Firefighter here. This video was a test in my mind to see how researched and accurate your teams videos are... And wow.. Absolutely insane detail down to the initial radio report from the first arriving officer, water tender shuttling operations, offensive/defensive operations, and of course the difference between and fire engine and truck (thank you). Obviously there are more details and layers to the logistics and response of the 911 system like what different engine/truck crews can be assigned on arrival and other specialty apparatus (hazmat, rescue engines, dive teams, etc...). However for a 23 minute video this is the perfect amount of information density to cover most topics of firefighting in good detail. Really happy you focused on prevention as thats a huge part of the job most don't consider. Excellent job, videos like these are why I've been subscribed forever.
I work on installing, repairing, and inspecting fire alarms, and this video helps me better understand what happens when trucks roll, and what does and play into responses. It'd be cool to see something on fire marshal inspections, the differences between different areas, building ages, and how older buildings are pulled into newer compliance. there's a lot of nuance to it.
My only comment though (being almost 4 min in) is technically the whole “fire proof” thing as that’s essentially not a thing. The highrise building being Type I construction with the steel frame and I beams, and Type II being non combustible. There’s 5 construction types with different ratings based on fire prevention equipment
I'm a volunteer firefighter with my local city up in Canada and my goodness was this video so good. I didn't realize how much research Wendover puts into these, but I was impressed with how accurate the details are. The part talking about the ICS (Incident Response System) was really good, I know the word bureaucracy has a lot of negative connotations but it's crucial for how firefighters can have such a fast response time and efficiently fight fires. At least with my department it was one of the first things they taught us, right after how to put out bunker gear on 😂. Also for those who found this video interesting and would like to help their community, I strongly urge you to consider volunteering with your local fire department. Over 65% of firefighters in the US are volunteers, and a lot of local departments are massively understaffed. I recommend seeing if you are legible to joining your local department and seeing if that's right for you 🚒. Great video again Wendover, and I can't wait for the next one
Thank you.. Department's across the country who rely upon volunteers are struggling to get them, leaving their stations under manned, especially in rural areas. The department in my hometown serves a population of only about 700, no buildings over 3 stories, but does deal with agricultural issues (including methane gas incidents, barn fires, etc).. I'd say that their members are all either over 60 or under 40 with not much in between. People are no longer working on their family farms (because there aren't any), so can't just leave the tractor in the field and respond to the firehouse or directly ro the scene
My home and whole area I live in is covered by a small volunteer fire department. They're awesome folks and kept my neighbors brush fire that got out of hand from coming my way. Those dudes brought a bulldozer from one of the volunteers, used it to cut lines and pumped a TON of water from my pond to help put it out. Those guys literally saved my property last year. They're phenomenal and I've actually been working with one of them to get ready (I'm a little out of shape) so I can see about joining them, so maybe I can assist in similar things for other folks in my community. It really opened my eyes to our needs in the rural unincorporated community I live in. Thank you to all firefighters but ESPECIALLY the volunteers. Lots of us would be on our own without them (I may have been okay, given my pond and pumps and such I have to stave things off during our longer response times, but I'm sure glad I wasn't on my own for that situation) PS the neighbors are fine, theyre still hanging out and I worry every time they start a fire now 😂 I drive over and check every time I see smoke and I'm home. They're not known as the most responsible folks in the area, which is saying somethin, cause I live here too! 😂
@@jennifertarin4707our VFD is much the same in age demographic which is why I'd like to join them, we gotta have folks so those guys can call it a day and "retire" so to speak when they're ready. Couple of em never will, but they're awesome folks and will always have knowledge and useful information to share, even if not super physically capable (which currently all of our guys but one are VERY capable)
Man have y'all considered just paying enough taxes so that these critical people can actually be paid to be professionally trained, equipped, and ready 24/7? Seems like a worthwhile investment
@@tarfeef101Volunteer firefighters are usually very well trained. It’s also very common worldwide to have volunteer firefighters. In France the number is 80% volunteer, and 94-99% in Germany, Austria, and Portugal. North America is not atypical in this regard, like it may be with other things
As an ER doctor, I wanted to say how wonderfully in depth and interesting this video was. Really great job. Much of what you talk about is known as a mass casualty incident (MCI). Hospitals, police departments, and fire stations train and prepare for such events multiple times per year. You never know if there will be a deadly gas, a bomb, mass shooting, fire, or etc. Having that scalability with an incident commander, command chief, designated hot zone, and so on is extremely important in order to have fire fighters, police officers, paramedics, and other medical personnel ready for anything.
Would you say the initial triage would the most important in those MCI situation, provided the scene is stable and relatively safe? I presume the initial triage of critical patients would result in the increase survival rate and optimised resource usage
At least looking at definitions here in Germany, depending where you are and what ressources are available, people might be surprised, at what point any incident may turn into a MCI. Response times here, at least when it comes to denser populated areas are defined by regulations, but when you get into smaller villages, it may well a a volunteer department responding first. And that is likely what you find across most of Europe, and as I understand, not that different in the US, although rural in the US may be a completely different dimension from what we have here. the most rural spot in Germany might still qualify as a suburb in Montana. Those people volunteering and ready to leave their work, their homes etc. when needed at any time cannot be appreciated enough. and those departments have recruiting issues, as sadly employers don´t like the inconvenience of an employee having to leave all of a sudden. But back to the topic. depending on resources, even within denser populated areas, anything involving more than 2 injured victims may qualify as an MCI already. Here in Germany there is one specialty though. While the US sends out EMTs to as good as possible stabilize a patient, grab the patient and run for the next ER at a hospital, in Germany we send out EMTs as well as a specially trained Emergency doctor. Usually an ER doctor with some additional training to go out, or depending where, even to drive to the scene with full signals. (They try to avoid that these days and have an EMT, who usually is a firefigther, as a driver available. But out in the village this doctor may operate out of his office, not a hospitals ER) And in larger cities, for cases of realy up scale MCIs, they even have ambulances built based on a bus, some of them can to a degree even serve as mobile ICUs. Thankfully those must be the least used vehicles in our fire departments fleets. I think they are most times used in either emergency drills, or to evacuate senior residences and hospitals, when another excavator finds a not exploded WW 2 bomb, requiring a certain size evacuation zone before the ordnance disposal service even starts to work.
I’m just a pharmacist so my roles in these MCI isn’t utilized as much as it could be (imo). I was an EMT for only a few months but FF/P earned so much respect. Same now with y’all physicians. Thank you all.
It's truly amazing to see the coordinated efforts and bravery of firefighters in action. They put their lives on the line to protect others. Respect to all the firefighters out there
Also, to all the people upvoting it, yeah sure. It's dangerous and it's good to have brave people to protect others, but where I live in the US the firefighter culture is super toxic. The Messiah complexes go crazy. When I was an EMT the firefighters were always assholes to us. Also the frat culture, the hazing, etc. They need some serious cultural changes. (Of course this is going to vary significantly by department, and by the individual, this has just been my experience.)
As a Locksmith who routinely works on Fire doors, my biggest advise to any person is to always, always sleep with your bedroom door closed. It can be inconvenient but the difference it makes to protect your life from fire (specifically smoke inhalation) is profound. Even if your bedroom door is not fire-rated, and it likely isn't, it extends the time you have by 4-5 minutes, critical time you will need to escape.
Keeping the exits clear is another big one. I had a fire in my dorms at college where the fire escape door was blocked by a ladder. I was the first one out and managed to clear it, but still. It needs to be kept clear at all times.
@@phillyphakename1255 See also all the whiners at apartment building and college dorms who complain that they can't store their bikes underneath the stairwell...
I've been a firefighter and officer for over a decade, and I could not agree with this more. I've been in properties that have been thoroughly smoke damaged and widely fire damaged, but a closed door has kept cupboards clean. It's astonishing, and it doesn't have to be a fire door. Unless the fire is directly impacting the door, you'll get 30mins of safety.
@@phillyphakename1255 Meanwhile my university hostel was quite strict in enforcing that each resident leave not more than 1 pair of footwear at their rooms' entrance, to minimize the no. of trip hazards along the corridors in a fire evacuation
Ah, Building Code. The often ignored but ever important aspect of building construction. I work in architecture and I can't tell you how many of my client and contractors have tried to "work around" building code, especially Ch 10 and Ch 11 (life safety and ADA accessibility).
Im a Fite alarm field technician for the IBEW and it's ridiculous how often I have to argue with AHJ'S about why I won't approve something that completely disregards NFPA-72. Breaking code often leads to nothing but when it comes to fire alarm and fire suppression systems that 1 out of 1000 times it matters people die.
I've seen so many businesses with obvious code violations that no one knows about or is willing to address. Sometimes, I think it's just that people don't know about fire code or who is responsible for it, but other times it's obvious they just do not care about it. For example, I've seen many businesses prop doors open which are supposed to be closed to provide compartmentalization in fires, but it's "convenient" to prop them open, so they won't close them.
I do facilities maintenance and it’s infuriating how often other dept’s try to ignore fire code when they do upgrades and installs. I go to jail if someone dies, so we shall not be fucking around with the fire code.
I"m an architect watching this at lunch time. I was just looking at Ch 7 minutes ago. Thank you for shining a light on the importance of the building code and what we do to prevent fires from becoming big. I learned a lot about fire fighting too. Great video.
My dad was a fireman for 20 years. The biggest fire he ever fought was when a local apartment building went up because someone caught a dishrag on fire in the kitchen, put it in the trash, and then put the burning trash can in the open air hall. No one was killed, but my dad and a few others went to the hospital for smoke inhalation. Most of the apartments in that building were totally ruined.
I do fire alarm repair in many places with elderly folks and it's not uncommon for someone to burn their breakfast, have the apartment alarm go off, and open the hallway door to let it air out, setting off the whole building when the smoke makes it to the common area smoke detectors. It's a HUD requirement that HUD subsidized housing for the elderly have tenant and general building fire alarm, and someone to check on either going off since it's so common to have false alarms from things like this. That's just one of the odd edge cases that keep everyone in this field on their toes.
There was also a fire that started on the stove in 1 stall in an open-air food court in my country. When someone poured water on the stove to put out the fire, that instead spread the fire to the rest of the food court via smoke extraction ducts above the stove in both that stall & other stalls in that food court
I've always had an appreciation for how dangerous fires are. I think as a Californian seeing the impact they can have has played into the respect I have for fire. They can be sparked from the tiniest of sources, and can spread incredibly quickly into an unimaginable fire. I've always thought of fire as a "living" thing, its dynamic, constantly changing, and hostile in every sense, underestimating them can have devastating consequences.
With new houses being built rapidly, using cheap materials (chewed up wood and glue/petrol products) with the physics of a fire doubling in size every minute, it gets crazy quick.
@@TrialzGTAS Also, because of the plastic and stuff that's in everyones houses now, fires produce something like 300 times more toxic smoke than they did 50 years ago, don't quote me on the exact number though
I read a psychology report ages ago that was generally about "How do people make decisions in emergency situations." The researchers hypothesized that an expert would gather as much information as they could in the time span they deemed sufficient and then choose the best option that they had. To test their hypothesis they interviewed and watched fire captains at work in large cities. What the captains did was gather information and as soon as a plausible plan was conceived that had no obvious failure points they would proceed with that one immediately without waiting to come up with better alternative strategies. I've always thought that was interesting and backs up the addage: a good plan today is better than a great plan tomorrow.
As a volunteer fire fighter from Germany, it's really interesting to see the differences and similarities in fire fighting to the US. I can explain many of them with differences in typical buildingsize, population density and building materials, but the huge difference in fire engines/trucks is just weird to me. They are so different to what I am used to in terms of shape, equipment and tasks. I can't even imagine an American fire truck fitting in a European old city street
The only times i saw an American tanker responding to a fire in Italy were at industrial fires, where the USAF firefighters from Aviano also intervened, i still wonder how they didn't get stuck at the first curve (just kidding, honor to the firefighters who put our lives before their own)
You have to keep in mind that every single major highway and freeway in the US was made for both the weight and size of tanks, and our cars have ALWAYS been big. Firetrucks are actually quite maneuverable considering the tight downtown streets in major cities they have to drive through.
