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B Shifter
Thermal Imaging Cameras for Size-up (Part 2)
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This episode is hosted by Josh Blum, Erik Phillips, John Eadiccio, Grant Light, and John Vance.
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This episode was recorded on June 23, 2025.
Thermal imaging cameras reduce search time for victims by 75%, are 100% successful in helping firefighters exit buildings, and lessen time finding the seat of fire by 60%.
• Use the "Life, Layout, Fire" approach when viewing thermal images - always look for life (potential victims) first at the lower part of the screen
• Too many firefighters use TICs incorrectly by scanning like a video camera instead of methodically analyzing images
• Personal thermal imagers for nozzle firefighters are game-changers - they're now cheaper than cell phones
• "No firefighter has died with a TIC in their hand" - powerful statement about their life-saving potential
• TICs allow firefighters to flow water from a distance, targeting the fire more effectively than traditional methods
• Reading thermal images requires understanding subtle cues like the "dip in the V" pattern at ceiling level
• Being able to see flow paths helps identify fire location, especially when dealing with below-grade fires
• PPE is not a proximity suit - it's designed for only 17.5 seconds in a flash fire when brand new
• Survivable space exists even in fire rooms, but using TICs and flowing water quickly extends victims' chances
Contact us to learn more about thermal imaging training opportunities at the upcoming Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference.
Introduction to Interior TIC Operations
Speaker 2Welcome everyone to the B-Shifter podcast. We've got John Vance and Josh Bloom here today, along with an esteemed panel, as we continue to talk about supporting your decision-making using a thermal imaging camera. Last week was part one. We were talking really about exterior size-ups and using it on the outside of a building, and then today we're going to focus a little more on what we do interior and some of the trips, ticks, tricks and really what we're looking at, because I don't think a lot of times people really train on what they're looking at Before we bring the guys in here. Josh, you got anything for us this week. How are you doing in the greater Cincinnati area mid-summer?
Speaker 3Everything's good. We got a little early heat here. It's heat index supposed to be like 105 or 106 today, which is unusual for us. But it's the humidity. It's, you know, 95 degrees and, I think, 78 or 80-something percent humidity.
Speaker 2Downright swampy.
Speaker 3Yeah, but it is what it is. It's all good, you get used to it.
Speaker 2Yeah, you do. It's a wet heat, as opposed to everyone out in Arizona telling us it's a dry heat, it's. You know, I would rather now. I have never fought fires in Arizona but putting on turnout gear when it's this dew point and this kind of heat is especially miserable. I don't know how they do it in Arizona, I don't know if it's any better, but in the Midwest in the summertime, or the Florida guys too, like I don't know how they do it, I suppose, just like we do, you really have to watch your work cycles, but it is especially miserable in turnout here.
Speaker 2Well, today we have with us on the panel John Edichico. We introduced John last week. He's part of our safety program and the assistant chief of the Laughlin Fire Department in Laughlin, ohio, grant Light, retired lieutenant from the Cincinnati Fire Department, very active with the safety program, blue card lead instructor, multiple presenter at the 2025 blue card hazard zone conference. He's getting the free footlong sub out of any of us, I think, for uh being a part of so many classes. Yeah, that's that and, by the way, that's how you're getting compensated this year. And then, uh, coming in uh with us today too is eric phillips. Eric's a very busy engine captain from Las Vegas, blue card lead instructor, and he also happens to live out in Utah where he's the fire chief of his local community fire department. So varying ranges of experience with these guys, a lot of experience, but in just different circumstances, that they're going to be able to share with you today.
Speaker 2And today we're really going to focus on what we're seeing on the inside. I think John Grant and Josh last week gave us a lot of great tips on what we're actually looking at and also dispelling some myths and really, I think, great motivation to train more on the thermal imager. We introduce people to that in our safety training that we do, so there's an opportunity for people to learn there, especially this year at the Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference. But get your hands on it, learn what you're looking at, and I think when we hear from John Grant, josh and Eric today, it'll really be the motivation for us to get a little deeper into what we're looking at.
Speaker 2So where do you want to start today, john? I'm going to bounce it over to you and we're going to look at some images. We invite you, if you're just listening to this, to follow along on our YouTube channel B Shifter on YouTube, because we will have some images we're going to describe to you what we're looking at. So if you're audio only, you'll be able to get something out of it, but you'll get a little bit more if you're following along on our YouTube channel. So what's up first today, john?
