When a building burns, the community looks to its leaders and asks a single, fundamental question: did you do everything in your power to keep people safe? For the occupants who could not escape and the firefighters who went in after them, that question is not rhetorical. It is the foundation of a legal and […]
Read MoreAlbuquerque (NM) Fire Rescue Driver Matthew Klosterman — AFR’s 2025 Firefighter of the Year and chair of the department’s Pre-Incident Planning Committee — contributed a feature article to the FAC Supplement documenting how AFR rebuilt their high-rise program from the ground up. AFR serves a city with 50 high-rise buildings. Their high-rise SOG hadn’t […]
Read MoreYou’ve heard of skyscrapers. You may even be familiar with the operational doctrine built around them — high-rise protocols, standpipe operations, stair staging, elevator recall, air management above the seventh floor. But there is another building type quietly reshaping the American fire attack landscape — one with no standard definition in the model codes, no […]
Read More“Air is everything. Without it, search and rescue stops. Extinguishment stops. Overhaul stops. Salvage stops. Everything we do in the interior attack depends on breathable air reaching our firefighters.” — Mike Gagliano, President, Firefighter Air Coalition Somewhere in America tonight, a firefighter will enter a burning high-rise. They will carry between 15 and 30 minutes […]
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