For my country (Singapore) the vehicles with ladders as long as those on fire trucks in the USA (9:53) typically don't carry much else & thus can't usually be used alone without a fire engine when fighting a fire. Probably because the ladders are folded more during transport so that the vehicles don't have to be so long. & the fire engine may not be the 1st vehicle on the scene on a fire; it may be a fire motorcycle (basically a firefighter with a compressed air foam backpack riding a Piaggio MP3) or a Red Rhino (a smaller fire engine based on a pickup truck) that responds earlier. For larger fires e.g. industrial ones we also use giant unmanned fire monitors (UFM) that can be left stationary & unattended pointing at 1 spot of a fire to cool it down. These UFMs are also usuable in train tunnels where space is more confined & thus you don't have to sweep the fire hose over a very large area to put out a fire there. For smaller fires e.g. road accidents we may instead send a Fire Medical Vehicle (FMV) that's a small fire engine & ambulance combined together on a medium truck chassis, perhaps to save manpower (with more firefighters cross-trained as paramedics now too) & the no. of vehicles that're needed to be dispatched. I remember the FMV has also accompanied the motorcade used when we hosted the Trump-Kim summit in 2018
Damn, never knew volunteer firefighters existed outside the US and Canada. Just feels like a distinctly "american" thing to compensate for underfunding. Also, yeah american streets are wider so, wider and longer vehicles can operate. I wonder what a German or British fire vehicle looks like...
@@marco_grt4460Honestly, that's a true sentiment, our vehicles of all types are just wider than those in Europe. Whoever maneuvered that thing must be damn good at their job... or they caused some property damage lol
I was lieutenant of my fire company for two years. Over watched many fires and incidents. So many moving parts and ensuring their are boots in the ground, span of control, accountability and so many other variables are there. Best job ever. You put in more research into your video essay and have a better grasp on the subject than many firefighters fresh from the academy. Hope this brings attention that we need all the manpower we can get with rapid changes in standards (Atleast in NJ)
dudes in replies trying to flex how cool they are for knowing everything about firefighting. ignore them, good on you for learning. we cant be expected to know everything about everything
I'm a paramedic and work with my firefighter and law enforcement brothers and sisters every shift. Excellent overview of some of the basics of fire attack and command and control of an incident. The thing about NIMS, is that it doesn't just apply to fire emergencies, but any kind of emergency. For example on a medical emergency with one patient, the highest licensed responder on a transporting ambulance will often be designated as the Incident Commander. In the case of a multi-casualty incident, like a bus rollover, what might happen is instead of a single IC there will be what's called Unified Command in which specific Fire, Medical, and Law branch commanders form a command post. Those three direct their respective branches, but because they're all, supposed, to be be together communication flows easier. At least that's the idea. Working from a common framework does help a lot. It takes a lot of the guesswork out since roles are pre-defined and thus we can get on with the job of mitigating a crisis.
I used to be on a board for a condo I lived at. It's completely CRAZY how often there is fires in units. We probably saw at least four or five a year in a 400 unit complex. But the fire suppression system worked, and if you weren't in the unit, or maybe a couple of units around them (or below them) with flooding damage, you never knew.
My country meanwhile saw an increasing number of fires sparked when motorized scooters were being charged by users in their own homes. 1 rider even died when his scooter caught fire when he was in an apartment lift with it. In response our gov't mandated the UL2272 safety standard for such scooters, but to the chargin of riders & scooter shops, soon after they invested to adopt this standard, our gov't then banned these scooters from pavements after several accidents caused by riders (& my country's cycling path network is only 8% the length of our pavement & road network)
I'm always happy to hear about systems that work. That Bronx Apartment Fire is really unfortunate but all information points to poor maintenance and negligent building owners. Both the Fire Fighters and the Fire Fighting System did the best it could. Respect for Fire Fighters.
If you’re interested, there’s a documentary on the Black Sunday fire. It’s a very sad story about firefighters that had to jump to their death because of illegal renovations in an apartment. The apartment made illegal modifications to the size of rooms and locations of walls. The fire got behind them, the went to find the fire escape but it wasn’t there because the apartment had built an extra wall to fit more rooms. The firefighters had no choice but either burn to death of jump and maybe live. Two of them died and 4 of them a permanently disabled. One of them died 5 years after due to his injuries. Sad story.
But the politicians didn't. It's an obvious, well-known fact that building owners like to skimp as much as possible and that we have building inspectors because _greed_ be real! Mandating inspections of older buildings with fewer safety protections would be easy. Firefighters should push for that, tbh.
This fire highlighted the major problem with buildings having internal escape corridors. Firefighters sometimes arrive to find the corridors filled with smoke, due to people leaving not closing their firedoor when they escaped. Regardless, the firefighter are then faced with up to 100 locked doors. Assuming that the doors meet the regulations, they are far from easy to break open, particularly wearing all the PE and airpacks. As one by one they are broken open and 95% found unoccupied, mostly because the occupants have already left to escape the fire, without the doors, once fire enters the corridor, it can spread unhindered. At Grenfell tower in London, smoke prevented firefighter breaking down more than 10% of the 100+ doors before the building became an inferno, Fire did not spread between any of the apartments, but incorrectly designed and installed exterior cladding allowed fire to enter through all the windows, killing around 100 people. Despite all this, the building suffered no structural damage. But due to the deaths, a decision was made for entire demolition. Their were several other failures that led to the disaster, but they would take me hours to correctly explain. The final report was more than 1,000 pages and took around 3 years to prepare. the whole thing was a national disgrace to the UK. If they had prepared a "Swiss cheese" model, the block of cheese would have been larger than the building.
It isn't just the fault of the building owners, some residents can be extremely hard to work with, and in some states extremely hard to get rid of, some will complain about maintenance, but then never let you in to fix it. Also you vote with your money, if you don't want your apartment complex to have poor maintenance, move, or be willing to pay more for better maintenance. If a complex couldn't fill rooms because maintenance was so bad, they would either decrease rent until people moved in, or at some point they would increase maintenance or sell to someone else who would increase maintenance. VOTE WITH YOUR MONEY!
@@MegaLokopo Hahahaha! Are you kidding? The housing/rental market is so rigged currently you CAN'T vote with your money unless you are wealthy. It's incredibly time consuming, expensive and difficult to move because, at least where I live, the housing shortage is outrageous and the fault of the government.
I was a firefighter in my 20s during and right after college. This is the best introductory overview of the fire service and its logistics/incident commend systems I have ever seen.
Some more information for this fire with a breakdown. The actual report for fire department came in over the Radio at 10:49, units likely received the notification on their MDT about 30 seconds to a minute and a half before the radio transmission. The fire was reported to be in 3 Eddie. At 11:01 they received a second phone call for fire in 3 Eddie, with a reported person unconscious at an unknown report. At this point 3 Engine Companies, 2 Ladders and a Battalion Chief are responding. In the same minute, Engine 48 transmitted the 10-77 (Working Fire in a High-rise Multiple dwelling.) On the 10-77 a total of 6 Engine Companies, 6 Ladder Companies, 4 Battalion Chiefs, a Deputy Chief and a whole array of Special Units. At 11:07 bronx dispatch reported a family w/ a new born sheltering in apartment 3B. Engine 42 reported heavy fire out the rear of the apartment. At 11:05 Division 7 transmitted the 10-77 2nd Alarm (Additional Alarm for more Manpower and Resources.) This brought in an additional 7 Engine Companies, 2 Ladder Companies, 4 Battalion Chiefs, and even more special units. At 11:09 Division 7 reported that they had (3) 10-45s No Codes (Fire Injuries, not given a code/tag pending ems to give it.) The Assistant Chief of Training Car 15A at this point was responding. At 11:10 they received 4 more apartments for smoke, including apartment 15E reporting they were trapped. Apartment 6F reported a frantic female, along with apartments 6C & 3M (not known to me.) Apartments 9E and 6C also reported being trapped, and 15G for smoke. Apartments 18N reported smoke, and 12G for people frantic. At 11:15 Division 7 reported (6) 10-45s No Codes (Same as before.) At an unknown time Bronx Dispatch notified Division 7 that 12C in the rear has people jumping out the window (I am unsure if 12C was jumping or someone else.) At 11:17 Battalion 26 transmited the 3rd Alarm (Likely the orders of the chief of Division 7.) The 3rd Alarm brought in an additional 4 Engines, 2 Ladders and 2 Battalions. The dispatcher then notified D7 of apartments 15H,12A,15E,19S for smoke. At 11:20 Division 7 special called two additional ladder companies, followed shortly by the transmission of the 4th Alarm again by Battalion 26. The 4th Alarm brought in an additional 4 Engines, 2 Ladders and 1 Battalion Chief. They then received apartments 12F for people trapped, 9K for smoke and 15M sheltering in place with 5 People. They then received 12G again for people frantic and 19S with 6 people in the Apt. At 11:25 Battalion 14 special called two additional truck companies. At 11:29 Division 7 requested that the Engine Companies on the 4th Alarm to come to the fire building with their CFR-D (First Aid) Equipment. They then received 9J for smoke. At 11:32 Division 7 reports a total of (10) 10-45s, with (7) of them being Red Tags (Critical.) At 11:39 Field Comm requested 4 additional trucks. At 11:40 Field Comm reported one additional 10-45 no code. Between 11:40 and 11:44 Field Comm transmitted the 5th Alarm orders of Car-15A. This brought an additional 4 Engines, 2 Ladders, 1 Battalion Chiefs and multiple Staff Chiefs. At 11:44 Field Comm reported a total of (15) 10-45s, with 11 being Code 2 (Red Tags.) At 11:58 Field Comm reported fire was on the Second and Third Floors, primary searches were in progress and that the fire was Doubtful will Hold. At 12:04 Field Comm requested an additional Ladder Company to carry out Ventilation Support Duties. Shortly followed by 2 additional Battalion Chiefs. Between 12:05 and 12:16, Field Comm reported a total of (39) 10-45s, 31 were Code 2, 3 were Code 3 and 6 were Code 4s. At 12:16 an additional RAC (Rehab) unit was requested. Between 12:16 and 12:25 it was reported that Primary Searches between the sixth and eleventh floors were complete and negative. At 12:25 Field Comm reported that they had a total of seven engine companies acting as CFR-D Engines. At 12:33 Field Comm reported that the fire was Probably will hold. At 12:38 Field Comm requested 4 additional engines, 3 Ladders and 1 Battalion Chief. At 13:25 Field Comm reported that the fire was Under Control. There was a total of 63 10-45s - 32 Code 2s, 9 Code 3s and 22 Code 4s. For just the "fire side" alone atleast 300 Firefighters responded.
I’m a retained Firefighter in the UK and although we have different structure and protocols the core principle is the exact same, i’m highly impressed with the level of research put into this as a lot of it was so dead on point! Great work Wendover!
I do facilities maintenance for a big radio company. We put SO MUCH effort into fire safety. Partially because we want to ensure we don’t go off-air due to a small fire, but obviously to protect staff. My boss tried to ignore some fire code stuff regarding type and placement of fire extinguishers and I nearly lost it on him because NFPA 1 (fire code) is the facilities man’s Bible. Secondly, if someone gets hurt or dies because of a fire code violation, I’m on the fast track to an orange jumpsuit and some new bracelets.
This breaks down in rural areas where volunteer units are the only ones available. I have seen incidents where only two responders, who left their home/job to fight a fire without pay, were the only ones on scene manning the engine.
We'd do well to put that choice plainly in front of people who live in rural areas. If I were King-for-a-Day, I'd make'em sign off annually on the emergency services available and remind them to manage risk appropriately. _or_ authorize more taxes for better services, I guess, but who wants to do that?
As a Fire Marshal on a ship, this is so amazing. One incident that would’ve been awesome to have been discussed during this video, was the fire on board the USS Bonhomme Richard. It’s the most notorious shipboard fire in history, and is a really amazing case study for both shipboard and structural fire fighters, especially regarding the National Incident Management system. There were major failures in that case, and everyone in this field can learn from it.
Sam, I don't know who wrote that but as a firefighter of almost 30 years, I can say it was the best short explanation of how firefighting works I have ever heard. I would not at all be surprised to find it used at fire academies as the first thing on the first day of a new intake's course. Very well done to whoever both wrote and researched this.
As a firefighter, this video was a very factual and informative look into the job and what goes into it, broken down into bits that the average viewer can understand. Good job!
In 2022 the building me and my boyfriend had JUST moved into (we'd lived there for a grand total of 3½ days) burned down almost completely in a massive fire in the middle of the day. Miraculously, none of the residents were hurt, because most people were at work. The building was from the 1930s, but what went wrong was that the fire proofing between stairwells up in the attic had been torn down during a roof renovation back in 2003. It was deemed the worst residental housing fire in the country in the last 37 years. We're doing okay these days after being rehoused, but to this day I'm still extremely grateful to the firefighters for showing up within minutes and doing their utmost to minimize the damage, even if the building couldn't be saved.
finally! something I know a bit about! And have to say, this has to be one of the better layman explanations of fire scene operations and NIMS that I've seen. Well done. You even got right the chief who will park his truck right where an engine would REALLY be better suited to be parked there to allow for quick access to the fire, or a ladder truck for arial master streams. I think every district has someone, be it their own chief or a neighboring chief, who just has to park the suv RIGHT in the driveway of the fully involved structure.
