a means to reduce water damage and limit fire damage to structures. These operations must be coordinated with the ventilation operations. Previous research and examinations of line of duty deaths has shown that ventilation events occurring with fire fighters in the structure prior to suppression have led to tragic results. One means of eliminating the possibilities of this occurrence would be a transitional attack, where water is directed into the structure from the exterior to cool the fire gases and reduce the heat release rate of the fire, prior to the fire fighters entering the building. The major concern with this type of operation is the potential harm that such an operation might have on persons trapped in the structure or on the amount of water damage to the structure. Therefore measurements are needed to document the changes of the thermal environment within the structure and the impact on the viability of persons who might be trapped in the structure.  

As this new information is documented, a significant task is to share the information with the fire service across the nation. Mechanisms include NIST reports and videos on the fire.gov website, journal articles, firefighting trade magazine articles, conferences, webinars, web-based training programs, podcasts and the integration of the new knowledge into standards, guides and training materials.  

Major Accomplishments:  

Recent Results:

Output: Firefighting Technology Research at NIST. Madrzykowski, D., Fire Engineering, Vol. 162, No. 5, May 2009. 

Output: Wind Driven Fire Research: Hazards and Tactics. Madrzykowski, D. and Kerber, S., Fire Engineering, Vol. 1, 63, No. 3, March 2010.

Output: Wind, Fire, and High-Rise Buildings: Firefighters and Engineers Conduct Research to Combat a Lethal Threat. Madrzykowski, D., Kerber, S., Panindre, P., and Kumar, S., Mechanical Engineering: The Magazine of ASME, Vol. 132, No. 7, July 2010.

Output: Research and Data Collection in the Fire Service. Madrzykowski, D., Understanding and Implementing the 16 Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives, Ch 3. Fire Protection Publications, Stillwater, OK, July 2010.  

Standards and Codes:

This project is fully engaged in standards activities and the project team are members or participating in several standards as listed below:

• NFPA 921, Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations
• NFPA 1001, Standards for Fire Fighter Professional Qualifications
• NFPA 1021, Standards for Fire Officer Professional Qualifications
• NFPA 1041, Standards for Fire Service Instructor Professional Qualifications
• NFPA 1403, Standards for Live Fire Training Evolutions
• NFPA 1410, Standards on Training for Initial Emergency Scene Operations