The mission of the fire service is to prevent fires from occurring in the hopes of reducing loss of life and property. One of the ways this is accomplished is through routine building inspections by local fire departments.
In small communities, regular inspections may not be carried out on a consistent basis, or at all. This leads to many unknowns for the responding fire department. If the commercial building cannot be inspected on a regular basis, then preplanning will also not occur.
In today’s training video, crews respond to a fire at a food processing plant. Commercial building fires present many unknowns:
- The building’s construction;
- Age of the building;
- Shape of the building;
- Quality of routine building maintenance;
- Quality of any building renovations; and
- Building contents, which could include processing equipment and product inventory.
These unknowns represent a black hole of data for the responding fire department. Without this information, the attempt to suppress the fire from the interior may not be initiated until deemed safe to do so after a defensive attempt.
Another unknown will be the chemicals stored on site that are used for the manufacturing process. What types of chemicals are present? How much is on site? How are they stored in terms of state of matter? In our video, multiple liquid storage tanks and a few pressure vessels can be seen on the exterior of the building. Normally these types of vessels are labelled, but the video shows no identification markings on them.
When dealing with any commercial building fire, access to a large water supply will be a major concern for the incident commander. A lack of available water limits crews’ efforts to defensive attacks only. Without enough water, the fire will increase faster than suppression efforts, leading to a larger problem overall.
Considering the unknowns, any opportunity to preplan these types of structures will be beneficial. Approach commercial building fires with caution, particularly when crews do not have a clear understanding of the building’s construction or contents. Speaking from experience, commercial building fires can become death traps due to a lack of windows, inadequate exits, congested pathways, or improper storage of contents and materials.
Training time
After watching this video/reading this news story with your company, your department should:
1. Determine the unknowns for the commercial buildings in your area and preplan a comprehensive response approach.
2. Perform a walk-through at a commercial building to identify hazards and discuss how the hazard would impact arriving crews in an “unknown” situation.
