HOTTER AND FASTER
Every year United States firefighters die while operating inside structures despite a marked decrease in structure fires across the country. Why have these numbers remained high, if not, as some researchers have suggested, increased? Reports and analysis conducted by Underwriters Laboratories and The National Fire Protection Association promote the idea that the behavior of fire is changing and it is doing so at such a rapid pace that many firefighters and the public are unaware of the dangers inside of burning buildings.
For firefighters and the public they serve, life or death can be determined in a matter of minutes on the fire ground. Consequently, both firefighters and the public must gain an education on the nature and force of fire and increase their understanding of how fires have become more dangerous in recent years.
The scientific research demonstrates that fires are growing faster and hotter due to synthetic furnishing, larger homes, open floor plans, and changes in construction materials. Research proposes that fire is not simply an uncontrolled chemical reaction that has the same predictable behavior over time and in all circumstances and firefighting is not simply fighting an uncontrolled chemical reaction. Instead, fire and firefighting are constantly changing over time.
Although fire is most widely known as a physical phenomenon, many do not consider that fire can be socially constructed. That is, people and their actions are constantly changing the intensity and deadliness of fire. Therefore human influences on fire must be included in scientific definitions in order to attain a more accurate and complete understanding of fire phenomena.
You are not fighting your grandfather’s fire anymore
This fire service adage refers to the view from many professionals that the nature of fire behavior has changed over the past 30 years in major ways. Firefighters can no longer rely on past practices and the traditional tactics of previous generations of firefighters to inform their knowledge of fire behavior and decision-making on the fire-ground.
The importance of understanding the behavior of fire is vital to the life safety of firefighters and the public. “Personal and public safety is enhanced by familiarity with the science of how fires start, grow, and are controlled….the evolution of this understanding has curtailed the impact of unwanted fire on a societal scale. According to industry experts, both firefighters’ and the public’s application of this knowledge today can reduce the threat to our own lives and possessions.
Fire is defined in a number of different ways depending on the source that is referenced. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) explains fire is a rapid oxidation process — a chemical reaction that gives off light and heat of varying intensities. In textbooks, fire is often explained as a tetrahedron — a geometric representation of the elements needed for a fire to exist: fuel, oxygen, heat, and an uninhibited chemical reaction. Authors Richard Gann and Raymond Friedman describe fire in their book, Principles of Fire Behavior and Combustion: “Fire is a chemical process that behaves according to the laws of physics. It follows that understanding the pertinent chemical and physical principles provides the basis for preventing and controlling fire.”
In the book Fundamentals of Fire Phenomena by James Quintiere, the author writes that fire phenomena includes everything about the scientific principles behind fire behavior. In order to understand fire, scientists have combined the principles of chemistry, physics, heat and mass transfer, and fluid dynamics. While these definitions from experts give diverse explanations of fire, none of them consider nor mention the influence of mankind’s action on fires and as a result, are lacking a complete description of fire.
This is an overlooked aspect of fire in that its nature can change depending on people’s actions. As a result, it is vitally important that firefighters, the public, and scientists always factor in and include human actions when attempting to predict the intensity and force of fire in any given situation. This change in approach to studying fire can save lives as a result of a more comprehensive understanding of fire.
