High Rise Fire Fighting—Effective Use of Positive Pressure Ventilation

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) engineers recently released a two-disk DVD set that demonstrates how Positive Pressure Ventilation (PPV), a technique in which powerful fans force smoke and heat from corridors and stairwells, can increase the effectiveness of firefighters and survivability of occupants in high rise structures.

The DVD collection of PPV videos, reports and a narrated slide presentation are the result of more than six years of NIST PPV experiments and computer simulations. A user-friendly graphic menu allows simple access to all the videos of the high-rise experiments. Users can select single and multi-camera views of events in the rooms of the different apartments. The multimedia presentations as well as the extensive discussion of appropriate PPV techniques for different high-rise building fires makes the DVD set a useful tool for firefighter training.

NIST's PPV work has been supported by the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate and the United States Fire Administration, as well as fire departments across the country. The DVD set, titled "Positive Pressure Ventilation Research: Videos & Reports" by Stephen Kerber and Daniel Madrzykowski, is free. To receive a copy, send a request with a name and mailing address via e-mail to Yalasha Redd at yalasha.redd [at] nist.gov (yalasha[dot]redd[at]nist[dot]gov) or Steve Kerber at skerber [at] nist.gov (skerber[at]nist[dot]gov).