ATF Releases Firefighter Training Videos

May 19, 2014

Source: FirefighterCloseCalls/The Secret List

A three part video series was prepared by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive's Fire Research Laboratory with the Support of Montgomery County (MD) Fire and Rescue Service in order to share with the fire service several relevant conclusions from recent full-scale fire tests and scene investigations.
 
Many of the fire scenes that ATF investigates feature teaching points and common themes relevant to the duties of the fire service. These findings are consistent with the firefighting tactical research conducted by NIST and UL. These videos are targeted directly to firefighters and feature terminology, videos, photos, and audio from actual fire scenes and full-scale fire testing. The ATF Fire Research Laboratory uses many of these videos to teach both ATF investigators as well as state and local investigators, however they also have value for the fire service.
 
ATF Certified Fire Investigators and the ATF National Response Team are the sole federal resource tasked with assisting state and local investigators with determining fire origin and cause. Many firefighter line-of-duty death cases are investigated by the ATF National Response Team, which consists of Certified Fire Investigators, Senior Special Agents, Fire Protection Engineers, Electrical Engineers, and forensic chemists.

Video 1: Reviews in detail the line-of-duty death of Baltimore County Firefighter Mark Falkenhan. Mark's widow, Gladys Falkenhan, introduces the video, which includes a detailed analysis utilizing computer fire modeling and discusses the effects buoyancy driven ventilation flow paths.  http://youtu.be/82OJqcftNVg
 
Video 2: Reviews several additional firefighter line-of-duty death and injury cases where firefighters were operating in uni-directional ventilation flow paths. Each case is examined to illustrate how to identify a uni-directional flow path, and several tactical considerations are also discussed. http://youtu.be/ISJuQfcj62A
 
Video 3: Examines the effects of ventilation and suppression tactics on ventilation-limited fires. The vast majority of fires encountered by firefighters are ventilation-limited, meaning that by definition the fire will always grow with additional ventilation until water is applied to absorb the energy being released. Several full-scale fire test videos are shown to illustrate all topics in the video, which concludes with a live table-top fire model. http://youtu.be/fIjOGCAZfgk