Recent advancements in the study of fire dynamics and compartment fire behaviour have deepened our understanding of how fires develop, propagate and interact with their surroundings. This field ...

If you examine common fire service texts there are a variety of definitions of combustion, but all describe the same phenomenon: A heat producing (exothermic) chemical reaction (oxidation) in which a ...

When operating on the interior of a structure fire, it’s helpful to break the structure down into boxes, or compartments. This allows members who are carrying out interior attack to concentrate on the ...

Every fire sends out signals that can assist firefighters in determining the stage of fire development and, most importantly, the changes that are likely to occur. This skill is essential to ensuring ...

The most important task for firefighters is to save lives. In the case of fires in multi-story residential buildings, this objective can be best achieved by using the stairways as the preferred route ...

During the night of April 5, 1949, a fire broke out in St. Anthony’s Hospital in Effingham, Ill. Without fire compartments and other standard features of modern fire protection, the blaze spread ...