Latest Blogs

When the Air Runs Out: Buildings, Bottle Brigades, and the Worst Day of a Civilian’s Life Somewhere in your city, there is a building someone is sleeping in tonight. It could be a 22-story residential tower, a 900,000-square-foot distribution warehouse, or a big-box retail center the size of four city blocks laid on its side. […]

Supplemental and incidental energy fire hazards in mid-rise, high-rise, and large-footprint structures present a growing risk that most fire departments have not yet fully accounted for. Part 1 of this series established the fundamentals: primary energy hazards — the purpose-built electrical rooms, utility vaults, and switchgear spaces that distribute power through a large building, and […]

After a devastating theater fire in 1903, it took more than 150 years to mandate water standpipes in buildings — and firefighters cannot afford to wait that long for air standpipes. This municipal liability series from the Firefighter Air Coalition examines the legal case for the Firefighter Air Replenishment System (FARS), a code-compliant air standpipe […]

Energy driven fires in high-rise and large-scale buildings are one of the most under-trained threats in the fire service. When a building’s own electrical infrastructure becomes the fuel, the standard structural firefighting playbook fails — and the clues that could save a crew are often missed in the first five minutes on scene. Chris G. […]

There is a moment in every high-rise fire that changes everything. It happens quietly, beneath the noise of the fireground. A low-air alarm sounds inside a mask. A crew transmits a Mayday. A civilian on the fourteenth floor is still waiting when the interior attack is pulled back. That moment is not an accident. It […]