The Middlefield Incident | After Action Review | June 3, 2024 | Defensive Fire Operations
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- The Middlefield Incident at 2700 Middlefield Rd.
June 3, 2024
After Action Review
Defensive Fire Operations
The Purpose and Intent:
Through the course of a facilitated discussion between key stakeholders, the purpose of this review is to identify significant successes and challenges during the fire response and provide recommendations as appropriate. Successes, challenges, and recommendations may be in planning, operations, administration, or management, which could be addressed at the agency or county level to improve future incident response. In accordance with standard AAR principles, individual names have not been credited to specific comments. Agency affiliation has been included to the extent needed to give constructive context to the discussion points.
Report made by BC Matt Menard, Menlo Park Fire
Drone footage by Tom Owen
Photos by Kyle Williams
Video Produced by FF charles Washington, Menlo Park Fire
Videographer by Gabe Ogilvie, Made It Media
What a fine production! I'm proud to say that I got to spend my whole career at Menlo Park Fire - and that I get to see some of the people who were just coming on board as I was wrapping up that career. Way to go in taking care of this fire and in producing this exemplary After-Action-Report!
This needs to be used on a National stage as a training tool for all metropolitan departments. Just the coordination from outside agencies and the assignments to different chiefs is beyond magnificent. To limit the fire to structure B only is fantastic. It appears as none of these chiefs were familiar with structure fires as large as this but there combine experience and years of service and knowledge is what saved this from being even worse then it could have been. The initiatives of these chiefs and captains is beyond extraordinary.
On everything NOT to do at a fire!
Fire chiefs: get your elected officials to pass ordinances against large stick structures. Don’t approve plans with such limited fire access like the RR tracks on 2 sides. IFC code is your friend.
👍🏻🚒
Thank you guys for creating this AAR and making it public!
Bravo Zulu. Nice AAR production also.
Liked, subscribed and shared your video and your channel
Best AAR I've ever seen!
You mean the best self-serving BS report you have ever seen.
What does it mean by '8 Alarm' fire? Best regards from Australia.
An alarm in America is essentially an assignment. A confirmed structure fire is a “1 alarm” and consists of the initial assigned units.
If command calls for a “second alarm”, they are asking for another group of units (typically the same size as the previous) to the scene.
In effect, as described by @baronvonkrug6994 , An Alarm is just a request for a set amount of units, The first alarm in this case called for 3x Engines, 1x Truck, and 1x Battalion (command/crew vehicle), The more alarms attached to a call, the more groups of units / companies show up, So an Eight alarm fire might have roughly 200 - 400+ Firefighters on scene.
(The largest fire/alarm count thus far was Brooklyn New York, August 26th, 1995, St. George Hotel complex, at 16-alarm with 700+ firefighters operating over 100 pieces of equipment)
You would need to either be nuts or very desperate to agree live in a massive modern built building like that. What ever happened to building multi-family mid-rise buildings out of block and concrete and non-combustible materials? It blows my mind that modern fire codes and modern building codes have digressed to a point where this kind of combustible construction is allowed for mid-rise residential buildings over 2 -3 stories.
What alarm fire was this?
Never mind
Are we not seeing a trend of this kind of construction and under construction burning down??? First Charlotte NC., Jacksonville FL. Aurora CO. Now you guys??? Same Owner? contractor? Insurance company? Very strange.
I give up! Tuned out after bout 20 min.
I'm out
3:10 This is why this fire got out of control. Notice that NO WATER is getting on the Visible Burning Material!!! It is only being applied to adjacent areas. You can NOT protect adjacent areas from an intense fire. Combustion of that magnitude doesn't care about your heat and wind driven water application. You have to STOP THE THREAT! Ten seconds of water for protection is all you need between a Thirty second application on the burning material.
The radiant heat from those flames is igniting massive amounts of new material every second and evaporating any water being applied for protection. This area definitely needs new firefighting leadership. What you saw right here was, "Let's look busy while we allow the fire to burn and spread!!!"
7:00 All that water should have been directed into those flames and onto the burning material starting with the perimeter and then working their way into the center. Listen to the way they pat each other on the back while you watch the building burn.
8:00 How do you think that fire was going to stop with a water application like that? That's like putting out a bedroom fire by squirting water into your garage.
8:10 Once it gets to this point, you might as well just focus on the adjacent buildings because you couldn't apply enough water to stop this.
8:23 Yes but, where is the plan for FIREFIGHTING! You know, putting water on the burning material.
10:10 That water is accomplishing absolutely nothing! The energy of those flames is literally, blowing the water away.
10:25 Where do YOU think that water should be going?
12:20 This is a complete and total waste of resources and especially WATER! That water would have better served this situation by applying it directly to the burning material. Those structures weren't even getting warm at this point let alone threatened in any way. What you see here is utterly ridiculous. Don't listen to the self-serving commentary, all you need to do is focus on the results of their performance.
Here is what you do at every fire you go to. This is your NUMBER ONE PRIORITY!!! "Find what's burning and stop it from burning!" That sounds pretty simple but try to find it in these videos on RUclips and FB. It is the LAST thing they do after they have performed every meaningless tactic they can think of.
This is the NORM, not the exception!
JB everyone knows the proper method for dealing with structure fires. Do you know why master streams are sent over the fire building. It is to cool the air and suck heat from the fire. Removal of heat will slow the fire spread. Wind driven fire open structure with no fire separations. Now for the final presumption You are sitting in New England the fire was in California. So the reality is you have no clue as to the totality of conditions on the fire ground. Stop trying to argue your way out of this assessment out of this because; as you are aware the fire service is well trained and knows far more than you regarding this incident. The reason is very simple they unlike yourself were actually there. You have stated this standard go to for your fire suppression tactics on numerous fire videos. The manner in which you refer to what to do on the fire ground shows you have no clue about how to conduct a coordinated fire attack where multiple things are happening simultaneously (at the same4 time) engines laying hose lines trucks setting up for defensive fire attack Medics and rescue apparatus operating in rescue mode while conducting primary and secondary searches. Life & Limb 1st: Property 2nd controlling the fire spread by robbing the fire of heat by cooling the air and the structures with water from hoses. Not to mention wet wood won't burn. Example: Myra Canyon on the old KVR line in the Okanagan most of the trestles were saved because the fire boss ordered the dozens of water drops on the trestles and the scrap wood below the trestles.