A defining moment in your career is the point that you feel you have enough experience and training to do your job well but you don’t settle for that. A characteristic of a good tradesman is the humility to realize how much more he needs to master and to understand it is going to take the entire remainder of his career to accomplish it. – Irons and Ladders
I don’t post just photos very often but these are some of the more incredible pictures that I have seen in a while. All the photos were taken by Tom Carmody. These are Pawtucket firefighters shortly after venting the roof and returning to the ladder, this happened on their way back. All the firefighters ended up with minor injuries.
Tom has a large amount of photos from this fire, these are only a few of them. Please visit his site to see the whole fire.
Here is a link to Tom Camodys webpage
This came together very quickly and is not very far out. Sign up today! We will be presenting a half day class on Forcible Entry Door Size Up. The other half of the day will be a Ventilation class presented by Brian Brush who runs Colorado Firefighter and contributes regularly to Fire Service Warrior. 100% of the money from this class will be donated to the family of Sparky Truax, a South Metro Firefighter who died only days before Christmas. Help us take care of his family like you would want your own taken care of. This is just a small part of the Brotherhood.
This will be held at South Metro Fires Training Center. February 1st, from 9 till 5. Register and information at the following links
Register here: The 2164 Foundation
Facebook Event Information here : Sparky Truax Family Fundraiser
Need a new years resolution. Here it is, prove to yourself and others how effective Thru-The-Lock is on storefront doors. It is hard to argue with this video. Time to quit ignoring that Rex or K-tool everyday as you check the trucks and start dedicating yourself to completely understanding it uses.
This is a great one to show the crew and talk about some tactics. The rapidly growing fire conditions in this video are a great reminder to us all why that first water is so important. No time for complacency on this one, we need a first line that is quickly flaked and charged, we need guys that can mask up quickly and then make an aggressive push through the apartment. It also shows the importance of aggressive search crews making a quick pass through the floor above, it could be what makes or breaks someones chances in those rooms.
This seems to be one of those fires that could quickly have people worrying about everything but that first hose line, look how much fire is knocked down in a matter of a few seconds of the first line flowing.
“The Fire Goes As The First Line Goes”
A. Fredericks
Here is a look of the video that came out of Brooklyn yesterday. We are a little late putting it up, but better late than never. You can look at almost every fire service site out there right now to get more information.
More coverage found at Statter911
Finally got around to editing about 3 hours of forcible entry video we have into short training sessions. We will start off with Thru-The-Lock tactics on mortise locks using the Rex Tool. Hope it is useful.
Now here is a bang up job and some great first due footage. You can nay-say all you want on this fire but to me this looks like an extremely professional and aggressive job done by these companies. Lines are flaked and put into service very quickly, door is forced and lines are advanced into the two most threatened areas of the home. Ground ladders are put into place on multiple sides of the home. Crew performs VES on the top floor. Truck goes to the roof and opens up the attic of a balloon frame that likely has fire in it. It is clear that everyone here knows their job and has a task, there is no one trying to figure out what comes next, or hanging back a little bit hesitating. Tactics are being done Proactively ahead of the need, not reactively because things are going downhill. Well done guys, great example to all.
They are reporting one Worcester firefighter was killed this morning in a triple decker fire. They had twelve people inside the building this morning when they arrived. A wall collapsed and pinned firefighters who had to be rescued. Be sure to follow this one has more information comes out.
This is a problem, a big problem. We have been spreading the word for quite a while now, about the downfalls of the different types of Halligans. The picture above happened yesterday, adding more credibility to the argument. This is not the first one on my FD that has broken, but it is the first one I have been around. These imitation tools breaking is not that rare of an event. My email has been filling up with guys from all over the country sending me pictures and stories regarding these tools breaking in similar fashions.
Here was the situation, the squad guys from my firehouse responded to an alarm and found that they needed to force entry into a house to access the person inside. They decided the need to get in did not require conventional forcible entry right away, so they went with the Rex Tool and did a great job going through-the-lock on both a key in the knob and a typical deadbolt. Their technique was great and was low impact enough that both locks were manipulated, but were still in working condition. This is a common practice for us to gain entry on medical or service call type situation on houses or apartments, most of the time we can lock everything back up (along with the homeowners keys still working) and you can barely tell we were inside.