Speaker 4Let's talk about why we should use it. Well, big thing it is going to reduce our time inside searching for victims by 75%. That's a study done out of Melbourne, australia. Michael Witte did one in 2010, and he dove deep into it. You know 75% reduction in time that we spend searching for people, whether that be a victim or a downed firefighter. So when we say we're for them, we're, we're, we're truly, if we're using the thermal imager, we're going to reduce that time. So if it takes us four minutes, we're down to a minute. So diving into it, you know he also looked at firefighters being lost and disoriented, which is 18 percent of the firefighter injuries on the fire ground. When we are lost, disoriented, you know we want to go back to our what we've been taught in school. You know right hand search, left hand search, left-hand search, follow the hose line, stay on a wall, all that stuff. But when we get off of walls, we are able to use that thermal imager, as long as we have it fully charged, ready to go and understand what we're looking at. His study showed 100% success rate in getting out of a building. So that's a big, big takeaway. So, reduction in time to finding the seat of the fire 60%. So we're creating an environment that we're putting fires out faster, we're getting to victims quicker and making it safer for everybody involved.
Speaker 4So that's the big reason why I think that's why we should use them. So I think that's where we should start. So on the picture that we have up on the screen, we have a little acronym that we like to use and it's life, layout and fire. So every time we pick up that thermal imager, we want to look at and say those three words inside of our head and go what are we looking at? Because if we're just looking at the screen, just to look at it, and not have a process to gather the information, process the information and make decisions based on that information, we're not doing anybody any good. So if we're looking at that picture, life lay out fire and we always put life first, so we're going to stay low. That's where life should be, is lower in the screen. So we're going to try and keep that in the highest sensitivity mode possible by staying underneath that heat.
Reducing Search Time with Thermal Imaging
Speaker 4So I believe we started talking about, you know, looking for the blobs last week. And you know, if we start looking at this picture, do we see any blobs. That's the first indication that we should be investigating something. So on this picture it's on the bottom left-hand corner. There's a blobby-looking thing in the grayscale that we need to investigate. Put our hands on. From there we got a pretty decent idea of the layout. I've got a clear floor. I can see all the way to the baseboards. On the other side of the room I've got a little cutout and a couple of doors or things that are man-made, and then, when I get to the fire aspect, I've got higher heat to the right in the reds, transitioning to oranges and moving to yellows. So I have that whole picture. I can process that all in about three to five seconds. What am I going to make a decision about? There's a blob. I'm going to move over to that. Get my hands on that.
Speaker 5So, john, you mentioned the life, layout and fire, and that's the importance, right. That's what we're after, right, to understand what starts out to be the most important thing, which is that life. When you keep saying blob we talked about it in the last, but some people may not have seen that episode or heard that episode If you look at that picture, you can see something that just looks weird, right, and you talked about the man-made Everything generally. Everything man-made has got straight lines and right-hand corners and things like that, and it really helps you to determine what's not so important in the picture, right, especially if you're looking for life, and then people generally would look and we jokingly call blob, but just like a weird shape, right, we don't have hard right edges and we don't have right angles and we don't have things like that. So, the ability to quickly look over and see, at the bottom left corner of that picture, something that just looks weird Could it be a pile of blankets? Could it be just about anything that isn't a human? Yes, but it also is something that we should investigate, right? That just draws us into that. And then the other things now.
Speaker 5Now you're looking for layout, and that's where we are looking for the man-made items generally right To see, like where there's tables and doors and windows and couches and things like that. A quick idea what the room layout is. So if our camera were to die right, then we would have a pretty good idea of what's laid out in that room in front of us. And then, obviously, when you say fire, the color really helps determine that right. You can see that the redder is on the far right, upper right side, so that's the hotter area of the fire, and then it turns to the oranges and down to the yellows as you move left across the screen. So where do you think the fire would be right?
Speaker 4Yeah, I completely agree and we'd be remiss if we didn't say it. We can't scan it like a video camera, right? We'd miss that odd-shaped object in the bottom left-hand corner. You know, if we're just scanning around because you know it's going to be quick, yes, yeah, scanning doesn't work.
Speaker 5also, and one thing when you train it you kind of miss that. When you get in a real environment all of a sudden, you're going to have an SCBA face piece on. You're going to have, depending on how thick the smoke is, a lot of smoke between the end of your SCBA face piece and the beginning of the screen of the camera. That is going to make things harder to see. And then that camera, if you pull it in closer because of the thick smoke now you're going to have a vision problem because it could be for some people of age. It starts to get a little out of focus the closer you get it. So all those things stack up against you and if you're just panning around, you're not going to pick out the little nuances that you really need to be able to see and figure out in your brain and process and make a decision about. If you're scanning all over the place, if you're just wildly panning around, you're going to miss some stuff and you might miss the most important thing.
Speaker 1I think one of the things that when you're conducting your training using these TIC cameras, you got to kind of explain the why it's in this fashion of life, layout and fire. When we know more about the TIC cameras that we're personally using every single day, we tend to use them different based on the technology. So if you have an older camera, that delay from switching from high to low sensitivity is going to be drastically longer versus a new, say C camera. That's pixel for pixel. So knowing your equipment and really knowing the why it's doing what it's doing will help us inside understand and interpret pixels. So knowing your equipment and really knowing the why it's doing what it's doing will help us inside understand and interpret everything that we're seeing through that TIC camera.