I love how the 21st century is about learning what indigenous communities knew for thousands of years about ecosystem management and sustainability. Is long overdue, but better late than never.
Hey. I'm interested in learning more about the UK version of this. I've done a bit of research on my own, but I'm wondering if there's anywhere I could go to learn more about how structural fitters and wildfires are managed? Thank you for any help you can provide.
@@whitechocolateman1088 Wildfires are pretty rare in the UK, it's too rainy and most of the time it doesn't get dry enough for long enough to let the undergrowth catch, though that's changing with climate change and we've had some pretty hot, dry summers these last few years. Compartmentation was supposed to stop the Grenfell fire in 2017, but a short time before they put new cladding which was not fireproof on the outside to make it look better. The fire started fairly low down and is believed to have been a faulty fridge, but the fire spread up the building and very sadly 72 people died. It's insane how something like could happen in a developed country in the 21st century. Grenfell tower was in the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which both has immense wealth and some of the most expensive property in the world (think houses over £20 million) but also has plenty of people who aren't wealthy at all and towers of social housing, like Grenfell
@grassytramtracks it's insane to see the similarities between the grenfell response and the response detailed in the video. In both situations the firefighters tried their best. But people died due to 2 factors that I can see. The theory of compartmentalisation, and failure in building codes/maintenance.
It's incredible to see the level of coordination and organization that goes into fighting a fire of this magnitude. The Incident Command System and the collaboration between different agencies are crucial in ensuring an effective response. Kudos to all the firefighters and emergency personnel who work tirelessly to keep us safe.
I am a Nebula member but I had to come here to comment on this video. It is one of the most through and fantastic web videos I've ever seen. It is on par with the epic work cable channels like History used to make before everyone started making reality. Wendover and Real Engineering are the reasons I joined Nebula and I am so glad I did.
I live in rural Colorado. Our local fire department (less than a 5 minute drive away) is located alongside our water station, and emergency paramedic office. Their operations are so complicated and they do so much for our community and it was great to see some of the complicities be shown. My local department is mostly volunteer based so to all of you emergency response personal all over the country THANK YOU!
Going into this, I didn't even know that fire engine and fire truck were not interchangeable. So needless to say, to me, this is one of the best ones you've done in a while.
Ground News is one of my favorite news sources. I love being able to see what each side writes but also able to see what news outlets outside of the US are saying about a story.
Great work, Sam and team. As a former wildland fire fighter this is really well researched and just about a perfect description of what we do. It took me about 3 months to learn all of the details that this video covers.
As a Volunteer Firefighter this video is one of the best videos I've seen describing the fire service especially by someone not immediately involved in the fire service. I applaud you on the amount of research you've done. Some things I wish you would have addressed is some fire safety information so I listed some basic below. If a fire occurs make sure everyone is out, call 911 and close all doors to keep the fire just that room and to stop it from spreading. Remember to call 911 before trying to put it out so the proper resources are on the way. Make sure you have working smoke detectors in every bedroom, outside bedrooms, in common areas and at least one on every floor. Carbon monoxide detectors should be present on every floor of your house. If you need help installing or can't afford smoke detectors the red cross offers programs to install 3 smoke detectors in homes free of charge so reach out to them. The NFPA offers many educational videos and information for the general public on fire and life safety if you wish to learn more.
Iam a volunteera Firefighter in New York City with 20 plus years in construction and i must say this is a really, really put together video with great and accurate information Well down Wendover Productions
What is your opinion on the catastrophic collapse of WTC Building 7 from a few isolated paper fires despite being made completely from structural steel and reinforced concrete...?🤔
Wow Sam, amazing work on this. As a firefighter from the front range of Colorado, you nailed the description of how code attempts to limit catastrophic fires and how departments respond. I've been following Jet Lag for years, but I'm learning that I need to check out your other work. Really good job on this. If you ever want to spend a day learning to fight fires, let me know! Happy to host you.
I love to hear about the stories my dad shares with me during his time with Hillsborough County Fire. It takes a special kind of person to be a firefighter, and I do not think they get enough recognition for all the lives they save.
I work as a dispatcher and I’m so blown away by how well put-together this is. You can tell so much work and research was put into this. I’ve followed this channel for years and haven’t seen any videos like this
Thank you Sam for this great video. I want to spend a word of appreciation for all the firefighters because they are ready to risk their life at a moment notice to save people from burning buildings or houses; they are the unsung heros of our modern society. Greetings from the UK, Anthony
Being a Colorado resident, I always love how Colorado-centric your videos are. Even more so this time around as my wife just starting working for SMFR. I literally drive on the street at 10:13 almost every day.
Although it geographically doesn't make sense with what he's saying, if Tower 18 was going to a fire in Chatfield Estates they wouldn't be driving on Quebec now would they lol. I knew exactly where that first example was upon the google earth zoom in. And the tender relay example is the southern offshoot of Tomahawk Rd. I spend too much time on the roads here apparently
Great video. As someone who lived in a wildfire prone area of Southern California I was always amazed and thankful for the hard work of the LA County Fire Dept.
As a volunteer firefighter, this is one of the best summary videos I've ever seen. It's the perfect video to show my friends to explain fire departments. Of course I gotta love the Denver representation! Much love from Colorado ♥️👩🚒
As a volunteer firefighter, this video was absolutely bang on. Great job capturing everything we do. Tons of information and lots of research was obviously done.
Retired Career Guy from a small Northeastern City Overall very well done, my only very minor complaints likely come from my own biases or limited to the experience of how my department operates. Not sure if your channel has fire experience, but overall phenomenal job and would be a great resource to any Fire Prevention or FD PR officer or unit.
You did a really amazing video on the logistics of Formula 1 a while back, as someone who just watched some of the 24 hours at Daytona, I would love to see a logistics video from you about the logistics of what goes into preparing and running a 24 hour race like that. From the track, to the teams, to the fans.
@@Nippleless_Cage the apparatus and the organisation are the biggest differences. Tactics are nearly the same. We do have the same kind of cars, yet the staff on them is different, with up to nine people on one engine. Most of our firemen are volunteers and respond from their homes or work to the fire stations to hop in their gear and on the cars. 94% of Firemen in germany are volunteers. Also, in many parts of Germany (also where I live), the Fire Departments are not responsible for the Ambulance Services, which is often done by the Red Cross. In some cases, like when an ambulance has to respond from far away, the local fire department gets to the call as well, to act as a first responder and give immediate first aid. If you are interested in watching a german (bavarian) fire department responding to a burning car on the highway, watch “amazing response to motorway incident by german firefighters” from “prawn sean”. LG
@@juliuslochner9325 Thanks for the reply. Our firefighters and ambulance services are separate too, but that's because of the grotesque privatization of American ambulance contractors.
I'm a Canadian FF in a volunteer hall in a rural area. I have to say, this video is very well researched and presented. This is nearly identical to how we do things in Canada, and this is a very well researched video. The focus on how individual halls are all equipped slightly different for their purpose is good to touch on, and I think this is one of the few videos I've ever seen that actually shows how communication, chain-of-command, and passing of IC duties happens, as well as considerations for tendering operations and how well hydranted the area is can affect response. I think it would've been nice to touch on how significant the volunteer portion of fire-fighting is in North America though. 65% in the US, and 70% in Canada. Great video; I'll keep this one saved to share to people looking for a primer on how modern fire-fighting works.
I'd love to see a companion video about fighting forest fires ("wildland fires"), which has a completely different philosophy. My ex was a wildland firefighter and people used to jokingly say things like "Ben, the building's on fire!", to which he'd inevitably respond, "No problem! I'll dig a line around out!" When you're talking wildland fire, the focus is on contain and control, rather than rushing in to stop things from the inside. (Or at least, that's how I understand things from a second-hand perspective.)
This was such an incredible video. The writing, explanations, graphics, storytelling, it was all perfection. Probably one of the top Wendover videos in the catalog. Excellent job
Thank you for taking on such a difficult topic. I am impressed with the detail you're able to put into these videos to help us learn how the world around us works. It also is a reminder that doors are important.
I'd love to see videos on the other parts of the 911 system. Firefighting is 10% of the calls firefighters go on, the other 90% is medical calls and car wrecks. A lot of fire departments run ambulances and paramedics and integrate with incident command. Along with that paramedics/firefighters can also be apart of SWAT which is a honey pot of logistics and tactical thinking (CQB alone could be a whole video) which would be at home on this channel. The logistics of 911 is so deep. People can call 911 for anything and be presented with a response that brings a solution. As always great job 👍👍👍
As a ex volunteer firefighter in Australian its interesting to see the similarities and differences between us both over the years. My mentor growing up (25 years ago when i joined) was a ex Philadelphia ladder truck crew/ instructor / paramedic. i learnt a lot from him in the tiny rural aussie town i was in thanks Mark.
My wife and brother were volunteer firefighters in neighboring counties and I did not know how debated the charged line entry thing was going to be. Seems like you hit the nail on the head with that one in this video.
Fire caulking. Fun stuff! Comes in sheets, tubes, etc. It gets put around things like electrical boxes and penetrations in walls, etc, it's special fire resistant stuff that we use to protect from fire spread even as electricians. The amount of that stuff I have applied and have never worked in anything taller than like 9-10 stories, is crazy! Last time I bought some it was for a tiny commercial space. I walked out with a whole bin of the stuff and it cost astronomical amounts, but it literally saves lives when we use it right. We are not obviously the only trade required to do this, just the one I happen to work in 😎
Would it be a useful thing to have in a residential space, if one could afford it? That would actually be really useful to have in a private workshop if you have welders and high-amperage tools.
@@spdcrzy it's more meant for penetrations through fire barriers as to not compromise it's rating, it may have a more residential application but generally only in multifamily settings. In a shop or garage it's not something I see providing much if any extra protection, at least the way we apply it.
Ironically there was a fatal explosion at a factory 3 yrs ago in my country that was manufacturing fireproof wrapping, suspected to be due to fine particles breaking loose from the wrapping & being more flammable, or perhaps due to manufacturing tools having substandard safety (that was reportedly purchased on Alibaba)
Good Job Wendover, I’m a firefighter in CA and this video was made really well with really accurate information while making it entertaining for people to watch. Thank you.
Volunteer firefighter from Pennsylvania here. Nice video. There are some naming conventions that differ depending on location (like whether you call it a truck, ladder, or rescue company), but overall this was well written. I would like to stress two things to anyone reading: 1) like the Bronx fire showed, make sure the doors of your residence are closed when evacuating! Air flow is SUCH a huge deal when it comes to controlling fire flow. 2) consider volunteering with your local department! It is an amazing way to love your neighbors, serve your community, and improve yourself!
I second this. I was a volunteer medic in my rural community long ago, and one time heard the firefighters toned out. They responded with 2 (two) personnel. I responded, as a medic, and assisted the fire engine operator to set up the drop tank, called dispatch for additional personnel (at the FEO's direction), and generally tried to (a) stay out of the way, and (b) assist where I could. Rural departments: fire and ems as well, really, really REALLY need personnel. Your time and effort can protect your neighbors, and help make your own family more safe.
Commercial buildings in my country often have emergency staircases be accessed via an intermediate room/lobby, with doors on both sides of that. So you have to go thru 2 layers of doors to evacuate to an emergency staircase, reducing the risk of fire & smoke spreading. Apartments on the other hand don't have such rooms/lobbies but often the corridors & staircases are open-air (my country has a tropical climate) probably to save money on air-conditioning, which also would allow smoke to dissipate more easily, though emergency staircases in older apartments may often not have doors (but on street level, the stair landing in newer apartments usually face away from the building, probably to direct evacuees further away from the building if it's on fire). In contrast, newer & more expensive apartments called condominiums may have the emergency staircases fully enclosed as they may double as bomb shelters (in cheaper public housing apartments the bomb shelter would instead be a storeroom in each housing unit, or a shop/clinic/social service office with hardened walls at the foot of the building), with doors on mezzanine floor landings to increase compartmentalization (though I think they are closed only in an emergency)
As a German firefighter this was a very interesting and eye opening overview of the American firefighting system in comparison to the German firefighting system which relies very heavily on volunteers
Canadian firefighter here, but we use a very similar system to the American one. We actually are mostly volunteers, a recent study found that over 65% of firefighters in the US are volunteers. In my own province personally there's only a few fulltime departments in the largest cities, the rest are all hybrid/fully volunteer
I love when youtube videos talk about places I grew up and live in. (Grew up in Littleton aka south metro area and live in Boulder aka where the brush fire a few miles north happened)
This was an amazing watch!! I’m 28 and I still want to be a firefighter when I grow up. So awesome what people can do together for the sake of helping others!
