One of the earliest Firefighter Line of Duty deaths that I learned intimately about was in 1977, and it was the death of Garden City Park (Long Island, NY) Captain Richard Provost. It happened just a few miles away from where I was a Firefighter (Manhasset-Lakeville) at the time. Captain Provost responded to a van on fire-no different than any of us ever have-and he died of traumatic injuries sustained while fighting that fire where illegally transported propane cylinders exploded and struck the 37 year old Captain.
Because our FD and GCPFD were neighboring, I was able to learn a lot from that loss. It taught me early that nothing at a fire scene is routine or normal-and that you never know what will be inside of a vehicle-or a structure, But lets focus on vehicles right now.
A few years later, I turned out with my crew and we had a van burning-with tans burning in the back. As we opened the doors to get more water on the fire-one of the burning tanks came rolling toward us so I grabbed it and tossed it. Not the best idea-as it rolled (burning) toward a travel agency. Fortunately we were able to stop my problem from getting worse-quickly. But between that, the fire in 1977-and so many more, we all gained deep respect for the vehicle fire.
Expect problems.
Throw loads of water.
Expect problems.
Throw more water.
Around 1400 hours today, Miami-Dade firefighters were working to put out what-yep-a van fire. As the MDFR members had the fire knocked, they opened the back door and the fire “took off” – fortunately they were bunkered up and on air-no exposed skin-so the gear did its job and the problem was taken care of. Detectives said a large amount of gasoline was being illegally and dangerously stored in the back of the van. Of course it was.
We never know what we will encounter-so expect that. There are places where the Firefighters would have had on a t-shirt and no SCBA handling that same fire and the results would have been much different.
Simply put-always wear all your stuff, size it up and think about “how bad could this get” – and then handle it. That’s what MDFR did today.
VIDEO OF THE ABOVE VEHICLE FIRE “TAKING OFF”