Speaker 1We think we're just going to take it off the rig, go inside, whip it around a few times. I think we're going to be able to interpret everything. We're just fooling ourselves. So the more training that we can get to on this subject, but really diving into why is the camera built the way it is, we're going to have more success inside finding that victim faster, knowing the layout of the structure inside and then finding that fire and putting water on it quicker than we ever have, because we actually know how to use our camera instead of just whipping around because it's something cool that we have, eric, I think right now I think it'd be a good time just to just a brief little piece on the.
Speaker 3you know one of the fires you and I talked about, where you know pretty significant smoke condition with like heavy content condition, but your firefighter has their own camera and used it and it was like how'd you know to go right there and, like he was a company officer, while you were doing what you were doing, they were able to use the camera to find the fire and navigate quickly to the fire.
Life, Layout and Fire Assessment
Speaker 1Yeah, so we had a fire and I couldn't be more proud of our firefighters on Engine 4. Middle of the night the nightclub fire was arson had some gasoline put it on some cushions. So a big open floor plan with a restaurant that was kind of attached to it, with booths, heavy smoke conditions, thick black all the way down on the floor coming out of the weep holes on the stucco. They went in about five to eight feet and through all the training and talking that we're doing with TIG cameras, they've actually gone out on their own and purchased some of those situational cameras and because of that they found the value in training and a few little fires of you know, this camera can help me out being on the nozzle, and so this particular fire. Obviously visibility is zero and they go in about five to eight feet and they pick up their tick camera and they're able to identify life layout and fire. And they pick up their tick hammer and they're able to identify life layout and fire and from that position they're flowing their hose stream approximately 30 to 40 feet through the structure, hitting that fire from essentially what would be the front door. Now we were probably all taught in the fire service don't flow water till you see the flames, and there's some people still today that believe in that. But we talk about flowing and moving. And how can you flow and move if you don't know where that heat is coming from? And so, because they have a TIC camera, they take it out, they are able to see that the fire is up and, to the left a little bit, they start flowing water. By the time I get to them, which they're only about five to eight feet inside of the structure, that fire is knocked down and the heat is kicked all the way back to the structure. You had some residual heat over to the right side I'm thinking the fire's over there, because when I got to their position, that's what I could see is the heat over on the right side, which that was just residual heat trapped in the restaurant section. After talking with them and trying to figure out where we're going to attack this fire, it was then communicated and figured out that they had already knocked it back and the fire was actually on the left side. And so, being able to have that TIC camera, being able to interpret when to use it and how to use it, we're able to put water on the fire faster from a farther location, and we often say, you know, from a safe location. Well, we're inside five to eight feet flowing water and now starting to flow and move to the seat of that fire, putting that fire out quicker than ever and, in this instance, had a great result from it.
Speaker 1You know we talk about TIC cameras. Why would they go by that? That's the fire department. Well, I can tell you a few things why my guys wouldn't did it. One, you spend more money on a cell phone than you do on this personal tick camera. And two, no firefighter has died with a tick in their hand, and you think about that. For a second, no firefighter has died with a tick in their hand. That's pretty powerful. And the third thing I want you to think about when we're talking about this interior size up using a TIC camera is we generally have one TIC camera on every engine or apparatus.
Speaker 1When you go to the scene, who generally holds that TIC camera?
Speaker 1It's usually the officer.
Speaker 1Well, let me ask you, in your company, where does the officer usually at?
Speaker 1Is he in the front or is he in the back?
Speaker 1Now, I'm lucky enough to have four-person staffing, so it's a little easier for me to be closer to the nozzle.
Speaker 1But if you run with two or you run with three, what is that officer really doing?
Speaker 1He's a little more hands-on because there's only two people going inside if they're first in. I've often laughed when I was a young firefighter thinking why is the officer behind me with a tick camera and I'm crawling into this building and I'm doing it blindly? Those days should be over. We should never go into a structure sending the nozzle person in without a tick camera, because they're going in blind and the person behind them. I mean, I guess we could lie to each other today and say they're always right by the nozzle person, but we know that that's not the case, because we got to hump hose, we got to do a lot of other things.
Speaker 1So if everybody has a TIG camera and able to use it to to make some decisions on that nozzle, they're going to be able to find that life layout and fire a lot faster because the person behind them doesn't have that TIG camera. So I would I would highly encourage everybody to look at that. They're cheap enough now. You spend more money on a cell phone than this TIC camera and this will greatly enhance your interior firefighting operations, with one key aspect You've got to be trained on how to use it, the limitations, what it can do and what it can't do, because it can't do everything.
