Imperfect Pitch: William Knight on Construction Problems --material and link to Fire Engineering

FF's usually go into action with only a general idea of what they are going to face. 

Advances have been made in helping Fire Crews be prepared for what is most likely, but, like a lot of the equipment FF's use, it is hopelessly old fashioned when you think of it.

As usual, it all comes down to one thing: Money. 

People who want to close down Fire Houses and gut FF's pensions are hardly going to be willing to invest in new technology that would keep FF's safe. 

Here is some of what  William  Knight has to say about one aspect of this in Fire Engineering:

Imperfect Pitch

• Posted by William Knight on December 4, 2014 at 4:43pm
• View Blog

It used to be that ventilating residential fires was pretty straightforward.  Even today, the process hasn’t changed, but the difficulties encountered while completing the task have multiplied.  Difficult roofs aren’t new; commercial flat roofs have long been a tough cookie to crack, with an infinite number of roof material combinations and challenges that pop up right in the middle of the cut.  With today’s engineering capabilities and ever-changing building construction technology, residential pitched roofs are starting to look a lot different than those that we were venting even five years ago.  I’d like to talk about some new and old roofs, how they can trick vertical ventilation crews, and how we can avoid some of the tricks before they cause unexpected problems.

Link to Fire Engineering:

http://www.fireengineering.com