Today We Burned a House

Well, not so much a house, but a ramshackle shack. We've been doing practices over the last few months at the "burn-shack". This is a house that was donated to the fire department to do fire practice with, and to rid the owner of a dilapidated cabin on his property.

We've been lighting fires, making entry, saving plastic dummies, and putting out the fires. Today we burned 'er to the ground, but not before setting some really big fires and putting them out.

We started the day with a "cold start" where we lit a big pile of pallets in a corner and watched the development of fire in an enclosed space. A couple of hours of big rollover/flashover burns and extinguishment followed before we broke for lunch.

Here's a sequence showing a completely flashed-over room. The attack team is able to cool the room from the outside with a few well placed shots of water. They can then make entry, find the seed of the fire, and extinguish it with a few more shots. While one firefighter monitors the fire, the other team members are able to complete a primary search of the rest of the house looking for more fire and any victims.

After lunch when everyone had had a few chances to be in a fully involved room with flames rolling over their heads, we let it go and burned it to a pile of embers.

Just to show that a promotion to officer and a white helmet hasn't given me too big a head, I'm including a photo of the new Deputy pulling hose just like anyone else, although with less technique and more heavy breathing.