Speaker 1As Grant and John said earlier, when you see that blob like in the lower left corner, you got to get some hands on it. You can't just think you know what that is, but you've still got to use it as a tool. It's not, it doesn't do everything for you. You still got to get hands on what you're doing. So that was probably the best fire that we've had to date, with success using the TIC cameras, with our firefighters, our nozzle person using that TIC, and it had a great outcome.
Speaker 2So I I chuckled when you talked about people having their own personal thermal imager camera. I was in a class about 25 years ago with chief gold fetter where, uh, somebody got lost inside a structure cause they didn't have a flashlight, and and the, and and the and the guy refused to buy a flashlight. Um, because, uh, he just was against, you know, spending of his own money. And chief goldfeder said so you're gonna die inside a fire because the bastards won't buy you a flashlight. And and I, I, you know we can now say the same thing about our thermal imagers, because the technologies come so far and it's probably just about as much as those flashlights were, uh, 25 years ago when that new technology came out. So it's kind of interesting how we come around to that but they'll buy it.
Speaker 3they'll buy their own halogen and super secret mall that's got their initials on it, their own fingerprints in it, so they can hold it right and all of that Custom forged. Won't commit to some technology that'll actually make a big difference and help us do our job and make it safer for everybody.
Speaker 2What are we going to look at next?
Speaker 4John, we're going to look at the stairwell from the second floor. Okay, so in this video we're looking down a stairwell and if we look at this properly, we need to understand grayscales. There's about 300 different colors of gray and our eyes can only see so many of them. But when we're looking at this, the first thing I notice is that black rush of air coming in on the bottom side. So there's a flow path that we're connecting and allowing the fire to grow by keeping the door open, and if we look at the top side of this, we see the hot gases rising. Look at the top side of this. We see the hot gases rising. So if we're just pointing and moving around like we're a video camera, we're going to miss all that movement. So this is a short clip that we took, but you can clearly see all that gas and we can get a good idea.
Speaker 4Life layout fire. There's no life that I can see that needs investigating. I got get a good idea. Life layout fire. There's no life that I can see that needs investigating. I got a really good idea. The clarity of this picture or the video, is really good, to where I can see the railing, the stairs go down and to the right and that's where the fire is. And you know, if I can see that, I'm going to be in the cooler air on the bottom side as I'm making my descent down those stairs and understanding that if I don't do anything about those gray, white looking wisps of heat energy, that's going to turn into color eventually. So I've got to be really cognizant of this. If we're going into a basement fire, what's the flow path look like when the back window fails? Is that going to change what I'm going to see at the top of that stairwell? So if I see a difference in cooler air coming in on that, I know there's something else going on.
Speaker 2Anybody have any comments about this picture or anything else that we should be looking at?
Personal Thermal Imaging for Nozzle Firefighters
Speaker 5I think it's a great video, just that you can actually see the cool air being drawn in and the hot air going up the staircase, Like you can really see it, like you, you know it's not uh, it's just so defined. I think it's. It's a great. It's a great video to see the drawing of the cool air, the darker, cooler air getting drawn in and then the hotter obviously much hotter rising up gases, um, going up and they're. They're white, it's the, it's the old white, black-white. They're not even so much in the grayscale, they're at both ends of the spectrum. The white is obviously the hottest thing there and then the black cool air being drawn in is the coolest thing in there, and it just defines it so well. It's just not something you see very often.
Speaker 1I think one of the things you look at this picture here identify is the size, location of the fire, location obviously being one of the key factors in this picture that you see.
Speaker 1If you didn't have a tick camera and that smoke is banked down to any level, how quick would you identify that there was a staircase going down which indicates that we have a fire below us? I don't care if you're in basement land or you are in a place that has two, three, four, six stories of buildings. Anytime that we can identify quick that there's fire below us, that's going to be a huge red flag that we need to evaluate those interior conditions and see if we're in the right attack position. You're not able to do that if the smoke is of any significance without that TIC camera there. It's a late thought. Now, using the camera appropriately, you're going to identify that much quicker, which is better for everybody involved in this instance. I don't care if you're talking about victims, the building or us. The quicker we can identify that fire, that that fire is below us, the better off that we're going to be.
Speaker 2All right, John, our next picture here. What are we looking at and what should we be looking at?
Speaker 4Well, I think I need to go back to what Grant said earlier about this picture. We're looking at this through the lens. That's just a couple of inches big. Our face mask is going to be suited up and have moisture on it. Our eyes, as we're getting older, get worse and worse. So as we're looking at this, we're looking at heat energy in the gray scale again and how that really is being reflected onto the building materials. So we're looking at that top side of the hallway. So we're looking down the hallway. We did our scan life layout fire. There's no life. I got a straight hallway. It's about 10 to 15 feet long and then it tees off. It goes into a room.
