A fire is Big news

The old historic Rod and Gun club in Terre Haute burnt.

I'm not a fireman. I was wondering how you put out a fire with a metal roof and brick walls?

You can read the news below.
fire at the rod and gun resturant.

Surround and drown used to be the expression to describe exterior attacks in the fire service.

Butch

with water.. but seriously, they are a big problem for us, most times its a do as you can with what you have to work with, safety being the priority.
One side effect of metals roofs here was the insurance
gave the owner a discount for installing one 10+ years ago and when the garage top floor caught fire, the insurance company declined full coverage due to the metal roof hindering fire fighting efforts....
keep your stick on the ice.

Yes, we still use the surround and drown expression, but that is only if interior attack doesn't make fast enough progress and Command makes the decision to pull everyone out. The metal roof and concrete walls makes little difference in procedure. You still have to get inside quickly and put the "wet stuff on the red stuff". The interior attack would be coordinated with opening the roof to vent heat and smoke out. Modern saws go through metal roofs every bit as fast as through asphalt shingled roofs. I was with a captain on my department on the second story of a rambling colonial in a neighboring town one time one time. I was working the nozzle through a burned opening into the attic. The crackling noise and heat were increasing despite ten minutes at 95 GPM. I never wanted to give in but sometimes you have to. I told the captain "I don't like this we. We gotta get out of here." We headed for the exit and within seconds the air horns on all of the trucks started sounding the "everyone out" order. We didn't make enough progress fast enough so we got pulled out.

Showcrop, where were you on the job at. I did 43 yrs, retired 2 yrs ago. Miss it but love playing with my old tractors. I live in Mid Mo

A lot also depends on the fire crews responding. The local volunteer fire departments for the most part will not enter an engulfed building unless they know specifically that a person is inside - and there is an idea where that person is. I have no idea what professional crews do with their better training and equipment.

Three years ago our neighbor burned a brush pile - and they did a decent job of it. They let it burn the dried grass around the pile for a fairly good area (about 30 to 50 feet) before putting the grass out then left the pile to burn out - fire was mostly out in 5-6 hours. Three days later we got 40-50 MPH winds blowing through and a stump in the pile lit up again and started a grass fire. This was about a month after we had a 10 day period of sub 10 degree weather with nightly temps well below 0. All the grass was freeze dried and was like have tissue paper covering the ground. The high winds drove it fast and hot. Lots of fence posts that had seen controlled burns for 30-40 years were burned off at the ground.

My next door neighbor lost his house - fire fighters arrived BEFORE the house caught fire but in the high winds small controlled backfires using the roads as fire stops was the only way to stop it. All they did was make sure no one was in it - apparently there was a lot of confusion as he was mostly bed ridden and they kept rechecking the house to make sure he wasn't in a back bedroom or somewhere else. My house was undamaged - but every other building I owned was fire damaged and I had the tires burned off of several pieces of equipment. The neighbor had Farm Bureau insurance - one of the biggest rip off companies I've ever dealt with. They came on to my property without calling me to inspect the damage - then sent me a letter offering $600 as full settlement. In the end they paid me about $7000 and that still didn't cover everything - but to get more would have involved lawyers and suing my neighbor and kinds of headaches. We lost the siding on 2 sides of our garage, the sidewalks were broken were the fire trucks drove across them, one brand new hay shed was fire blackened on the inside where the hay caught fire. It was only saved when my son used a tractor and loader to push a couple hundred burning bales of hay out of the shed then put out the burning timbers with a garden hose, another machine shed had 3 6X6 posts that mostly burned off at the ground and the lower nailer burned off the entire length of the shed, a smaller wooden loafing shed had a wall burned off, the COOP declared our propane tank as compromised and it was yanked. A big pile of hedge posts burned without a trace and I paid the neighbor kid $400 for the tires on his truck that caught fire while he was helping my son get the hay out of the hay shed.

