Report on Residential Fireground Field Experiments

Published

April 27, 2010

Author(s)

Jason D. Averill, Lori Moore-Merrell, Adam M. Barowy, Robert Santos, Richard D. Peacock, Kathy Notarianni, Doug Wissoker

Abstract

Over the past three decades, fire department response has expanded from fire prevention and fire suppression to include multiple other community services such as emergency medical services, hazardous materials response, and special rescue. Today, service demands and public expectations placed upon local fire departments continue to rise as threats to communities from both natural and man-made disasters including terrorism reach new highs. A Multi-Phase Study on firefighter safety and the deployment of resources is being conducted with funding provided through DHS/FEMA s Grant Program Directorate for FY 2006 Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program - Fire Prevention and Safety Grants. The multiple stages of the larger study include development of a conceptual model for community risk assessment and deployment of resources, implementation of a generalizable department incident survey, and delivery of a software tool to quantify the effects of deployment decisions on resultant firefighter and civilian injuries and property losses. This report focuses on the residential fire ground experiments. For these experiments, a 2,000 sf , two-story residential structure was designed and built at Montgomery County Public Safety Training Academy in Rockville MD. Fire crews from Montgomery County, MD and Fairfax Co. VA were deployed in response to live burns within this facility. In addition to varying the arrival times of the first and subsequent fire apparatus, crew size was varied from two to fiveperson staffing. Each deployment performed a series of twenty-two timed tasks, while the thermal and toxic environment inside the structure was measured. Results presented in this report quantify the effectiveness of crew size, first-due engine arrival time, and apparatus arrival stagger on the duration and time to completion of key fire ground tasks.

Citation

Technical Note (NIST TN) - 1661

Report Number

1661

NIST Pub Series

Technical Note (NIST TN)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

fire service deployment, fire safety, firefighter safety, fire experiments, residential fires

Citation

Averill, J. , Moore-Merrell, L. , Barowy, A. , Santos, R. , Peacock, R. , Notarianni, K. and Wissoker, D. (2010), Report on Residential Fireground Field Experiments, Technical Note (NIST TN), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=904607 (Accessed December 10, 2024)