Speaker 4So when I'm looking at this and I'm looking at the fire side of things, there's nothing really to tell me what the fire is. Is it big, is it small? Because there's not a lot of heat energy being transmitted. But what I'm seeing is a small dip towards the direction of the fire, where it is, and it's to the left. So one of the notes that we make when we teach with this is if you have the availability of either the survey mode or the search and rescue mode, depending on the brand of the camera. You may want to flip to one of those modes to get kind of a verification If you're well-trained in the operations of that camera and you can do it really quickly with a gloved hand.
Speaker 4Perfect If not. But you have to look for this little dip in what I call the V. So it's dropping down. You know the V pattern of the fire growth. So I'm looking at that little drop in the V at the bottom tip, at the top of the ceiling level. So that's going to indicate where the most heat energy is coming from and that's where I need to go and start my investigation or my suppression. So again, using survey mode, we may see a little bit different colors in that, because we're not seeing it right now. It's getting pretty bright white. So it's getting closer to 300 degrees, which you know if we change over to survey mode it drops that temperature to 150 degrees. We may see some colors that would indicate exactly where we need to go. And this is great for investigative modes where we can't find the seat. We've got something going on. We've got a smells and bells kind of thing going on and there's just not a lot of energy in the space. That's causing us great concern, but there's something that we need to investigate.
Speaker 1To get a little bit deeper into this, I think when you look at this picture and you talk about it from a training aspect obviously we're talking about ticks You're going to want to put that tick down, make sure that you got the smoke conditions that you're seeing and their matches, what you're seeing on your tick camera. So we're going to assume that visibility is not the best. We're not going to be able to really see where that seat of the fire is. We pick up our tick camera and we see this. We obviously have some heat current, some fires to the left, so what does that mean for your nozzle person can identify this coming down a hallway early now. That firefighter on the nozzle is going to be able to make some decisions of how do we flow and move flowing water using this in a T pattern because it's a hallway right there again at the end of getting water into that occupancy space as soon as possible. We know from all the studies that it drastically drops the temperature, even if we can start to bank that hose stream because now we know where that fire is and get that water moving in that compartment space earlier from a much farther distance.
Speaker 1This is also going to help your firefighter talk about what side of the hose line, of the hose of your body. Is the hose going to be on? It's going to be on the left side or the right side? Well, because, uh, you're, you're going down this hallway. You're going to be able to see that at a much earlier time, but that's a firefighter that's got to make that decision. If he doesn't have a TIC camera, he's just guessing where this is at. It's smoky, it's hot. Well, yeah, there's a fire. That's all going to be there, but you really can't indicate where the seat of that fire is, which on this one it's to the left.
Speaker 1So I'd want my firefighter to make an adjustment to have that nozzle on the right side of your body, getting that hose stream and breaking that pattern up to get to cool that environment, which is better, for if there's any victims in there, it's better for the victims. We're starting to cool that space down, which makes it better for us. Again, I said it earlier, we are all taught not to spray water in this instance. You've been in the fire service any amount of time. That's what we were all taught. That was the best information we had at the time. Now we know the science and the research and the data that that's not the case. We want to start flowing water from way back in this hallway because we can identify that using the camera.
Speaker 5The interesting thing I think with this picture is just the nuance of just when you look at that. It's not a big giant yellow stripe or an orange stripe or a red stripe. It's not an arrow saying fire. This way it's noticing that if you imagine you know fire investigation that starts with a V and comes up, you can see that that's going down to the ground on the left side. It's aiming that way and just picking up that little bit. It's not a lot, just picking up that little thing, but a smart fireman can take that little bit of information and, as you said, Eric can make the right decision on which side he wants the nozzle on and which side he's aiming for when he goes down that hallway. It's not going to be a big sign. It's being able, smart enough, to pick up the little signs, which will make a big difference.
Speaker 1I'll go back to one of the things I said earlier. If your nozzleman doesn't have a tick camera with you or with them on going in first, and that company officer is behind them by any amount of distance, how is he making decisions? There would be nothing to indicate the flow of water, because this is all going to be dark, black smoke that is starting to bank down chest waste, going down to the floor at some level. You're not going to see that fire starting to roll out there. You're just seeing some heat currents from a distance. You're not going to see that with a naked eye. So think again where is the company officer in this scenario? Well, it's not going to be right up with the nozzleman showing them the tick camera. Depending on the number of people having a crew, even with the three people going inside on a four-person crew, I'm not right next to the nozzle person. He has got to start to think and be the leader, if you will, in there.