Holy cow!!! Imagine how many lives are saved every year due to this incredibly thoughtful and beautiful choreography of interagency cooperation. Wow. Thanks for bringing this to light; I had absolutely no clue!
I'll be honest. I think this is my favorite Wendover production so far. I can't explain why but it is checking ever box I can think of. Wendover Team, kudos to you. To any Firefighter, you are a factual hero. So Thank You
I went through a large apartment fire myself. 24 families were displaced, and the whole building was condemned. Because there was no one inside when the department got there, the fire fighting, a 2 alarm fire, was set to defensive. Sitting there and watching my life burn away, I understand how important fire compartmentalization is. I'd also like to point out, the higher the occupant count in a building, the higher the chance for fire. Tired of living in apartments. Can't wait to get a home.
My country is building ever taller apartments to fit a growing population while having limited land, topping out @ 50+ stories currently with 300+ units (or ~1200 residents). I think its a good idea for neighbouring apartment buildings to have bridges between them at regular floor intervals so that if 1 building has a fire its residents can evacuate to neighbouring buildings more quickly. My country's building codes also mandate an empty floor halfway up an apartment building if it is >40 stories, where residents can evacuate to & take refuge in 1st in case of fire, which often are turned into sky gardens too. Such tall buildings are also required to have bigger & more firemen lifts, while those >30 stories need a wet riser too I remember
The structures, protocols and chain of command systems, are very similar accross many different operations. I work for London Underground, when we have a major incident, we have, Bronze, Silver and Gold Command. Similar with Police, Paramedic and Fire services. We use the same phonetic alphabet, and similar radio protocols. This makes communications channels across multiple agencies easy and efficient. This video reminded me of a fire that was close to home, that was on a even larger scale than the fire in this video. On 14th June 2017, an apartment block in London caught fire. The block had 24 floors and the fire in the Grenfell tower claimed 72 lives. I will always remember that day waking up, the feeling of shock and immense sorrow when I saw the news and live pictures of the fire. I remember catching the train into work and seeing the smoke in the sky, and being in absolute shock. How in a city like London, could a whole building of that size catch fire. I'll always remember that fire, it was honestly devastating. The sad thing is most people were advised to stay in their apartment by the London Fire Brigade, as the fire should of been contained within the flat it started, but in the case of this fire, the building was covered in a combustible cladding, which meant the compartmentation of the flats failed as the fire climbed and spread on building from the outside in.
This did make me instantly think of Grenfell. It shouldn't be possible for a high rise residential fire to kill 72 people in a developed country in the 21st century
@@grassytramtracks Same, watching this instant remind me of Grenfell that incident should of been a world wake up call to prevent such disasters from happening. Sad is despite being 2024 a lot of buildings aren't up to code.
i don't imagine this to be a problem in modern buildings. someone in my building had a kitchen fire 2 years ago, the building's fire suppression system promptly flooded the unit where fire originated, as well as all the units below it for 52 floors. i was working on my computer late into the night, when all of a sudden my AC unit started to shoot out water instead of cold air, that's how flooded we were. in modern buildings we fear drowning more than we fear fire.
Sadly 10 yrs ago 2 security guards died in a fire in a new luxury high-rise apartment building in my country's downtown. Someone had discarded furniture in the firemen lift lobby on one of the floors, which caught fire & sounded the fire alarm. The 2 guards took the firemen lift up to investigate but probably due to inexperience (they were only a few days into their job I remember) they didn't switch the lift to firemen mode. Perhaps the fire alarm also wasn't precise enough to tell them that the fire was in the firemen lift lobby itself, so the guards took the lift to the floor with the fire, but were engulfed by the fire once the lift doors opened, with their infrared sensitive edge mistaking the smoke for a door obstruction (as they weren't deactivated as the lift wasn't set to firemen mode). Either that &/or the doors expanding & warping under the fire's heat prevented them from closing
I’m an emergency management coordinator. Thank you for posting a great video on the nuance of fire fighting! I hope you explore more of emergency management!
I would never in 1 million years care to watch a video on the logistics of fires. But since I saw it was made by Wendover, I felt compelled to watch and I'm glad I did.
Wow, this is really similar to incident response at Google! The main difference is that we don't automatically hand off the IC role to a more senior person. The IC is always the person with the most context on the current issue. We're explicitly trained not to let a more senior employee take over IC just because. This has (rightfully) lead to situations where junior employees instruct their directors to perform tasks. We do hand of IC for several reasons (not all listed here): 1. The incident has been going on for a while, and the IC needs to sleep. 2. The problem spirals out of an IC's control. At that point the IC can escalate to a seasoned SRE team which will assume control of the role. 3. The IC believes someone else is a better fit for the role. We also have a similar structure for media relations, and contact with the outside world (everything from putting a warning banner on the affected product, to talking with news outlets).
I think my country meanwhile is encouraging factories to have some of their staff be the POC with the fire department, so that if the factory catches fire, the staff can guide firefighters around the building to reach trapped occupants more quickly, reach the source of fire more quickly etc.
I’m an EMT working on getting hired at a career fire department. This video was incredibly accurate! I was surprised to see Sam mention NIMS/ICS. As a long time viewer, it was fun to see my career field cover in such depth
So much more is involved with a wildland fire. After 17 years I’m still amazed at how fast we can flood resources in and even build a whole town for fire camp.
Alot of wonderful info and good generalizations of a broad trade. Only thing I want to mention is that for a first due company to a fire, protection of life is tantamount. That sometimes means making a primany search without a charged line covering you. It is indeed a dangerous job.
Just wished you mentioned on call volunteer's.. One of my work colleagues responded to a warehouse fire at 2am after getting home at 8pm that day from a 14hours shift.. They sacrifice their own rest & weekend free time to help others
Fire dangers is also a reason why I'm not very trusting of many guys (not everyone) who own e-bikes and e-scooters. There tends to be a lack of seriousness in ensuring safe charging. I even asked a family member to stop charging these lithium-ion batteries inside the apartment, because they kept leaving the battery plugged for more than necessary.
That's not very likely to cause a fire, at least not compared to other things. If it's a modern system, it shouldn't catch fire from over charging, assuming it doesn't have a charging system to prevent overcharging. I'd be much more worried about space heaters, candles, and the like
@@alexrogers777 The batteries are more likely to suffer physical damage due to the environment they operate in. Also, they are much higher capacity, 100Wh is the maximum you will find in a laptop, and that isn't going to get an e-bike very far.
@katrinabryce but do you have statistics for other things that cause fires and their frequency, such as space heaters, a cooking accident, or candles to put that number in perspective. Having the raw number of one every two days is almost meaningless in a city as big as London. How many of these happen relative both to the rate of ownership of these Ebikes and how does that compare with similar fire hazards? I don't know this, and I don't feel like looking it up if I could even find the information, but that info is what you would need to determine if it's a significant risk charging your bike battery inside
Great information. My nearest city just had a major fire at a 5 story building with mixed residential and commercial restaurant. Old building, initial call at 2pm, firefighters on scene until 5am, 150 firefighters, 4 alarms. Mostly defensive attack. Our local departments will also mitigate collapse risk by bringing in an excavator to control how the building comes down and allows access to hotspots
This is a great video! I was glad you mentioned NIMS, but was surprised you didn't mention ICS. I have been in emergency management for years, and could talk about this stuff for days! Great Job Team!
As a 2nd year firefighter this is a terrific breakdown of what we were taught through our Fire 1 Academy courses. 10/10. Only thing I would add is many several fire departments have what they call a "Quint" truck. It surmasses the role of engine, truck, rescue, and aerial ladder. My department where I work for example houses 3 in service Engines with 1 Quint. (We also have like 15 other apparatus in storage/reserve. such as water tankers/tenders, ARFF truck, light duties, 2 heavy duty ambulances which serve as rescue trucks and so forth.) Nonetheless I absolutely loved this video.
Really cool to see this video because my dad is a fire safety engineer working in New York City, he switched out of security to do that when I was little and he’s been doing it for 20 years. The city does NOT play when it comes to fire safety and keeping up on the codes; they will show up randomly without notice to make sure you’re following the rules and they won’t hesitate to shut people down. When you have 30,000 people per square mile, you literally lack margins for error.
I am surprised to learn that in the US, authorities recommend to stay in the high-rise building in case of a fire. In Germany, rule of thumb is: If its more than 6 floors, always get out, because in case the fire spreads, it's game over that high.
@@opusmaximum Sorry, I meant to say the advice "was". I don't know if the advice has changed or not. What hasn't changed is the lack of accountability.
Heard (from an al-Jazeera documentary IIRC) of a fire that broke our for unknown reasons at a home in Japan (around Osaka?) that killed the family's daughter. The mother was then interrogated by law enforcement & guilt-tripped into falsely confessing that she'd committed arson on the house & thus murdered her daughter (with police/prosecutors saying the daughter's spirit would never rest in peace otherwise). I remembered that that documentary explained that this could've been linked to prosecutors fear of being harshly judged if their cases don't end up with a conviction
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Firefighter here. This video was a test in my mind to see how researched and accurate your teams videos are... And wow.. Absolutely insane detail down to the initial radio report from the first arriving officer, water tender shuttling operations, offensive/defensive operations, and of course the difference between and fire engine and truck (thank you). Obviously there are more details and layers to the logistics and response of the 911 system like what different engine/truck crews can be assigned on arrival and other specialty apparatus (hazmat, rescue engines, dive teams, etc...). However for a 23 minute video this is the perfect amount of information density to cover most topics of firefighting in good detail. Really happy you focused on prevention as thats a huge part of the job most don't consider. Excellent job, videos like these are why I've been subscribed forever.
If you make another video, you should talk about the role of the Fire Marshal in ensuring that fire regulations are followed.
@@Johnny-bm7ry I agree! And fire investigations in general.
I work on installing, repairing, and inspecting fire alarms, and this video helps me better understand what happens when trucks roll, and what does and play into responses. It'd be cool to see something on fire marshal inspections, the differences between different areas, building ages, and how older buildings are pulled into newer compliance. there's a lot of nuance to it.
My only comment though (being almost 4 min in) is technically the whole “fire proof” thing as that’s essentially not a thing. The highrise building being Type I construction with the steel frame and I beams, and Type II being non combustible. There’s 5 construction types with different ratings based on fire prevention equipment
Honestly this kind of video should be mandatory in schools so people know roughly what's going on and how to behave around a scene.
I'm a volunteer firefighter with my local city up in Canada and my goodness was this video so good. I didn't realize how much research Wendover puts into these, but I was impressed with how accurate the details are.
The part talking about the ICS (Incident Response System) was really good, I know the word bureaucracy has a lot of negative connotations but it's crucial for how firefighters can have such a fast response time and efficiently fight fires. At least with my department it was one of the first things they taught us, right after how to put out bunker gear on 😂.
Also for those who found this video interesting and would like to help their community, I strongly urge you to consider volunteering with your local fire department. Over 65% of firefighters in the US are volunteers, and a lot of local departments are massively understaffed. I recommend seeing if you are legible to joining your local department and seeing if that's right for you 🚒. Great video again Wendover, and I can't wait for the next one
Thank you.. Department's across the country who rely upon volunteers are struggling to get them, leaving their stations under manned, especially in rural areas. The department in my hometown serves a population of only about 700, no buildings over 3 stories, but does deal with agricultural issues (including methane gas incidents, barn fires, etc).. I'd say that their members are all either over 60 or under 40 with not much in between. People are no longer working on their family farms (because there aren't any), so can't just leave the tractor in the field and respond to the firehouse or directly ro the scene
My home and whole area I live in is covered by a small volunteer fire department. They're awesome folks and kept my neighbors brush fire that got out of hand from coming my way. Those dudes brought a bulldozer from one of the volunteers, used it to cut lines and pumped a TON of water from my pond to help put it out. Those guys literally saved my property last year. They're phenomenal and I've actually been working with one of them to get ready (I'm a little out of shape) so I can see about joining them, so maybe I can assist in similar things for other folks in my community. It really opened my eyes to our needs in the rural unincorporated community I live in.
