I grew up in a nearby town, and I recall a small creek nearby with a limited supply of draft H2O, so this is probably why a second master stream was not deployed. The Catty and North Catty VFD's are probably the best trained VFD's in the area and it shows. Good job!!
How is spraying a steady mist on the smoke *above* the flames meant to help put a fire out? Is aiming at the brick siding (walls) of the structure meant to cool the fire down more efficiently? I see this happening often in these videos and I don't understand the professional techniques.
I'm not sure why you think they are spraying a "mist", but that deck gun is putting out a lot of water. I didn't see them spraying above the smoke, but a lot of times when that happens it's because they either see something we don't or they don't see what we see. That doesn't look like brick to me. It doesn't look anything like masonry-even CMU. But to answer the question about hitting brick with water, it doesn't do much, if any, good at all. One thing people don't realize is, brick "walls" are actually veneer. In other words, the brick is attached/anchored to a back up wall. A "back up" wall is made from wood or steel studs or is masonry such as concrete or CMU (block). Unless we're talking about structural brick, the brick you see on houses is for looks or ornamental purposes and offers absolutely no structural value whatsoever. In fact, it's the opposite. The problem firefighters have with brick is, the back up wall (the wall the brick veneer is anchored or "tied" to) is what's on fire unless that back up wall is masonry such as CMU or "cinder block" (not sure why people call it that). Once that back up wall is damaged, that brick veneer will come crashing down, easily killing anyone standing near it. I've seen firefighters hitting brick "walls" with water to prevent any possible collapse from going outward, forcing the brick to fall in towards the building. This is, of course, if they are not doing an interior attack near the brick wall.
@@ericweiler6571 If you didn't see the mist spray then I disregard whatever you might think about what you can't see. You may or may not be somewhat correct about the actual material I summarized as "brick" but it doesn't come to the point that it isn't the actual flame or on fire in layman's terms. I still don't understand how aiming at this wall material is meant to extinguish a flame inside that wall. It could have been a steel drum, my question remains the same.
@@puirYorick I think what you're seeing is the deck gun, and some nozzles will have a natural mist as the stream breaks, but the main bulk of the water was being directed towards the fire. Don't forget that there is also a need to protect the exposures too, and in some cases the stream will be directed to other parts to reduce the effect of radiated heat. The fact that the cladding was glowing red hot means that there is possibly quite a lot of radiated heat which may be why they cooled it just to make it safer for FFs to get closer, or it could just be that they lost control of the deck gun!
@@puirYorick In many cases the deck gun is used as first attack while hydrant lines are set up and the FFs organise themselves. I think in this case, there was little to save and exposures not necessarily and issue so they had some time to play with. On some other videos I've seen the deck gun has been used to really good effect whilst everything else is being set up around them.
Was really cool to see the deck gun, we don't see those used very often. Seemed to do a great job of keeping a ton of water on it while everyone else got set up.
Why in the hell were so many firefighters in the collapse zone? As long and as hot as that fire was, the structural integrity of that building was seriously compromised! There was no excuse or reason for this kind of risk! Back up and let the airiel tower do its job! Thank God no firefighters were injured during this escapade! 😒