This was just a grass fire but with the high winds and the grass all freeze dried the volunteer fire fighters had all they could handle just keeping it on one section - had it jumped the road it would have been really bad. I counted over 17 local fire trucks running all over the place - and every hydrant I owned had garden hoses hooked to them soaking something. The 6X6 posts on the machine shed were a pain to put out as they were burning internally - one was missed and 4 hours later it restarted and was burning up the wall in the machine shed. I still can't believe they offered $600 - that didn't even cover the hay that was lost. If we had done what was asked of us -evacuate - most likely every building on the place would have been lost including the house.

Just because its cold doesnt mean it cant burn. Low temperatures, especially extremely low temperatures are very low humidity. Your fuel moisture content is very low and your PIG increases.

Think about it, in subzero the doors on your home open and close easily and you probably run a humidifier.

Often in summer, the doors expand and you struggle to close the same door.

I disagree, building materials make a difference. A
metal roof alone will contain heat better than a
conventional and will increase interior temperatures,
especially in attic fires. Combine that that with a
brick structure and the insulating qualities of brick
and concrete and it will be significantly hotter inside.
There are reasons besides flammability that kilns are
brick or iron and not wood. Even a veneer brick wall
will increase interior temperatures.

If you doubt this think how close you can stand to a
brick or concrete wall compared to a wood wall at any
stage of the fire. That brick is containing the heat.

Was your own insurance company any help? Sometimes you can get the two insurance companies to work out a better settlement for the not-at-fault parties.

At least a dozen tankers and firefighters from Vigo, Clay, Vermillion and Parke Counties responded to the blaze.

The restaurant is a total loss.

The volunteer department should have quenched the stump hot spot. Leaving embers is not fire suppression. So, though it is spilled milk on the barn floor, there is fault. Lightning started a fire in a hollow snag tree in river bottom land with a very convoluted path to get to the location. I got dressed while my wife called it in. The surrounding grass was dry and had started to burn in a ring around the tree. There was about 30 acres of meadow with a fire path onto my property. I put on boots and grabbed a spade. My home was 175 feet above the fire, and 1200 feet west. I made my way down the bentonite slopes (sliding on the muddy bare surface) and made my way to the fire. I used the shovel to tamp out the fire by cutting a short grass free line, then tamping around the perimeter till it was out. The fire department brought trucks out in 20 minutes, and they were not going to make it down the embankment even with the landowners direction. They came to my house and talked to my wife who showed them the fire and what I was doing. They watched!! I then dug/scraped a shallow trench around the tree at the perimeter at the fire extent. I waited until a burning top piece of the tree fell and stayed within the ring. I put it out as the rain became stronger. I made it back home using a less muddy indirect path. I was just caked with white clay. The fire department had gone home 10 minutes before I got back up the bank. The snag was still smoking the next morning. but additional rain put it out. Only the owner thanked me for doing reasonable response to a potential event. Jim

The volunteer fire department had nothing to do with the original fire - it was a controlled burn done by a neighbor - they thought it was out. I probably would have thought so too. It was only when the wind picked up that the smoldering stump/log lit up again.

My insurance company did not want to get involved - I blame that on the worthless agent I now have. I had used the same agents for decades having never set foot in the agency - I called them about car insurance back when I was in college and they picked me up and I ran everything I owned through them just calling occasionally. They did a good job and I never had an issue. The closest I ever lived to them was 50 miles and at one point I lived more than 200 miles away from them. Then they bought another agency and those guys have an agent with an office about 4 miles from my house - he's about useless. I know I get him ticked off when I'll call him a couple times and he doesn't return a call so I call my old agent and explain I can't get a hold of the new guy and I make my changes through them. Usually he'll call me a couple days later and tell me my old home town office has made the changes and if I could please contact him on future changes....

It burned because it had been cold. The several days of near zero temps with extremely low humidity has freeze dried all the grass and wood into the perfect tinder - ad some 40-50 MPH winds and you've created a blast furnace. Normally grass doesn't burn hot enough to light fence posts or tires on fire - but on that day the fires burned extremely hot. In terms of clearing underbrush and little trees that fire left the ground bare of anything but rock. We had one big cedar tree that had a fire started internally - my son noticed it smoking three days later and the heart of the tree had been burning/smoldering. When the chainsaw started cutting it there was flame 3 foot out the side of the tree.