Thank you to all firefighters but ESPECIALLY the volunteers. Lots of us would be on our own without them (I may have been okay, given my pond and pumps and such I have to stave things off during our longer response times, but I'm sure glad I wasn't on my own for that situation)
PS the neighbors are fine, theyre still hanging out and I worry every time they start a fire now 😂 I drive over and check every time I see smoke and I'm home. They're not known as the most responsible folks in the area, which is saying somethin, cause I live here too! 😂
@@jennifertarin4707our VFD is much the same in age demographic which is why I'd like to join them, we gotta have folks so those guys can call it a day and "retire" so to speak when they're ready. Couple of em never will, but they're awesome folks and will always have knowledge and useful information to share, even if not super physically capable (which currently all of our guys but one are VERY capable)
Man have y'all considered just paying enough taxes so that these critical people can actually be paid to be professionally trained, equipped, and ready 24/7?
Seems like a worthwhile investment
@@tarfeef101Volunteer firefighters are usually very well trained. It’s also very common worldwide to have volunteer firefighters. In France the number is 80% volunteer, and 94-99% in Germany, Austria, and Portugal. North America is not atypical in this regard, like it may be with other things
As an ER doctor, I wanted to say how wonderfully in depth and interesting this video was. Really great job. Much of what you talk about is known as a mass casualty incident (MCI). Hospitals, police departments, and fire stations train and prepare for such events multiple times per year. You never know if there will be a deadly gas, a bomb, mass shooting, fire, or etc. Having that scalability with an incident commander, command chief, designated hot zone, and so on is extremely important in order to have fire fighters, police officers, paramedics, and other medical personnel ready for anything.
Would you say the initial triage would the most important in those MCI situation, provided the scene is stable and relatively safe?
I presume the initial triage of critical patients would result in the increase survival rate and optimised resource usage
You have my dream job! Thank you for what you do.
At least looking at definitions here in Germany, depending where you are and what ressources are available, people might be surprised, at what point any incident may turn into a MCI.
Response times here, at least when it comes to denser populated areas are defined by regulations, but when you get into smaller villages, it may well a a volunteer department responding first. And that is likely what you find across most of Europe, and as I understand, not that different in the US, although rural in the US may be a completely different dimension from what we have here. the most rural spot in Germany might still qualify as a suburb in Montana.
Those people volunteering and ready to leave their work, their homes etc. when needed at any time cannot be appreciated enough. and those departments have recruiting issues, as sadly employers don´t like the inconvenience of an employee having to leave all of a sudden.
But back to the topic. depending on resources, even within denser populated areas, anything involving more than 2 injured victims may qualify as an MCI already. Here in Germany there is one specialty though. While the US sends out EMTs to as good as possible stabilize a patient, grab the patient and run for the next ER at a hospital, in Germany we send out EMTs as well as a specially trained Emergency doctor. Usually an ER doctor with some additional training to go out, or depending where, even to drive to the scene with full signals. (They try to avoid that these days and have an EMT, who usually is a firefigther, as a driver available. But out in the village this doctor may operate out of his office, not a hospitals ER)
And in larger cities, for cases of realy up scale MCIs, they even have ambulances built based on a bus, some of them can to a degree even serve as mobile ICUs. Thankfully those must be the least used vehicles in our fire departments fleets. I think they are most times used in either emergency drills, or to evacuate senior residences and hospitals, when another excavator finds a not exploded WW 2 bomb, requiring a certain size evacuation zone before the ordnance disposal service even starts to work.
Thank you for what you do, and I’m sorry you have to deal with burn victims. That’s not fun for anyone. Ever.
I’m just a pharmacist so my roles in these MCI isn’t utilized as much as it could be (imo). I was an EMT for only a few months but FF/P earned so much respect. Same now with y’all physicians. Thank you all.
It's truly amazing to see the coordinated efforts and bravery of firefighters in action. They put their lives on the line to protect others. Respect to all the firefighters out there
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Most of them are wife beaters 💀💀💀💀
@@Whatismusic123frrrrr
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Also, to all the people upvoting it, yeah sure. It's dangerous and it's good to have brave people to protect others, but where I live in the US the firefighter culture is super toxic. The Messiah complexes go crazy. When I was an EMT the firefighters were always assholes to us. Also the frat culture, the hazing, etc. They need some serious cultural changes.
(Of course this is going to vary significantly by department, and by the individual, this has just been my experience.)
As a Locksmith who routinely works on Fire doors, my biggest advise to any person is to always, always sleep with your bedroom door closed. It can be inconvenient but the difference it makes to protect your life from fire (specifically smoke inhalation) is profound. Even if your bedroom door is not fire-rated, and it likely isn't, it extends the time you have by 4-5 minutes, critical time you will need to escape.
Keeping the exits clear is another big one. I had a fire in my dorms at college where the fire escape door was blocked by a ladder. I was the first one out and managed to clear it, but still. It needs to be kept clear at all times.
Test those smoke alarms regularly.
@@phillyphakename1255 See also all the whiners at apartment building and college dorms who complain that they can't store their bikes underneath the stairwell...
I've been a firefighter and officer for over a decade, and I could not agree with this more. I've been in properties that have been thoroughly smoke damaged and widely fire damaged, but a closed door has kept cupboards clean. It's astonishing, and it doesn't have to be a fire door. Unless the fire is directly impacting the door, you'll get 30mins of safety.
@@phillyphakename1255 Meanwhile my university hostel was quite strict in enforcing that each resident leave not more than 1 pair of footwear at their rooms' entrance, to minimize the no. of trip hazards along the corridors in a fire evacuation
Ah, Building Code. The often ignored but ever important aspect of building construction. I work in architecture and I can't tell you how many of my client and contractors have tried to "work around" building code, especially Ch 10 and Ch 11 (life safety and ADA accessibility).
Average ableism moment 💀
Im a Fite alarm field technician for the IBEW and it's ridiculous how often I have to argue with AHJ'S about why I won't approve something that completely disregards NFPA-72. Breaking code often leads to nothing but when it comes to fire alarm and fire suppression systems that 1 out of 1000 times it matters people die.
I've seen so many businesses with obvious code violations that no one knows about or is willing to address. Sometimes, I think it's just that people don't know about fire code or who is responsible for it, but other times it's obvious they just do not care about it. For example, I've seen many businesses prop doors open which are supposed to be closed to provide compartmentalization in fires, but it's "convenient" to prop them open, so they won't close them.
"Safety laws are written in blood" and all that...
I do facilities maintenance and it’s infuriating how often other dept’s try to ignore fire code when they do upgrades and installs.
I go to jail if someone dies, so we shall not be fucking around with the fire code.
I"m an architect watching this at lunch time. I was just looking at Ch 7 minutes ago. Thank you for shining a light on the importance of the building code and what we do to prevent fires from becoming big. I learned a lot about fire fighting too. Great video.
My dad was a fireman for 20 years. The biggest fire he ever fought was when a local apartment building went up because someone caught a dishrag on fire in the kitchen, put it in the trash, and then put the burning trash can in the open air hall. No one was killed, but my dad and a few others went to the hospital for smoke inhalation. Most of the apartments in that building were totally ruined.
that person was an absolute pillock
I do fire alarm repair in many places with elderly folks and it's not uncommon for someone to burn their breakfast, have the apartment alarm go off, and open the hallway door to let it air out, setting off the whole building when the smoke makes it to the common area smoke detectors. It's a HUD requirement that HUD subsidized housing for the elderly have tenant and general building fire alarm, and someone to check on either going off since it's so common to have false alarms from things like this. That's just one of the odd edge cases that keep everyone in this field on their toes.
Wow. I guess this someone could be charitably described as having room temprature IQ...
There was also a fire that started on the stove in 1 stall in an open-air food court in my country. When someone poured water on the stove to put out the fire, that instead spread the fire to the rest of the food court via smoke extraction ducts above the stove in both that stall & other stalls in that food court
it’s incredible how simple yet complicated putting a fire out is
I've always had an appreciation for how dangerous fires are. I think as a Californian seeing the impact they can have has played into the respect I have for fire. They can be sparked from the tiniest of sources, and can spread incredibly quickly into an unimaginable fire. I've always thought of fire as a "living" thing, its dynamic, constantly changing, and hostile in every sense, underestimating them can have devastating consequences.
Yes, I agree its super complicated. But USA fire trucks and emergency vehicle then Europe and Singapore.
That's exactly why prevention is key. If you don't have the fire in the first place, you can save time, money, and most importantly, time.
With new houses being built rapidly, using cheap materials (chewed up wood and glue/petrol products) with the physics of a fire doubling in size every minute, it gets crazy quick.
@@TrialzGTAS Also, because of the plastic and stuff that's in everyones houses now, fires produce something like 300 times more toxic smoke than they did 50 years ago, don't quote me on the exact number though
5:40 shout out to the writers for that "hinges on" line
Underrated comment (underrated line as well)
I read a psychology report ages ago that was generally about "How do people make decisions in emergency situations." The researchers hypothesized that an expert would gather as much information as they could in the time span they deemed sufficient and then choose the best option that they had.
To test their hypothesis they interviewed and watched fire captains at work in large cities. What the captains did was gather information and as soon as a plausible plan was conceived that had no obvious failure points they would proceed with that one immediately without waiting to come up with better alternative strategies.
I've always thought that was interesting and backs up the addage: a good plan today is better than a great plan tomorrow.
As a volunteer fire fighter from Germany, it's really interesting to see the differences and similarities in fire fighting to the US. I can explain many of them with differences in typical buildingsize, population density and building materials, but the huge difference in fire engines/trucks is just weird to me. They are so different to what I am used to in terms of shape, equipment and tasks. I can't even imagine an American fire truck fitting in a European old city street
The only times i saw an American tanker responding to a fire in Italy were at industrial fires, where the USAF firefighters from Aviano also intervened, i still wonder how they didn't get stuck at the first curve (just kidding, honor to the firefighters who put our lives before their own)
You have to keep in mind that every single major highway and freeway in the US was made for both the weight and size of tanks, and our cars have ALWAYS been big.
Firetrucks are actually quite maneuverable considering the tight downtown streets in major cities they have to drive through.
For my country (Singapore) the vehicles with ladders as long as those on fire trucks in the USA (9:53) typically don't carry much else & thus can't usually be used alone without a fire engine when fighting a fire. Probably because the ladders are folded more during transport so that the vehicles don't have to be so long. & the fire engine may not be the 1st vehicle on the scene on a fire; it may be a fire motorcycle (basically a firefighter with a compressed air foam backpack riding a Piaggio MP3) or a Red Rhino (a smaller fire engine based on a pickup truck) that responds earlier. For larger fires e.g. industrial ones we also use giant unmanned fire monitors (UFM) that can be left stationary & unattended pointing at 1 spot of a fire to cool it down. These UFMs are also usuable in train tunnels where space is more confined & thus you don't have to sweep the fire hose over a very large area to put out a fire there. For smaller fires e.g. road accidents we may instead send a Fire Medical Vehicle (FMV) that's a small fire engine & ambulance combined together on a medium truck chassis, perhaps to save manpower (with more firefighters cross-trained as paramedics now too) & the no. of vehicles that're needed to be dispatched. I remember the FMV has also accompanied the motorcade used when we hosted the Trump-Kim summit in 2018
Damn, never knew volunteer firefighters existed outside the US and Canada. Just feels like a distinctly "american" thing to compensate for underfunding. Also, yeah american streets are wider so, wider and longer vehicles can operate. I wonder what a German or British fire vehicle looks like...
@@marco_grt4460Honestly, that's a true sentiment, our vehicles of all types are just wider than those in Europe. Whoever maneuvered that thing must be damn good at their job... or they caused some property damage lol
I was lieutenant of my fire company for two years. Over watched many fires and incidents. So many moving parts and ensuring their are boots in the ground, span of control, accountability and so many other variables are there. Best job ever. You put in more research into your video essay and have a better grasp on the subject than many firefighters fresh from the academy. Hope this brings attention that we need all the manpower we can get with rapid changes in standards (Atleast in NJ)
Thank you Wendover for teaching us all the difference between a fire truck and fire engine 👍
wait until you learn that there's more than those two.
There’s more than just two little boy…
@ShoshinManga
Units and the main equipment:
Engine: Water, Hoses, Pump, some ground ladders, ground monitor, deck gun, haligain, axe, hydrant wrench, backboard, stokes basket.
Truck: Aerial Ladder, Ground ladders, hydraulic rescue cutters and spreaders, rotary saw, chain saw, pike pole, axe, haligain, backboard, stokes basket.