Speaker 1I'm going to be there with the decision-making tick behind him, looking at some things and guiding. But that nozzleman makes so many decisions up front when we push them through the threshold of the door. Make so many decisions up front when we push them through the threshold of the door. They've got to have all the tools available to them to start making better decisions and doing their own interior size up. I can't do my job and tell them what side to put the hose on and the fires to the left. That is something they can pick up a tick with, put it back down and then move forward, blow some water and move on from there and reevaluate it as they get closer to see that fire. But we've got to give them the tools that we're going to put them in the building first. Let's give them the tools to be the most successful and make better decisions.
Speaker 5Yeah, put them in the right position, empower them to be able to make decisions, and then the whole team gets better.
Speaker 2All right, our next video. What are we going to look at next, john? All right, our next video.
Analyzing Heat Patterns and Flow Paths
Speaker 4What are we going to look at next, john? This one is a rollover high heat energy coming out of the fire room. I think Eric said it best earlier when we give our firefighters the tools to make suppression happen at a further distance, a safer distance, who's that going to be better for Us? The building them right, everybody involved, you know. So if we could start seeing these things a lot earlier on and having it in our nozzle firefighters face, you know I don't necessarily want them inside that screen nonstop. I think that's where we get lost a little bit and they don't need to be navigating being a way finder, you know, going through the building nonstop with the thermal imager in their, in their face. They need to look at it, process the information, put it down and move towards the target.
Speaker 4And you know, in this instance, you know the big thing is start tooling from. You know, across the room, use the reach of the stream. We can deflect water through that space to get some water to the sea of the fire, depending on our path of travel to this. But we need to start cooling this down Eventually. All that smoke and what we're not seeing is the potential, and that's not. What we're not seeing is the potential. What's the thick black smoke that's around us that's going to light off, and what's the tentability of our gear inside of that space? So we need to start cooling this from an earlier position across the room, use the reach of the stream and start flowing water and going down to water mapping aspects of our job.
Speaker 3When you're looking at that video, blan, and we see the edge where the yellow and that gray scale starts on the back away from where the fire is in the room, where it's red, where we're starting to get that 800 degrees. So when we're looking right there, you know that that's that breadcrumb trail, if you will. That kind of leads you to that path of where the fire is. So, yeah, I can point and see right where the fire is in the room, but we may very well have fires in multiple rooms or it's traveled down a hallway, right. So using the camera and navigating, kind of a point to point thing, what am I looking at and then what am I going to do about it? So in this case I could start flowing water, like John said, from a distance.
Speaker 3But even looking further at that picture through that door, the most energy is coming from the right-hand side, right.
Speaker 3So if I'm talking about deflecting water into that room and trying to get water in on directly onto that seat of the fire, I could cool what's overhead, get rid of that energy that's over my head, continue to flow and move until I get into the space and then have a pretty good idea that I believe that the fire is to the right.
Speaker 3You know, inside of, inside of that room, when I actually cross or get to that, you know threshold, so you know, just keeping in mind, uh, using the camera sometimes as an officer, like when I get to this position to guide the stream, even like if I'm using the header or the doorframe to get water into the space from further away, the nozzleman's not going to probably see that once they start flowing, but the company officer could guide that right. So you know, as we go through this TIC series, we have plenty of videos that show that, as far as what does that look like? Kind of a water application that's TIC, guided, if you will, by the company officer. You know, move the line to the left, move the lines to the right, you know whatever, so that we're actually getting it into the space. Far too often we flow blindly and aren't really making the impact we could because we're not using the tools that we have available.
Speaker 4But you know we talk about it a lot when we're teaching a safety class. Just put the thermal imager in front of the nozzleman's face, right, if I tell you to turn, go left, two inches, go right, two inches, go up and down, you know you're probably going to get frustrated with me because I'm trying to probably micromanage you a little bit. But if I just throw it in front of your face and let you do the work, and then that allows us as company officers a little time to think, make a decision, what are we going to say over the radio, give a good can, report and think about what's coming next? I got the fire knocked down. I probably need another company in here Get some hooks and finish this off. Or do I need another hand line in here because it's overtaking my stream? So it gives us a little opportunity to take a little bit of a tactical pause, if you will, inside of the building. So throw it in front of the nozzlement's face and he can do the rest of the work.
Speaker 5Yeah, like you said, it's just not blind spraying, josh. It's now targeted, targeted application of water, which means the fire is going to go out faster, the building is going to cool faster, all those things are going to happen faster, which is, you know, much better for us and for the people we're in there trying to find and to save Right. So so, taking that moment, the nozzle guy only has two hands. Even if he has his own tick, he only has two hands Right, so he's got them on the hose. If I can just reach out and hold that in front of his face for a few seconds, he can see exactly where the water's going, what it's hitting, what it's doing, and then bam, this, this goes out much faster.
Speaker 2All right, john. What are we seeing next?
