WHAT WOULD YOU DO? DOWNTOWN COMMERCIAL FIRE

07/03/2015

By John "Skip" Coleman

This fire occurs in a downtown commercial building. It has many apartments on the upper two floors and mercantile on the first floor. Please view the video first. It only lasts 20 seconds.

Assume you are responsible for initially establishing command at this fire.

Other units responding are what your department would send on a report of a fire in this occupancy type.

Answer the questions below or make your own strategic, tactical and task level questions to answer.

Can Crews safely effectively Enter and work? Yes No

Could there be savable people inside? Yes No

Will you allow Offensive (Interior) Operations? Yes No

First Assignment:___

Second Assignment:__

Third Assignment:__

Fourth Assignment:___

For Fire Attack: Size of Line (Control)__ : Taken in from and taken to: (Confine)_

For Ventilation

How_

For Search

How_

For Back Up. How___

Give us your thoughts on initial strategies and tactics on the comment section below or at our Fire Engineering page on Facebook .

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John "Skip" Coleman retired as assistant chief from the Toledo (OH) Department of Fire and Rescue. He is a technical editor of Fire Engineering. a member of the FDIC Educational Advisory Board; and author of Incident Management for the Street-Smart Fire Officer (Fire Engineering, 1997), Managing Major Fires (Fire Engineering, 2000), Incident Management for the Street-Smart Fire Officer, Second Edition (Fire Engineering, 2008) and Searching Smarter (Fire Engineering2011) and 2011 recipient of the FDIC Tom Brennan Lifetime Achievement