(quoted from post at 06:56:25 12/13/23) Showcrop, where were you on the job at. I did 43 yrs, retired 2 yrs ago. Miss it but love playing with my old tractors. I live in Mid Mo

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What's this "where WERE you on the job?" I am still on the job at just shy of 75, although I haven't put on an air pack and gone interior in nearly three years. I was on a hand line exterior for an hour three weeks ago, and I do plenty of hose dragging. I am in Chester NH.

(quoted from post at 08:54:22 12/13/23) I disagree, building materials make a difference. A
metal roof alone will contain heat better than a
conventional and will increase interior temperatures,
especially in attic fires. Combine that that with a
brick structure and the insulating qualities of brick
and concrete and it will be significantly hotter inside.
There are reasons besides flammability that kilns are
brick or iron and not wood. Even a veneer brick wall
will increase interior temperatures.

If you doubt this think how close you can stand to a
brick or concrete wall compared to a wood wall at any
stage of the fire. That brick is containing the heat.

Click to expand...

Jim, you are not totally wrong but nearly so. As I posted earlier our saw goes through a metal roof just as fast if not faster than one of asphalt shingles. we have the capability to let the heat out very quickly. Every cubic foot of hot air escaping through the roof is replaced by a cubic foot of cool air coming in the door past the firefighters.

CHECK R VALUES!!!!!

You seem to have no conception about how modern fire fighting works.


I would stand in my Tee shirt next to both walls no problem! Are you at all familiar with building construction codes?


One gallon of water, at 50 F., discharged as high pressure fog, absorbs 9,438 B.T.U. of heat when converted to steam. Stated another way, 60 GPM high pressure fog has the capability of absorbing 566,280 B.T.U. of heat per minute. Most departments use 120 GPM fog nozzles. Provided that the water can be applied into the space by two aggressive firefighters, the fire is quickly knocked down. I did this many times as nozzle man over my 25 years as an interior firefighter. Granted it doesn't always work, but if the attack is launched in time, and we would fly up the stairs at a dead run to get to it quickly, we very often had success.

Yes. We see that a lot. We had 60-80 mph winds on our fire. All the posts burned. It depends a lot on the posts, type of wood, age, how much flammable material is around them, etc.

Its like my forge; I start at about 15 psi and its burning around 1500 degrees. As it warms, I can go down to 10, maybe 8 psi and the temp will get up around 1800 to a little under 2000. If I put a blower on the forge, I can get down to 2 psi and upwards of 2200-2400 degrees.

The same thing is happening in a wind. With a preheat and a good wind, you dont need much fuel to get really hot.

The night of our fire, I had moved tires and propane tanks about 75 feet away from the barn into an open gravel area. When the barn caught, it was hot enough that it burned the tires and cooked off the propane. There was absolutely nothing left of the metal roof of the barn to say nothing of the barn or its contents.

The pressure tank for the well ruptured.

This is the policy of most departments. Its on the wall of every firehouse in my district.

1. We Will risk our lives a lot, in a calculated manner, to save savable lives.
2. We Will risk our lives a Little, in a calculated manner, to save savable property.
3. We Will Not risk our lives at all for lives or property that are already Lost.

(quoted from post at 20:37:19 12/13/23) This is the policy of most departments. Its on the wall of every firehouse in my district.

1. We Will risk our lives a lot, in a calculated manner, to save savable lives.
2. We Will risk our lives a Little, in a calculated manner, to save savable property.
3. We Will Not risk our lives at all for lives or property that are already Lost.

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While I have never seen that on a wall, it was part of the training. The key is in the calculation. The interior firefighter needs to be constantly using his training and experience to evaluate the information that he is taking in about the structure and the fire, to assess whether he should be advancing, holding or retreating.