Speaker 4All right. So just what we were just talking about, uh, with with cooling, with the hose stream. So we're going to look at flowing down at the fire and what we're going to do is he's going to sit there and paint the room dark. You know, in this video we allow it to rebound a little bit to show them what what fire is going to do when we don't hit the seat of the fire. As soon as he puts water on that space, it darkens down that room. But as soon as he shuts down the line and doesn't move, it starts to rebound because there's no water really getting towards the seat of the fire.
Speaker 4So, to our point, we want to continually flow down that hallway, start flowing as soon as we can identify where we're flowing at and keep going until we get to the sea of the fire. Otherwise, it's just going to keep rebounding and we're not going to do anybody any good, because all we're doing is cooling the space that we're occupying right now and we just need to keep moving down the hall. And it's a really good tool to see you know where that guy is targeting his hose line when we can put it in front of his face. So, to our point. Put it in front of the guy's face and let him see where his paintbrush is going.
Speaker 5I think, yeah, I think this one shows really well where your water application, how it changes everything on that thermal imager. With this guy hitting that, all he would have to do when you were talking about movement and flowing is just go in and make the turn and put the seat of the fire out. But no, we're never said, we're not saying that the thermal imagers are the end, all be all. The end, all be all is getting wire on the seat of the fire, where the actual fire is Right. But but this allows you to see exactly where it's coming from and allows you to see the the effect of what you're doing with that nozzle. And it's plain as day when you can see it like this.
Targeted Water Application with TIC
Speaker 4So you know, we, we go out traveling all over and we asked the question what is a survivable space, what's the definition of a survivable space? And we we get some mixed opinions, I should say, about that. You know, what we've come to realize is that there's some science that's behind survivable space. So what the scientists say 250 degrees or less, 5,000 parts per million of CO for five minutes or less, and then 12.5% oxygen or more. When I look at this picture of that space, is there survivable space? So in the research that we've kind of dissected and included into the safety program, we can justify there may be some survivable space in there. Well, where is it? It's going to be really, really low. Probably three, maybe four feet off the ground is the max that that's going to be. So is there survivable space inside of a fire room? Absolutely, there can be.
Speaker 4There's a great video out of Governor's Island when they did the, the, the, uh, that inner search. You know smoke pouring out of a window. You know at the one foot level there was some potential survivable space. So do we need to get in there and put this fire out and search the building? Absolutely, there is survivable space inside of that room. So it's going to be low and that's why we need to keep our thermal imager as low as possible, keep it out of that heat. Depending on the brand, the Seek camera works very well with every independent pixel, is working in high and low sensitivity. But if we don't have that and we have something else that switches modes, we want to stay below that. So that way we have the best opportunity to get a victim on that camera and get our hands on them and get them out of the building.
Speaker 3And this picture just lines right up with everything else you guys have talked about so far. Right, like it should not look like that for very long at all. We should have a hand line and we should be changing those conditions, like immediately, which is just going to make the conditions better everywhere for everybody. So, yeah, the color thing, you know, catches somebody's eye. Well, that's one of those things we and, depending on what mode your camera's in and what camera you have, with the camera in this mode that it's in, right here, if I'm seeing that it should not look like that for very long, I should be taking it right back to the gray scale, right? So, just as we're lining all of that up and we're talking about survival space, you know, the faster we get water on the fire and take the energy out of it, we're hoping to maintain and create that survivable space.
Speaker 2Would you guys say the survivable space is where the gray scale or the black and white is. And if we've got a room that's floor to ceiling yellow, orange, red is that not survivable space? Is there a rule of thumb that we can use, just by simply looking at this picture on where that survivable space is?
Understanding Survivable Space
Speaker 3I don't think you can rely on a camera. I think you can use the camera as a tool, but I think we all need to remember that the camera is telling us nothing. The camera is actually providing us a snapshot of, and then we have to process that right. So I would not use a camera to say there's survivable space or not. And you go back to the example that John used about the governor's island. If you looked at the window of that, it's like there's nobody alive in there.
Speaker 3But we think about where victims are found, and they're found on the floor. Yeah, I mean it could be survivable if that's where they are. Survivable space, right. And then I know we're talking about a tech thing, but then, keeping in mind that don't make it worse. Then If you find a victim, then don't raise them up to the two or three foot level either. You keep them low and keep them in the survivable space because, yeah, they were breathing a bit on their own, but then we, we brought them up to the you know three foot level when we drug them out and exposed them to all of that. And that's just another reason why we, why putting the fire out and making conditions better helps as well, because if I can cool that space, then I have a little bit more flexibility when I'm removing somebody.
Speaker 1Also, I think when you talk about survival space in that picture, time is one of those factors. We don't know how long that room has been looking like that or where that victim is in the room or how long it's been like that. But I can tell you one thing If we have a hose line with us and we see these conditions, there's one thing we can do to make that better for everybody flow water. And you do that by recognizing this quickly and having that nozzle with you for the one thing that will make that room better, and that's to cool it. And we use water to cool that room. So I got to say one thing and it is what it is.