Rescue: hydraulic cutters and spreaders, hydraulic ram, airbags, haligain, rotary saw, chain saw, pike pole, cribbing, ropes, pulleys, scene lighting, wheel chalks, hydraulic strut, axe, backboard, stokes basket.
Squad: medical equipment, hydraulic spreaders, wheel chalks, haligain, backboard, stokes basket.
Tanker: portable water pool, booster pump, boosters, hydrant wrench.
Quint: Aerial ladder, haligain, axe, hydraulic cutters and spreaders, pike pole, chain saw, rotary saw, backboard, stokes basket.
There’s more if you want me to name them.
dudes in replies trying to flex how cool they are for knowing everything about firefighting. ignore them, good on you for learning. we cant be expected to know everything about everything
@@_holy__ghost I just put them here for fun for anyone interested! 😂
I'm a paramedic and work with my firefighter and law enforcement brothers and sisters every shift. Excellent overview of some of the basics of fire attack and command and control of an incident. The thing about NIMS, is that it doesn't just apply to fire emergencies, but any kind of emergency. For example on a medical emergency with one patient, the highest licensed responder on a transporting ambulance will often be designated as the Incident Commander. In the case of a multi-casualty incident, like a bus rollover, what might happen is instead of a single IC there will be what's called Unified Command in which specific Fire, Medical, and Law branch commanders form a command post. Those three direct their respective branches, but because they're all, supposed, to be be together communication flows easier. At least that's the idea. Working from a common framework does help a lot. It takes a lot of the guesswork out since roles are pre-defined and thus we can get on with the job of mitigating a crisis.
I spent several hours reading NIMS SOPs working in a COVID lab, of all places. It's a really cool system, and its versatility is really impressive.
I used to be on a board for a condo I lived at. It's completely CRAZY how often there is fires in units. We probably saw at least four or five a year in a 400 unit complex. But the fire suppression system worked, and if you weren't in the unit, or maybe a couple of units around them (or below them) with flooding damage, you never knew.
My country meanwhile saw an increasing number of fires sparked when motorized scooters were being charged by users in their own homes. 1 rider even died when his scooter caught fire when he was in an apartment lift with it. In response our gov't mandated the UL2272 safety standard for such scooters, but to the chargin of riders & scooter shops, soon after they invested to adopt this standard, our gov't then banned these scooters from pavements after several accidents caused by riders (& my country's cycling path network is only 8% the length of our pavement & road network)
I'm always happy to hear about systems that work.
That Bronx Apartment Fire is really unfortunate but all information points to poor maintenance and negligent building owners. Both the Fire Fighters and the Fire Fighting System did the best it could. Respect for Fire Fighters.
If you’re interested, there’s a documentary on the Black Sunday fire. It’s a very sad story about firefighters that had to jump to their death because of illegal renovations in an apartment. The apartment made illegal modifications to the size of rooms and locations of walls. The fire got behind them, the went to find the fire escape but it wasn’t there because the apartment had built an extra wall to fit more rooms. The firefighters had no choice but either burn to death of jump and maybe live. Two of them died and 4 of them a permanently disabled. One of them died 5 years after due to his injuries. Sad story.
But the politicians didn't. It's an obvious, well-known fact that building owners like to skimp as much as possible and that we have building inspectors because _greed_ be real! Mandating inspections of older buildings with fewer safety protections would be easy. Firefighters should push for that, tbh.
This fire highlighted the major problem with buildings having internal escape corridors. Firefighters sometimes arrive to find the corridors filled with smoke, due to people leaving not closing their firedoor when they escaped. Regardless, the firefighter are then faced with up to 100 locked doors. Assuming that the doors meet the regulations, they are far from easy to break open, particularly wearing all the PE and airpacks. As one by one they are broken open and 95% found unoccupied, mostly because the occupants have already left to escape the fire, without the doors, once fire enters the corridor, it can spread unhindered.
At Grenfell tower in London, smoke prevented firefighter breaking down more than 10% of the 100+ doors before the building became an inferno,
Fire did not spread between any of the apartments, but incorrectly designed and installed exterior cladding allowed fire to enter through all the windows, killing around 100 people.
Despite all this, the building suffered no structural damage. But due to the deaths, a decision was made for entire demolition.
Their were several other failures that led to the disaster, but they would take me hours to correctly explain. The final report was more than 1,000 pages and took around 3 years to prepare. the whole thing was a national disgrace to the UK.
If they had prepared a "Swiss cheese" model, the block of cheese would have been larger than the building.
It isn't just the fault of the building owners, some residents can be extremely hard to work with, and in some states extremely hard to get rid of, some will complain about maintenance, but then never let you in to fix it.
Also you vote with your money, if you don't want your apartment complex to have poor maintenance, move, or be willing to pay more for better maintenance.
If a complex couldn't fill rooms because maintenance was so bad, they would either decrease rent until people moved in, or at some point they would increase maintenance or sell to someone else who would increase maintenance.
VOTE WITH YOUR MONEY!
@@MegaLokopo Hahahaha! Are you kidding? The housing/rental market is so rigged currently you CAN'T vote with your money unless you are wealthy. It's incredibly time consuming, expensive and difficult to move because, at least where I live, the housing shortage is outrageous and the fault of the government.
I was a firefighter in my 20s during and right after college. This is the best introductory overview of the fire service and its logistics/incident commend systems I have ever seen.
Some more information for this fire with a breakdown.
The actual report for fire department came in over the Radio at 10:49, units likely received the notification on their MDT about 30 seconds to a minute and a half before the radio transmission. The fire was reported to be in 3 Eddie.
At 11:01 they received a second phone call for fire in 3 Eddie, with a reported person unconscious at an unknown report. At this point 3 Engine Companies, 2 Ladders and a Battalion Chief are responding.
In the same minute, Engine 48 transmitted the 10-77 (Working Fire in a High-rise Multiple dwelling.) On the 10-77 a total of 6 Engine Companies, 6 Ladder Companies, 4 Battalion Chiefs, a Deputy Chief and a whole array of Special Units.
At 11:07 bronx dispatch reported a family w/ a new born sheltering in apartment 3B. Engine 42 reported heavy fire out the rear of the apartment.
At 11:05 Division 7 transmitted the 10-77 2nd Alarm (Additional Alarm for more Manpower and Resources.) This brought in an additional 7 Engine Companies, 2 Ladder Companies, 4 Battalion Chiefs, and even more special units.
At 11:09 Division 7 reported that they had (3) 10-45s No Codes (Fire Injuries, not given a code/tag pending ems to give it.) The Assistant Chief of Training Car 15A at this point was responding.
At 11:10 they received 4 more apartments for smoke, including apartment 15E reporting they were trapped. Apartment 6F reported a frantic female, along with apartments 6C & 3M (not known to me.) Apartments 9E and 6C also reported being trapped, and 15G for smoke. Apartments 18N reported smoke, and 12G for people frantic.
At 11:15 Division 7 reported (6) 10-45s No Codes (Same as before.) At an unknown time Bronx Dispatch notified Division 7 that 12C in the rear has people jumping out the window (I am unsure if 12C was jumping or someone else.)
At 11:17 Battalion 26 transmited the 3rd Alarm (Likely the orders of the chief of Division 7.) The 3rd Alarm brought in an additional 4 Engines, 2 Ladders and 2 Battalions. The dispatcher then notified D7 of apartments 15H,12A,15E,19S for smoke.
At 11:20 Division 7 special called two additional ladder companies, followed shortly by the transmission of the 4th Alarm again by Battalion 26. The 4th Alarm brought in an additional 4 Engines, 2 Ladders and 1 Battalion Chief. They then received apartments 12F for people trapped, 9K for smoke and 15M sheltering in place with 5 People. They then received 12G again for people frantic and 19S with 6 people in the Apt.
At 11:25 Battalion 14 special called two additional truck companies.
At 11:29 Division 7 requested that the Engine Companies on the 4th Alarm to come to the fire building with their CFR-D (First Aid) Equipment. They then received 9J for smoke.
At 11:32 Division 7 reports a total of (10) 10-45s, with (7) of them being Red Tags (Critical.)
At 11:39 Field Comm requested 4 additional trucks.
At 11:40 Field Comm reported one additional 10-45 no code.
Between 11:40 and 11:44 Field Comm transmitted the 5th Alarm orders of Car-15A. This brought an additional 4 Engines, 2 Ladders, 1 Battalion Chiefs and multiple Staff Chiefs.
At 11:44 Field Comm reported a total of (15) 10-45s, with 11 being Code 2 (Red Tags.)
At 11:58 Field Comm reported fire was on the Second and Third Floors, primary searches were in progress and that the fire was Doubtful will Hold.
At 12:04 Field Comm requested an additional Ladder Company to carry out Ventilation Support Duties. Shortly followed by 2 additional Battalion Chiefs.
Between 12:05 and 12:16, Field Comm reported a total of (39) 10-45s, 31 were Code 2, 3 were Code 3 and 6 were Code 4s.
At 12:16 an additional RAC (Rehab) unit was requested.
Between 12:16 and 12:25 it was reported that Primary Searches between the sixth and eleventh floors were complete and negative.
At 12:25 Field Comm reported that they had a total of seven engine companies acting as CFR-D Engines.
At 12:33 Field Comm reported that the fire was Probably will hold.
At 12:38 Field Comm requested 4 additional engines, 3 Ladders and 1 Battalion Chief.
At 13:25 Field Comm reported that the fire was Under Control.
There was a total of 63 10-45s - 32 Code 2s, 9 Code 3s and 22 Code 4s.
For just the "fire side" alone atleast 300 Firefighters responded.
I’m a retained Firefighter in the UK and although we have different structure and protocols the core principle is the exact same, i’m highly impressed with the level of research put into this as a lot of it was so dead on point! Great work Wendover!
I do facilities maintenance for a big radio company. We put SO MUCH effort into fire safety. Partially because we want to ensure we don’t go off-air due to a small fire, but obviously to protect staff.
My boss tried to ignore some fire code stuff regarding type and placement of fire extinguishers and I nearly lost it on him because NFPA 1 (fire code) is the facilities man’s Bible. Secondly, if someone gets hurt or dies because of a fire code violation, I’m on the fast track to an orange jumpsuit and some new bracelets.
This breaks down in rural areas where volunteer units are the only ones available. I have seen incidents where only two responders, who left their home/job to fight a fire without pay, were the only ones on scene manning the engine.
We'd do well to put that choice plainly in front of people who live in rural areas. If I were King-for-a-Day, I'd make'em sign off annually on the emergency services available and remind them to manage risk appropriately. _or_ authorize more taxes for better services, I guess, but who wants to do that?
As a Fire Marshal on a ship, this is so amazing. One incident that would’ve been awesome to have been discussed during this video, was the fire on board the USS Bonhomme Richard. It’s the most notorious shipboard fire in history, and is a really amazing case study for both shipboard and structural fire fighters, especially regarding the National Incident Management system. There were major failures in that case, and everyone in this field can learn from it.
ooh i would love a different video on that to see how it would work on a ship
Sam, I don't know who wrote that but as a firefighter of almost 30 years, I can say it was the best short explanation of how firefighting works I have ever heard. I would not at all be surprised to find it used at fire academies as the first thing on the first day of a new intake's course. Very well done to whoever both wrote and researched this.
As a firefighter, this video was a very factual and informative look into the job and what goes into it, broken down into bits that the average viewer can understand. Good job!
In 2022 the building me and my boyfriend had JUST moved into (we'd lived there for a grand total of 3½ days) burned down almost completely in a massive fire in the middle of the day. Miraculously, none of the residents were hurt, because most people were at work. The building was from the 1930s, but what went wrong was that the fire proofing between stairwells up in the attic had been torn down during a roof renovation back in 2003. It was deemed the worst residental housing fire in the country in the last 37 years. We're doing okay these days after being rehoused, but to this day I'm still extremely grateful to the firefighters for showing up within minutes and doing their utmost to minimize the damage, even if the building couldn't be saved.
finally! something I know a bit about!
And have to say, this has to be one of the better layman explanations of fire scene operations and NIMS that I've seen. Well done. You even got right the chief who will park his truck right where an engine would REALLY be better suited to be parked there to allow for quick access to the fire, or a ladder truck for arial master streams. I think every district has someone, be it their own chief or a neighboring chief, who just has to park the suv RIGHT in the driveway of the fully involved structure.
I love how the 21st century is about learning what indigenous communities knew for thousands of years about ecosystem management and sustainability. Is long overdue, but better late than never.