The problem came after both locks had been tripped, the door still had resistance. After recognizing that the door had a secondary device they moved to conventional Irons work and discovered that they had a 2×4 drop bar with fairly weak steel mounts on the backside of the inward swinging door. Not a big deal for them to overcome, but one of the variables that you don’t find on most single family homes. As they drove the tool in trying to set the forks to the proper depth, one of the axe blows broke the entire adze end of the tool off. They now had a little more challenging situation, they were still going to get the job done with what they had, this required them to strike the now exposed shaft of the tool to drive the bar rest of the way in. That takes a lot more trust of your striking guy when he’s swinging at a 1 inch piece of steel rod that you are holding! They overcame and forced the door with little difficulty after that. Well done fellas.
Where the real problem lies is that a hand tool, made for the fire service, could be constructed and accepted at this level of quality. These bars are made of three different pieces, attached with a pin on each end to hold the working heads on or in the picture above circular welds all the way around the bar. It is a widespread problem across the country that these types of Halligans are put on front line rigs. What is the worst part? Its not for financial reasons, it usually a lack of attention to detail when ordering tools. You can buy a high quality bar that is made out of ONE PIECE FORGED STEEL for basically the same price as these imitations. This is the meat and potatoes of our tool compliments, they should be made to work, work hard, and work with a very small likelihood of failure. They are pry bars!!! Who designs a pry bar that has the working end made out of separate pieces? The exact spot on the tool that has hundreds of pounds of leverage being applied to it!! It shouldn’t take a mechanical engineer to figure that one out.
The fire service is full of gimmicks, go to any fire equipment related web sites and you will see that a good portion of the tools and equipment that are marketed to us these days are only made to make money. Trust me, they would not continue to make all of these gimmicks if they were not being purchased by a large majority of us across the nation. You have to evaluate every tool and ask yourself “Is it a gimmick or not”? Most hand tools that come with 14 features and can turn off gas, turn on O2 bottles, pull a nail, cut drywall, then open sheet metal like a can opener, all while being a rope anchor should raise some red flags to us. I am not for one-second trying to say there has not been some amazing developments in our hand tools over the years, I am saying that the tools that have been around before all the gimmicks are still doing the job better than any multi-tool. Axes, Halligans, Hooks, Hose, Rope and Wooden Chocks, it is hard to put something up against those time tested tools.
I use Pro-Bar Halligans plain and simple. Are they the only good bar out there? I highly doubt it, in fact I know of a couple others that I would love to test out and some guys would vouch for 100% (Aazel Tool Co. is one of the good Halligans in particular that I think would compete). That’s not what my experience has been with, so I will not speak to those. 30 inchPro Bars have superior construction, have a great amount of thought into the thicknesses, curves and designs of its working ends and have been proven on the fire ground for many years. I have already wrote an entire article on the differences of the Halligans found on the market. Please take a look at it here, it gives you all the information you need to compare the 3 Piece Bars v.s One Piece Pro Bars. Here is the article Halligan Bars, They Are Not The Same
We have made the change in my FD and are now purchasing 30″ Pro Bar Halligans, it is encouraging progress and they have successfully been phasing out these other bars. Our work does not end there, we have to spread the knowledge and information about the differences in these tools, its the only way to make an impact. The proper information has to reach enough people on your own departments to create awareness on this topic. I do not represent Pro Bar or Fire Hooks Unlimited in any way, I will not make any money off of this next part, nor am I trying to pull some type of stunt to get more web traffic to our site. I am simply asking you, whoever is reading this today, to pass this on and let others see the differences in these tools. Last night when I posted that picture it went to over 5000 people in a matter of an hour or two. That didn’t happen because of my post, that happened because many of you thought it was worth talking about. It is the only way we will ever make a difference with what we will accept as properly made tools. Most of the comments reflected on how widespread this problem is. I am asking those guys out there that read this website and have very large blogs, websites, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc, to please give me a hand on this one. You are the ones that can make a difference, not me on this small website in my own little corner of the Fire Service world. So if you believe in the message of this post, and want to help spread this information please share it with others.
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