By Bryan Lynch Vertical Ventilation is consistently referred as “one of the most dangerous things we do”. This is simply not true. Bryan Lynch of Irons and Ladders took it upon himself to research all LODD’s involving building collapse from 1994-2013 (excluding 9-11-01) to see what the trends and data actually says. A special thanks […]

Train Firefighters and Yourself Effectively At times we focus all our efforts on quantity of training and unfortunately even measure ourselves against other companies using this metric. How much are we out stretching hoselines, searching, throwing ladders?  It is the easiest thing to measure.  Instead, maybe, we should focus our effort on the quality & […]

Estimating the Hose Stretch:  Suburban Residential Structure Fires Capt. Kevin Housley Firefighter Craftsmanship 2018 When I went through the fire academy in 2005 we were never taught a simple rule of thumb on how to estimate how much hose we actually needed to efficiently attack a residential or commercial structure fire.  It was more along […]

Firefighter Training Videos and Recording Them So They Don’t Suck   Here’s a handy little infographic for you as you embark on the greatest training video ever created for the fire service…  You have knowledge to share so share it!  We all are after solid and useful training videos so here is a handy little […]

Firefighter Electrical Safety “Hidden” Electrical Danger at Outside In Fires -Captain Spencer Rice for Firefighter Craftsmanship Our fire department routinely experiences outside in fires.  These often times create considerable damage to exterior mechanical systems of the structures.  We recently had an outside in fire that damaged the electrical system feeding into the house and unfortunately […]

Really good dash cam footage of a working multi family fire with jumpers in the middle of the day.  First arriving engine company did a great job of setup, quick deployment/water, and aggressive tactics to protect residents who’s primary egress was cutoff by fire.  Solid truck work with more controlled aggression.  Tactical discipline is the […]

Here is a link to some of the best produced simple engine training around.  Most of these videos explain the “why” and then you an get out and implement the “how“, “what” & “when” based on your current/future setups, department operational directives and staffing models.  Sit down by yourself and with your company and continually work […]

Nutrition is as important as the rest of the basic skills we train on every shift.  Heres a free downloadable .pdf that breaks it down nice and simple and even includes a couple of solid recipes!  

YouTube provides so much game film it’s not even funny!  Here are some fantastic live footage ladder rescue shots that we all can use as training reps.  Think about what your company and department would do in these situations.  What lengths of ladders do you have on your apparatus and how would you deploy them?  […]

This post is from Brothers in Battle and has some great information in it about the reality of working and climbing angles.  The thing we like the best is that there are pictures with degrees on real buildings in real conditions.  Thanks to BiB for allowing us to share their information here on this page.  […]