As a firefighter, I must say this video was very well done! You definitely did your research and explained everything wonderfully. Great job Wendover!
Much respect to all of the first responders out there. Truly heroes.
As a UK firefighter it's always interesting to see how the logistics work in other countries. Great work brothers and sisters!
Hey. I'm interested in learning more about the UK version of this. I've done a bit of research on my own, but I'm wondering if there's anywhere I could go to learn more about how structural fitters and wildfires are managed?
Thank you for any help you can provide.
@@whitechocolateman1088 Wildfires are pretty rare in the UK, it's too rainy and most of the time it doesn't get dry enough for long enough to let the undergrowth catch, though that's changing with climate change and we've had some pretty hot, dry summers these last few years.
Compartmentation was supposed to stop the Grenfell fire in 2017, but a short time before they put new cladding which was not fireproof on the outside to make it look better. The fire started fairly low down and is believed to have been a faulty fridge, but the fire spread up the building and very sadly 72 people died. It's insane how something like could happen in a developed country in the 21st century. Grenfell tower was in the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which both has immense wealth and some of the most expensive property in the world (think houses over £20 million) but also has plenty of people who aren't wealthy at all and towers of social housing, like Grenfell
Yea I agree with you im a german firefighter and its cool to see other Countys systems
@grassytramtracks it's insane to see the similarities between the grenfell response and the response detailed in the video. In both situations the firefighters tried their best. But people died due to 2 factors that I can see.
The theory of compartmentalisation, and failure in building codes/maintenance.
It's incredible to see the level of coordination and organization that goes into fighting a fire of this magnitude. The Incident Command System and the collaboration between different agencies are crucial in ensuring an effective response. Kudos to all the firefighters and emergency personnel who work tirelessly to keep us safe.
I am a Nebula member but I had to come here to comment on this video. It is one of the most through and fantastic web videos I've ever seen. It is on par with the epic work cable channels like History used to make before everyone started making reality. Wendover and Real Engineering are the reasons I joined Nebula and I am so glad I did.
I live in rural Colorado. Our local fire department (less than a 5 minute drive away) is located alongside our water station, and emergency paramedic office. Their operations are so complicated and they do so much for our community and it was great to see some of the complicities be shown. My local department is mostly volunteer based so to all of you emergency response personal all over the country THANK YOU!
Going into this, I didn't even know that fire engine and fire truck were not interchangeable. So needless to say, to me, this is one of the best ones you've done in a while.
Ground News is one of my favorite news sources. I love being able to see what each side writes but also able to see what news outlets outside of the US are saying about a story.
Great work, Sam and team. As a former wildland fire fighter this is really well researched and just about a perfect description of what we do. It took me about 3 months to learn all of the details that this video covers.
As a Volunteer Firefighter this video is one of the best videos I've seen describing the fire service especially by someone not immediately involved in the fire service. I applaud you on the amount of research you've done. Some things I wish you would have addressed is some fire safety information so I listed some basic below.
If a fire occurs make sure everyone is out, call 911 and close all doors to keep the fire just that room and to stop it from spreading. Remember to call 911 before trying to put it out so the proper resources are on the way. Make sure you have working smoke detectors in every bedroom, outside bedrooms, in common areas and at least one on every floor. Carbon monoxide detectors should be present on every floor of your house. If you need help installing or can't afford smoke detectors the red cross offers programs to install 3 smoke detectors in homes free of charge so reach out to them. The NFPA offers many educational videos and information for the general public on fire and life safety if you wish to learn more.
Iam a volunteera Firefighter in New York City with 20 plus years in construction and i must say this is a really, really put together video with great and accurate information
Well down Wendover Productions
What is your opinion on the catastrophic collapse of WTC Building 7 from a few isolated paper fires despite being made completely from structural steel and reinforced concrete...?🤔
@@warriorson7979You, realize that the building burned for 7 hours right?
You’re a vollie in New York City? Where breezy?
Wow Sam, amazing work on this. As a firefighter from the front range of Colorado, you nailed the description of how code attempts to limit catastrophic fires and how departments respond. I've been following Jet Lag for years, but I'm learning that I need to check out your other work. Really good job on this. If you ever want to spend a day learning to fight fires, let me know! Happy to host you.
I love to hear about the stories my dad shares with me during his time with Hillsborough County Fire. It takes a special kind of person to be a firefighter, and I do not think they get enough recognition for all the lives they save.
hillsborough county YES SIR!!
I work as a dispatcher and I’m so blown away by how well put-together this is. You can tell so much work and research was put into this. I’ve followed this channel for years and haven’t seen any videos like this
Thank you Sam for this great video. I want to spend a word of appreciation for all the firefighters because they are ready to risk their life at a moment notice to save people from burning buildings or houses; they are the unsung heros of our modern society.
Greetings from the UK,
Anthony
As a former volunteer firefighter / EMT, I greatly appreciate the detail and accuracy of this video.
Being a Colorado resident, I always love how Colorado-centric your videos are. Even more so this time around as my wife just starting working for SMFR. I literally drive on the street at 10:13 almost every day.
Although it geographically doesn't make sense with what he's saying, if Tower 18 was going to a fire in Chatfield Estates they wouldn't be driving on Quebec now would they lol. I knew exactly where that first example was upon the google earth zoom in. And the tender relay example is the southern offshoot of Tomahawk Rd. I spend too much time on the roads here apparently
@@some0ne8 Sure wouldn't. Curious to at least somehow get footage a road that they drive on though. Also saw 470/University
I was a volunteer for about 10 years. You nailed the entire system. Awesome vid!
Great video. As someone who lived in a wildfire prone area of Southern California I was always amazed and thankful for the hard work of the LA County Fire Dept.
As a volunteer firefighter, this is one of the best summary videos I've ever seen. It's the perfect video to show my friends to explain fire departments.
Of course I gotta love the Denver representation! Much love from Colorado ♥️👩🚒
6:31 a fire fighter called Burns? Perfect nominal determinism!
As a volunteer firefighter, this video was absolutely bang on. Great job capturing everything we do. Tons of information and lots of research was obviously done.
Retired Career Guy from a small Northeastern City
Overall very well done, my only very minor complaints likely come from my own biases or limited to the experience of how my department operates.
Not sure if your channel has fire experience, but overall phenomenal job and would be a great resource to any Fire Prevention or FD PR officer or unit.
You did a really amazing video on the logistics of Formula 1 a while back, as someone who just watched some of the 24 hours at Daytona, I would love to see a logistics video from you about the logistics of what goes into preparing and running a 24 hour race like that. From the track, to the teams, to the fans.
German volunteer Firefighter here, amazed to see the way our American colleagues work!
What's same and different between the two, if you don't mind my asking?
@@Nippleless_Cage the apparatus and the organisation are the biggest differences. Tactics are nearly the same.
We do have the same kind of cars, yet the staff on them is different, with up to nine people on one engine. Most of our firemen are volunteers and respond from their homes or work to the fire stations to hop in their gear and on the cars. 94% of Firemen in germany are volunteers. Also, in many parts of Germany (also where I live), the Fire Departments are not responsible for the Ambulance Services, which is often done by the Red Cross. In some cases, like when an ambulance has to respond from far away, the local fire department gets to the call as well, to act as a first responder and give immediate first aid.
If you are interested in watching a german (bavarian) fire department responding to a burning car on the highway, watch “amazing response to motorway incident by german firefighters” from “prawn sean”. LG
@@juliuslochner9325 Thanks for the reply. Our firefighters and ambulance services are separate too, but that's because of the grotesque privatization of American ambulance contractors.
I'm a Canadian FF in a volunteer hall in a rural area. I have to say, this video is very well researched and presented. This is nearly identical to how we do things in Canada, and this is a very well researched video. The focus on how individual halls are all equipped slightly different for their purpose is good to touch on, and I think this is one of the few videos I've ever seen that actually shows how communication, chain-of-command, and passing of IC duties happens, as well as considerations for tendering operations and how well hydranted the area is can affect response. I think it would've been nice to touch on how significant the volunteer portion of fire-fighting is in North America though. 65% in the US, and 70% in Canada.
Great video; I'll keep this one saved to share to people looking for a primer on how modern fire-fighting works.
I'd love to see a companion video about fighting forest fires ("wildland fires"), which has a completely different philosophy. My ex was a wildland firefighter and people used to jokingly say things like "Ben, the building's on fire!", to which he'd inevitably respond, "No problem! I'll dig a line around out!" When you're talking wildland fire, the focus is on contain and control, rather than rushing in to stop things from the inside. (Or at least, that's how I understand things from a second-hand perspective.)
This was such an incredible video. The writing, explanations, graphics, storytelling, it was all perfection. Probably one of the top Wendover videos in the catalog. Excellent job
Thank you for taking on such a difficult topic. I am impressed with the detail you're able to put into these videos to help us learn how the world around us works. It also is a reminder that doors are important.
I was a firefighter for 12 years. This is by far the best video on how firefighting works I've ever seen on RUclips. Well done!
At 6:30, I noticed the firefighter's coat said BURNS on it and I was like 'duh', and then I saw it was his name XD
Been installing fire alarms for 15 years, never even thought about a DOOR operating properly as an issue. Great video!
I'd love to see videos on the other parts of the 911 system. Firefighting is 10% of the calls firefighters go on, the other 90% is medical calls and car wrecks. A lot of fire departments run ambulances and paramedics and integrate with incident command. Along with that paramedics/firefighters can also be apart of SWAT which is a honey pot of logistics and tactical thinking (CQB alone could be a whole video) which would be at home on this channel. The logistics of 911 is so deep. People can call 911 for anything and be presented with a response that brings a solution. As always great job 👍👍👍
As a ex volunteer firefighter in Australian its interesting to see the similarities and differences between us both over the years.
My mentor growing up (25 years ago when i joined) was a ex Philadelphia ladder truck crew/ instructor / paramedic. i learnt a lot from him in the tiny rural aussie town i was in thanks Mark.
Informative video Sam. It is amazing how you have the different names for the appliances but even in Australia, we vary from State to State.
My wife and brother were volunteer firefighters in neighboring counties and I did not know how debated the charged line entry thing was going to be. Seems like you hit the nail on the head with that one in this video.
Fire caulking. Fun stuff! Comes in sheets, tubes, etc. It gets put around things like electrical boxes and penetrations in walls, etc, it's special fire resistant stuff that we use to protect from fire spread even as electricians. The amount of that stuff I have applied and have never worked in anything taller than like 9-10 stories, is crazy! Last time I bought some it was for a tiny commercial space. I walked out with a whole bin of the stuff and it cost astronomical amounts, but it literally saves lives when we use it right. We are not obviously the only trade required to do this, just the one I happen to work in 😎
Would it be a useful thing to have in a residential space, if one could afford it? That would actually be really useful to have in a private workshop if you have welders and high-amperage tools.
@@spdcrzy it's more meant for penetrations through fire barriers as to not compromise it's rating, it may have a more residential application but generally only in multifamily settings. In a shop or garage it's not something I see providing much if any extra protection, at least the way we apply it.
Ironically there was a fatal explosion at a factory 3 yrs ago in my country that was manufacturing fireproof wrapping, suspected to be due to fine particles breaking loose from the wrapping & being more flammable, or perhaps due to manufacturing tools having substandard safety (that was reportedly purchased on Alibaba)
Good Job Wendover, I’m a firefighter in CA and this video was made really well with really accurate information while making it entertaining for people to watch. Thank you.
Volunteer firefighter from Pennsylvania here. Nice video. There are some naming conventions that differ depending on location (like whether you call it a truck, ladder, or rescue company), but overall this was well written. I would like to stress two things to anyone reading: 1) like the Bronx fire showed, make sure the doors of your residence are closed when evacuating! Air flow is SUCH a huge deal when it comes to controlling fire flow. 2) consider volunteering with your local department! It is an amazing way to love your neighbors, serve your community, and improve yourself!
I second this. I was a volunteer medic in my rural community long ago, and one time heard the firefighters toned out. They responded with 2 (two) personnel. I responded, as a medic, and assisted the fire engine operator to set up the drop tank, called dispatch for additional personnel (at the FEO's direction), and generally tried to (a) stay out of the way, and (b) assist where I could.
Rural departments: fire and ems as well, really, really REALLY need personnel. Your time and effort can protect your neighbors, and help make your own family more safe.
