“Why Do Firefighters Need to Learn & Understand Building Construction?”… from The Housewatch.com

Why Do Firefighters Need To Learn & Understand Building Construction?

Aaron Lipski, Milwaukee Fire Department

The answer to this question is simple. Firefighters can take the time to learn and understand the principles of building construction ahead of time or they can learn as they are being maimed or killed by the building.

Buildings respond in predictable ways to the stresses put upon them by fire. More importantly, firefighters can avoid the hazards of structural failure by recognizing the various building construction types, analyzing how the fire has already weakened the structure, and predicting how the fire will work to cause structural collapse. Francis L. Brannigan observed that for firefighters, a structure is nothing more than a gravity resistance system (GRS). This means that the purpose of any building, under a fireload or not, is to not fall over or collapse. Simple enough, right?

Wrong. Buildings are being built using smaller structural elements to support heavier loads because engineers and building codes say it will work. In many cases, it does, in fact, work, but only until the occupancy suffers a fire. It is then that firefighters come to appreciate how fire actively operates to weaken and destroy a building’s GRS.

Modern engineering also puts firefighters in greater danger because of tighter, better insulated buildings. Vincent Dunn tells us:

“To summarize, the firefighters of the 1990’s go deeper into fires that burn hotter, in rooms that hold heat better, using gear that shuns the smoke barrier and belies the heat level. Under these circumstances, firefighters can unwittingly contravene safe search procedures and get in too deep to get out. The only safe piece of equipment that can protect us is our brain.”

A clear understanding of how a building (and lax fire protection engineering, weak building codes, non-existent fire chief involvement in those codes, and the Grandfather Clause) may work to kill firefighters is essential to staying alive in a structure fire. Ask yourself a simple question each time you arrive to suppress a structure fire: How is this burning building trying to kill me?