Live Burn Comments

This week I am publishing an article sent to me by Captain Scott Murray of The Central Coventry RI Fire District. Scott shares some brief thoughts about using the 1403 standard for conducting live burns.

I would like to share my experience with NFPA 1403. It has been a chore to say the least. My first recommendation to anyone who is even thinking about conducting a live burn PREPARE, PREPARE, PREPARE, and then after you are done Prepare, some more. Although you may feel it is not need Plan, Plan, and then plan some more. Make no mistake if you have not conducted one of these before, and it is in an acquired structure, the very first thing you should do is prepare for the objective (conducting live burn) but now prepare for what could happen, that is not necessarily what you want to happen. Get your key people together, Chief, training officers, shift/department officers and plan out the usage of the property/structure. Like the old adage states "If you fail to plan then plan to fail". That is one obstacle I am having to overcome with this live burn is MY failure to plan. Start your plan of the structure the first day you actually gain possession/usage!
e of it. Take NFPA 1403 and have each officer review it and then break it into sections and have them make check sheets on the different aspects and identify their responsibilities (and for your own sake put a time limit on it and stick to it). Bring all your personnel back together and meet. Use the check list in the appendix of 1403 as a START or jumping off point and add SAFETY measures from there. I had the opportunity to do some of this and had two GREAT thoughts given to me FREE for the asking. This information is above 1403 but adds to safety. Have every instructor keep a thermal imager on their person while the training is going on, and spray paint on the floors and walls with florescent paint the word EXIT with arrows leading out of the structure. Both of those are not required but do you think they will add to the safety of your men and women? After that is completed now you know what is needed for the burn. But what if you have the structure for a reasonable !
amount of time and can conduct multiple training in different disciplines. Figure out where you will want to do the burn and where you plan on storing the materials for the burns then plan your forcible entry training, RIT drills, ladder operations, PPV,search and rescue etc.. Use the structure for as long as you can with fake or theatrical smoke. If you don't have a smoke machine or access to one, find a metal 55 gallon container and smoke the house with smoldering hay (be careful of this and always have the barrel manned and a charged handline in place) after you have satisfied all your other training needs and before you ever bring the materials to burn into the structure re-evaluate what has happened. In RI we need a DEM air quality permit (simple form to file and obtain) yet sometimes overlooked. Did you get that signed consent to burn and is it still active? If you are going to interfere with residents do they know and what have you done to reassure them that they will not be negatively affected or it will be kept to a minimum. Rural non hydranted areas always lead to water supply issues, do you have enough water for reserve and enough for the actual suppression? If not how will you make it available. How much water will you flow for each team and what will be your turn around time before the next team is able to go and the room is ready? Manpower is the killer on smaller rural departments. Conducting multiple burns in only 4 hours or so clips how many people are you going to get to the drill that won't participate. How will you get them to come back when they can? Will they be able to? Remember the community doesn't shut down just because you are going to train that day/night you need to have sufficient people and equipment available to handle first alarm assignments. These are a couple of problems I have run into trying to plan a live fire evolution.