Commercial buildings in my country often have emergency staircases be accessed via an intermediate room/lobby, with doors on both sides of that. So you have to go thru 2 layers of doors to evacuate to an emergency staircase, reducing the risk of fire & smoke spreading. Apartments on the other hand don't have such rooms/lobbies but often the corridors & staircases are open-air (my country has a tropical climate) probably to save money on air-conditioning, which also would allow smoke to dissipate more easily, though emergency staircases in older apartments may often not have doors (but on street level, the stair landing in newer apartments usually face away from the building, probably to direct evacuees further away from the building if it's on fire). In contrast, newer & more expensive apartments called condominiums may have the emergency staircases fully enclosed as they may double as bomb shelters (in cheaper public housing apartments the bomb shelter would instead be a storeroom in each housing unit, or a shop/clinic/social service office with hardened walls at the foot of the building), with doors on mezzanine floor landings to increase compartmentalization (though I think they are closed only in an emergency)
As a German firefighter this was a very interesting and eye opening overview of the American firefighting system in comparison to the German firefighting system which relies very heavily on volunteers
Approximately 80% of the US fire service is volunteer. And a lot of the career guys I know also volunteer.
Canadian firefighter here, but we use a very similar system to the American one. We actually are mostly volunteers, a recent study found that over 65% of firefighters in the US are volunteers. In my own province personally there's only a few fulltime departments in the largest cities, the rest are all hybrid/fully volunteer
Urban areas have professional fire fighters, but most rural areas are covered by volunteer fire departments. And the US has LOTS of rural areas
I love when youtube videos talk about places I grew up and live in. (Grew up in Littleton aka south metro area and live in Boulder aka where the brush fire a few miles north happened)
This was an amazing watch!! I’m 28 and I still want to be a firefighter when I grow up. So awesome what people can do together for the sake of helping others!
Holy cow!!! Imagine how many lives are saved every year due to this incredibly thoughtful and beautiful choreography of interagency cooperation. Wow. Thanks for bringing this to light; I had absolutely no clue!
I've watched the whole video twice and can confirm it is a wendover classic
😂 how did you do this? Since the Video is 12 minutes online....
@@mweb5066 he's probably one of the paid members that get releases early (if he's not lying)
@@mweb5066 He called you out bro 😂
I'll be honest. I think this is my favorite Wendover production so far. I can't explain why but it is checking ever box I can think of. Wendover Team, kudos to you. To any Firefighter, you are a factual hero. So Thank You
I went through a large apartment fire myself. 24 families were displaced, and the whole building was condemned. Because there was no one inside when the department got there, the fire fighting, a 2 alarm fire, was set to defensive. Sitting there and watching my life burn away, I understand how important fire compartmentalization is. I'd also like to point out, the higher the occupant count in a building, the higher the chance for fire. Tired of living in apartments. Can't wait to get a home.
My country is building ever taller apartments to fit a growing population while having limited land, topping out @ 50+ stories currently with 300+ units (or ~1200 residents). I think its a good idea for neighbouring apartment buildings to have bridges between them at regular floor intervals so that if 1 building has a fire its residents can evacuate to neighbouring buildings more quickly. My country's building codes also mandate an empty floor halfway up an apartment building if it is >40 stories, where residents can evacuate to & take refuge in 1st in case of fire, which often are turned into sky gardens too. Such tall buildings are also required to have bigger & more firemen lifts, while those >30 stories need a wet riser too I remember
The structures, protocols and chain of command systems, are very similar accross many different operations. I work for London Underground, when we have a major incident, we have, Bronze, Silver and Gold Command. Similar with Police, Paramedic and Fire services. We use the same phonetic alphabet, and similar radio protocols. This makes communications channels across multiple agencies easy and efficient.
This video reminded me of a fire that was close to home, that was on a even larger scale than the fire in this video. On 14th June 2017, an apartment block in London caught fire. The block had 24 floors and the fire in the Grenfell tower claimed 72 lives. I will always remember that day waking up, the feeling of shock and immense sorrow when I saw the news and live pictures of the fire. I remember catching the train into work and seeing the smoke in the sky, and being in absolute shock. How in a city like London, could a whole building of that size catch fire. I'll always remember that fire, it was honestly devastating. The sad thing is most people were advised to stay in their apartment by the London Fire Brigade, as the fire should of been contained within the flat it started, but in the case of this fire, the building was covered in a combustible cladding, which meant the compartmentation of the flats failed as the fire climbed and spread on building from the outside in.
Would you/have you ever done a video on the Grenfell fire?
This did make me instantly think of Grenfell. It shouldn't be possible for a high rise residential fire to kill 72 people in a developed country in the 21st century
@@grassytramtracks Same, watching this instant remind me of Grenfell that incident should of been a world wake up call to prevent such disasters from happening. Sad is despite being 2024 a lot of buildings aren't up to code.
As someone born and raised in New York, but now lives in Colorado, this video was about as curated as it gets. Incredibly well done!
i don't imagine this to be a problem in modern buildings. someone in my building had a kitchen fire 2 years ago, the building's fire suppression system promptly flooded the unit where fire originated, as well as all the units below it for 52 floors. i was working on my computer late into the night, when all of a sudden my AC unit started to shoot out water instead of cold air, that's how flooded we were. in modern buildings we fear drowning more than we fear fire.
Sadly 10 yrs ago 2 security guards died in a fire in a new luxury high-rise apartment building in my country's downtown. Someone had discarded furniture in the firemen lift lobby on one of the floors, which caught fire & sounded the fire alarm. The 2 guards took the firemen lift up to investigate but probably due to inexperience (they were only a few days into their job I remember) they didn't switch the lift to firemen mode. Perhaps the fire alarm also wasn't precise enough to tell them that the fire was in the firemen lift lobby itself, so the guards took the lift to the floor with the fire, but were engulfed by the fire once the lift doors opened, with their infrared sensitive edge mistaking the smoke for a door obstruction (as they weren't deactivated as the lift wasn't set to firemen mode). Either that &/or the doors expanding & warping under the fire's heat prevented them from closing
I’m an emergency management coordinator. Thank you for posting a great video on the nuance of fire fighting! I hope you explore more of emergency management!
"Risk a lot to save a lot, Risk little to save little, and risk nothing to save that which has already been lost"
I would never in 1 million years care to watch a video on the logistics of fires. But since I saw it was made by Wendover, I felt compelled to watch and I'm glad I did.
Wow, this is really similar to incident response at Google! The main difference is that we don't automatically hand off the IC role to a more senior person. The IC is always the person with the most context on the current issue. We're explicitly trained not to let a more senior employee take over IC just because. This has (rightfully) lead to situations where junior employees instruct their directors to perform tasks. We do hand of IC for several reasons (not all listed here):
1. The incident has been going on for a while, and the IC needs to sleep.
2. The problem spirals out of an IC's control. At that point the IC can escalate to a seasoned SRE team which will assume control of the role.
3. The IC believes someone else is a better fit for the role.
We also have a similar structure for media relations, and contact with the outside world (everything from putting a warning banner on the affected product, to talking with news outlets).
I think my country meanwhile is encouraging factories to have some of their staff be the POC with the fire department, so that if the factory catches fire, the staff can guide firefighters around the building to reach trapped occupants more quickly, reach the source of fire more quickly etc.
I’m an EMT working on getting hired at a career fire department. This video was incredibly accurate! I was surprised to see Sam mention NIMS/ICS. As a long time viewer, it was fun to see my career field cover in such depth
It would be interesting to see a video on the logistics of wildland fire as a counterpart to this one.
So much more is involved with a wildland fire. After 17 years I’m still amazed at how fast we can flood resources in and even build a whole town for fire camp.
he did a video about that a few years back.
@@TheStig_TG ah, i didnt know that. Watched the video. Good video for the basics.
Alot of wonderful info and good generalizations of a broad trade. Only thing I want to mention is that for a first due company to a fire, protection of life is tantamount. That sometimes means making a primany search without a charged line covering you. It is indeed a dangerous job.
If I lived in one of these older high rises, I'd probably have a closet full of extinguishers and a breathing apparatus.
Same tbh, I'd try and buy some old firefighter gear to keep close by
As a active firefighter and past chief.....you did a awesome job with this video. Outstanding
A collab between Wendover and South Metro Fire channels would have been dope. Get Sam for a ridealong and see it in action would be great.
Just wished you mentioned on call volunteer's.. One of my work colleagues responded to a warehouse fire at 2am after getting home at 8pm that day from a 14hours shift.. They sacrifice their own rest & weekend free time to help others
Fire dangers is also a reason why I'm not very trusting of many guys (not everyone) who own e-bikes and e-scooters. There tends to be a lack of seriousness in ensuring safe charging. I even asked a family member to stop charging these lithium-ion batteries inside the apartment, because they kept leaving the battery plugged for more than necessary.
That's not very likely to cause a fire, at least not compared to other things. If it's a modern system, it shouldn't catch fire from over charging, assuming it doesn't have a charging system to prevent overcharging. I'd be much more worried about space heaters, candles, and the like
Maybe there's something about e-bikes I don't know but I don't see why that'd be any different than leaving a laptop battery plugged in
@@loganricherson In London, there is a fire cause by one of these batteries on average every two days.
@@alexrogers777 The batteries are more likely to suffer physical damage due to the environment they operate in. Also, they are much higher capacity, 100Wh is the maximum you will find in a laptop, and that isn't going to get an e-bike very far.
@katrinabryce but do you have statistics for other things that cause fires and their frequency, such as space heaters, a cooking accident, or candles to put that number in perspective. Having the raw number of one every two days is almost meaningless in a city as big as London. How many of these happen relative both to the rate of ownership of these Ebikes and how does that compare with similar fire hazards? I don't know this, and I don't feel like looking it up if I could even find the information, but that info is what you would need to determine if it's a significant risk charging your bike battery inside
Great information. My nearest city just had a major fire at a 5 story building with mixed residential and commercial restaurant. Old building, initial call at 2pm, firefighters on scene until 5am, 150 firefighters, 4 alarms. Mostly defensive attack. Our local departments will also mitigate collapse risk by bringing in an excavator to control how the building comes down and allows access to hotspots
A Wendover day is always a good day!
This is a great video! I was glad you mentioned NIMS, but was surprised you didn't mention ICS. I have been in emergency management for years, and could talk about this stuff for days! Great Job Team!
TIL a fire engine is not the same thing as a fire truck.
As a 2nd year firefighter this is a terrific breakdown of what we were taught through our Fire 1 Academy courses. 10/10. Only thing I would add is many several fire departments have what they call a "Quint" truck. It surmasses the role of engine, truck, rescue, and aerial ladder. My department where I work for example houses 3 in service Engines with 1 Quint. (We also have like 15 other apparatus in storage/reserve. such as water tankers/tenders, ARFF truck, light duties, 2 heavy duty ambulances which serve as rescue trucks and so forth.) Nonetheless I absolutely loved this video.
Like all loss of life is tragic, but 17 deaths in one of the worst fires of the decade in one of the densest cities feels like a mayor win.
Really cool to see this video because my dad is a fire safety engineer working in New York City, he switched out of security to do that when I was little and he’s been doing it for 20 years. The city does NOT play when it comes to fire safety and keeping up on the codes; they will show up randomly without notice to make sure you’re following the rules and they won’t hesitate to shut people down. When you have 30,000 people per square mile, you literally lack margins for error.
I am surprised to learn that in the US, authorities recommend to stay in the high-rise building in case of a fire. In Germany, rule of thumb is: If its more than 6 floors, always get out, because in case the fire spreads, it's game over that high.
UK - the advice is to stay put.
When it goes wrong it's a disaster - Grenfell Tower was a tragedy.
@@andrewharrison8436 Wow. I thought they changed that advice after Grenfell - but apparently they did not.
@@opusmaximum Sorry, I meant to say the advice "was". I don't know if the advice has changed or not.
What hasn't changed is the lack of accountability.
@@andrewharrison8436 Grenfell was supposed to be compartmentalized, but it wasn't.
@@Croz89 The most notorious failing was the cladding. Did the internal compartmentalisation fail as well?
Firefighter/Medic here, pretty good info, covers things broadly and correctly, I appreciate the effort.
My dyslexic ass read "fire lighting" and was looking for tips about effective arson 😭
Heard (from an al-Jazeera documentary IIRC) of a fire that broke our for unknown reasons at a home in Japan (around Osaka?) that killed the family's daughter. The mother was then interrogated by law enforcement & guilt-tripped into falsely confessing that she'd committed arson on the house & thus murdered her daughter (with police/prosecutors saying the daughter's spirit would never rest in peace otherwise). I remembered that that documentary explained that this could've been linked to prosecutors fear of being harshly judged if their cases don't end up with a conviction