ATF Releases Firefighter Training Videos

May 20, 2014

Tuesday, May 13, 2014 (Source: Firefighter Close Calls, The Secret List) An excellent three part video series (below) was prepared by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive's Fire Research Laboratory with the Support of Montgomery County, Maryland Fire and Rescue Service an effort 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 featuring 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 certainly have value to the fire service.

ATF Certified Fire Investigators and the ATF National Response Team is 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.

Thanks to the "firefighters" at ATF for their support and outstanding "behind the scenes" work they do for us-such as the following videos:

Part 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. [youtube]http://youtu.be/82OJqcftNVg[/youtube]

Part 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. [youtube]http://youtu.be/ISJuQfcj62A[/youtube]

Part 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 that the fire will always grow with additional ventilation until water is applied to the 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.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/fIjOGCAZfgk[/youtube]

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