Uh, what the *%#$? Are you flexible enough to get to the stairs, good luck making the push down them to fight fire.
“It’s in the basement” can be a frantic transmission heard on the fireground. Often, it’s one that heightens our awareness and can trigger the myriad of tactical decisions that are imperative for basement fire success. Basement fires can be some of the most dangerous and challenging fires we face. In the residential structure they can be especially dangerous, all you have to do is review many recent “close calls” and several line of duty deaths.
The run-of-the-mill basement fire possesses enough challenges for the Combat Ready Company, day in and day out. Some of these challenges include: the presence of lightweight components (eager to fail and drop you into the basement), the task of finding and maintaining control of the basement door, and the absolutely essential coordination of multiple hoselines to extinguish the fire.
Imagine if you added to the litany of issues in the challenge of finding a basement / cellar door. How long do you think that we would be searching for the steps that are located behind the storage doors of an entertainment center!
We recently discovered this “cosmetic covering” of a basement stair entrance during a walk-through of a local assisted living residential facility. This would certainly only add to the complexity of a basement fire in this structure.
As pictured below, the basement entrance appears to be part of the entertainment center. It only becomes obvious when you open the door. There are no indicator signs to what is behind the door. Imagine a firefighter attempting to enter and descend these stairs. Compounding this downward obstruction is the cheap construction of the open wooden steps that lead down, certain to fail quickly in fire conditions.
To be Combat Ready we must:
- Identify these areas in our response areas.
- Share the information with our fellow firefighters who may respond with us.
- Prepare for how we will overcome this obstacle and do your job – get to the seat of the fire!
Thanks to the firefighters at Fairfax Firehouse 10 for spotting this during a routine medical local call.
A view down the rickety steps
Looks like an ordinary run of the mill entertainment center....
This is actually the entrance to basement.
We updated this post from a few years back. There seem to be consistent tragedy that follow these lightweight plywood “I” beams. From a construction perspective, they are great! They often times hold more weight, are lighter, cheaper and easier to assemble than nominal lumber. For us firefighters, the plywood “I”, when exposed to fire conditions are potential killers. They silently wait for us to put our weight on them… advance our hose-lines over and crawl under them. We are testing thier fire ravaged and weakened strength. As we advance, we often cannot measure what strength is truly left in that “I”.
Think about your last fire. The thousands of sounds that surround you, there should be one that 
Lets face it, sometimes its complicated with bare hands!
the tailboard after a nice first due job. At the fire building there were two windows on the first floor (where the initial push was being made) that had a horizontal set of metal bars screwed into the wooden window frame. ” 
e in and out of traffic, come and go from home to work, saying hello and goodbye as the day goes on… Taking for granted that our complacent actions just keep us going throughout the day.
can run the fire that flashes over on the crew, the building suffers a partial collapse, God forbid, a brother goes down. We are now faced with a definitive Mayday situation but, have we prepared our personnel for this situation? Do they call a Mayday for a partial collapse? Do they know what a Mayday situation is? Or, are they waiting for someone else to call it?
it’s not the first thing in our minds. If we are thinking about the type of construction, typically its mentioned quickly and only when responding to a reported fire, in a size up statement.
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