FIRE FIGHTING

Importance of Fire Fighting Tactics and Forensic Awareness in Fire Scene Evidence Presentation

Importance of Fire Fighting Tactics and Forensic Awareness in Fire Scene Evidence Presentation

Introduction What is Fire fighting?

Fire fighting is a process of extinguishing fires and is considered to be a highly technical skill that require Expertise who have gone through comprehensive training programs on general fire techniques. It is a short term process of fixing problems caused by fire rather than studying the factors that resulted in fire (www.businessdictionary.com)

Fire Fighting Tactics

Fire fighting tactics are the methods for firefighting that can be adapted by individuals in order to achieve the goals of the incident commander. The tactical functions that form the operation are: rescuing of endangered lives, protecting exposures, confining the fire to a limited area, Extinguishing the fire by using appropriate techniques, Ventilating the affected area to save the lives of people and to provide a much safer working environment for firefighters overhauling of the area to completely extinguish the fire and investigate the point of origin, conducting rescue operations to limit damage to the affected area and its contents.(Carter 2001,p2)

Methods to put out fire Fire requires three elements for burning including

Heat Heat is needed to increase the temperature to the ignition point of a material.Major sources of heat are stoves, sparks and matches

Fuel The fuel for fire generation can be in solid, liquid or gaseous for and depending on the type and quantity of fuel the method of extinguishing fire is determined

Oxygen

Oxygen is an essential element for a burning fire and most fires burn vigorously in any atmosphere containing minimum 20% oxygen (FEMA 2011,p.4) Thus removing any part of the fire triangle will put the fire off. Use of water, Foams including CAFS, dry agents and chemical additives and Fire extinguishers are some of techniques to set off fire .

Discussion Decision Making The operations of firefighting are characterized by Naturalistic decision making which is based on eight factors I'll structured Problems-

The incident commander have information regarding the real problems on arriving at the fire sight Uncertain dynamic environments.The information obtained

is insufficient, vague or altering

Time stress.

Obviously throughout the fire fighting operations there is a great time stress on the fire fighters

Shifting, Ill-Defined or competing goals

There will be always a competition between either saving the building or saving the firefighters

High Stakes

The decision is critical for life and death at the time of fire fighting

Multiple Players

The decisions are not only made by the Incident Commander , but many other members are involved in decision making

Organizational standards and goals.

An organizations norms and goals must be balanced with the personal choice by the decision maker .

Action or Feed Back loops

The assessments occur in the form of multiple event feedback oops(Klein,Gary1993 p7).According to the Swedish incident commander the most hard decision to make is prioritizing at the time when resources accessible are not as much of as required, the choice between exterior and interior attack, placement

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