Our friends over at TheBravestOnline.com have a posted another excellent video. The video is of a seven alarm apartment fire outside of Houston. Apparently, they were faced with significant access issues from blocked cars. You’ll notice the excellent use of tow trucks early on in the event to rectify the situation. Those wreckers were hookin’ and draggin’! Good call by the IC! He knew he was going to have a large number of apparatus on scene, and needed the room.
It’s nice to see the extensive use of ladders to the second floor. The importance of secondary means of egress should never be overlooked.
We need to remember: big building + big fire = big water!
We post these videos as a learning tool, and look forward to reading your thoughts and comments. –Jimm-
Holy rescue effort!!! RECEO plays in vary well here. From the looks of the sign for this joint in the video it may be one of those weekly or monthly rental palces. So you never really know if all or which units are occupied. I bet those wreaker drivers had a blast with this one!!! You gotta love those guys.
I don’t think AAA will cover that expense!! Anyway, another good video from The Bravest. Something that doesn’t get thought about too much is the use of an elevated stream (and for that reason). If you have the ability and angle to blast a fire with 2000gpm from somewhere other than above, do it. It doesn’t really show and it’s hard to tell in the video, but instead of dragging handlines into the hotel rooms to try to put out big fire, drop that tower down to door level as close as possible and let it rip!! Up and out is better than down and in. Like I said, just because it’s an elevated stream, doesn’t mean it has to go ALL the way up.
I know i wasn’t there but wouldn’t it been a good idea to put a hole in the roof. Maybe even a trench cut. Heck of a video and good job on not gettin any body hurt. Keep up the good work guys.
Good video guys. From the looks of this fire it could have been 17 alarms and the outcome would have been the same. Common cockloft and lack of fire stops made this fire a touch nut to crack. Hopefully there were no injuries and everyone went home safe. Keep up the good work.
Well first off, thanks for the comments! I actually drove the first in apparatus. I simply tossed the camera up front with us.
The building was our local “crack hotel” It was FULLY occupied the time of the fire! Nearly 80% of the occupants lived in the building. The PD notifed us of the fire. Knowing the construction of the building it hit 2-11 right away. The PD told the wreckers to move all the cars while they evacuated the entire building for us!
As far as ventilation. Yes, it was done, in fact, several times. The initial vertical hole was cut early on. This hole was the hole seen with all the fire blowing out of it. The fire appeared to have started between the floors. Going through two layers of stucko was not easty. The fire then travled up the pillars and jumped into the attic space! One trench cut was not sucesffully completed and the fire moved around it. The second however, which can not be seen in the video or pics, SAVED THE REST OF THE BUILDING.
It was REMARKABLE that no one was injured! We were blessed! If you are looking for some GREAT training video, you need to check out the raw footage. I shot everything with my professional Canon GL2, and the DVD version is GREAT!
Thanks again for your support and comments! Your site is AWESOME!
I would like to know, at the start of the clip, who was the knuckle head in the right seat responding with his face piece on????
Why go through the trouble of cutting a hole in the roof if you’re going to have an aerial master stream shoot water into it (narrow fog pattern at that)…and if you changed over to defense with the aerial master stream, why did I still see people walking into or in front of that hotel room on the 2nd floor?
who allowed the white helmets to fight fire.
I second the fact that Aerial ops and interior firefighting dont mix. Its a wonder nobody got burned up here. Heat holes are not for water to be poured into with guys inside!!!!