Speaker 1If we go into a fire and we come out and our stuff is all burned up, or we come out of there and we say that was a hot fire, holy crap, I was burning and we had a hose line with us, you're an idiot, and I say that because we have the one thing that will take care of those and, using this TIC camera, you think of a victim that's laying on that floor in there. What do they want to do? They want to be cooled down and the sooner that all these other pictures that we saw from as a stairwell or going down the hallway. We see, the faster we can see the heat and we start flowing water. It cools them down and that's what that victim's wanting they want to be cooled down and removed out of there. So when we talk about survivability yet there's a lot of factors that go into it, but the earlier we can identify it and earlier do something about it to make it better, now we're actually making a difference.
Speaker 5Eric, I think you hit the nail on the head. What's missing is the time, right. How long has that condition been like that and how long have they been under that? Because there's still radiated heat radiating down on them. Um, and also those numbers.
Speaker 5Um, just so you know, we all understand, those numbers were behind a closed door, in a room behind a closed door, right. So the, the two, 55,000, let you know, co and the and the oxygen level at 12.5. Is it then? Is is the survival space behind a closed door? So if they're laying on that floor in there and they're getting radiated by that heat, that's, you know, 450, 500 at the ceiling, things are going to, you know, they may not have a lot of time, even though where they're laying is actually only 100 degrees or 150,. We've still got to make a change by either getting them out of there or putting water on the fire and usually it starts with putting water on the fire as you move down the hallway from a distance and then getting close enough to move them out of there to a place of refuge, so you can make some better decisions and I mean we should always be looking for victims, right?
Speaker 3like I mean, we're looking for fire and we're looking for victims, so the whole survivable space thing. It's like, well, we're looking for fire and we're looking for victims, so the whole survivable space thing. It's like, well, we're not making a decision whether it's survivable or not. If we come across somebody in that space and they're on the floor, we're going to remove them. It's like that is not. It is not up to us to decide if they survive.
Speaker 3It is up to us to do everything in our power, starting with putting the fire out, getting rid of the problem, and then removing them from the space. We're isolating from the space, right? So I mean, yeah, there's a. I mean, if somebody's, if they're in a chair and it's like they're part of the chair, it's like, yeah, that's, that's not survivable. But you know all of the rest of that. It's like where, if we come upon a victim or we find a victim, we're going to, yes, we're going to rebuild them, and then the best thing we can do we've said it a hundred times already is put the fire out.
Speaker 2All right, great information once again, always learning something from you guys that this has been good on our interior operations with TIC. I think we could do a part three of this coming up, where we talk more about the construction features, fire protection systems and those types of things. So we'll definitely come back and continue this conversation, tapping into the expertise that you guys have on all of this. It's been great, thank you. Before we go, you guys want to do a Timeless Tactical Truth. Sure, all right, here we go. Timeless Tactical Truth from Alan Brunicini. And today's Timeless Tactical Truth is your PPE is not a proximity suit. I think people don't know the limitations of their turnout gear. What can what we look at on the tick tell us about survivable space for us and what we're able to get into? Because our PPE is not a proximity suit.
Speaker 5Yeah, our PPE is structural firefighting gear right, and it's designed and tested and all that kind of stuff. But everybody's got to remember when they test that gear to show what its ability is to resist heat and heat transfer into the inside, it's brand new gear, right. It's tested as brand new and every day you wear it, every day it hangs up, gets sunlight on it, every day it gets dirty and then gets washed. And gets dirty, gets washed. It's ability to do its job to the fullest. It gets degraded and degraded over time. So we got to remember that it is not a proximity suit and it's also a. It's not a suit of armor, right, it is just. It is fire gear that's doing the best it can. But we've got to be smart enough not to think that it is more than it is.
Speaker 4Yeah, we talk about this a lot in the safety program. Right, it's designed for 17 and a half seconds, brand new, right out of the wrapper, in a flash fire, in a flash fire. Well, what happens when you wear that one time and you wash it, and wash it, and wash it five, six times, just to get it loose to wear it the first time? It reduces the ability to allow that heat to get to your skin, so you're getting burns a lot quicker. You know, we joke 111 degrees is all it takes for somebody to feel pain on their skin. So make a decision when you're feeling pain. So we have to understand that the best thing we can do, put water on fire, keep ourselves cooler, you know, and keep that thermal insult away from our skin. It is not a proximity suit by any means.
Speaker 3The level of protection of PPE goes down drastically as we continue to be bombarded by energy inside the building. Longer we're exposed, your gear is going to perform better, if something happens in the first minute, than it is. You've been exposed to three or four hundred degrees for how five minutes, and then something happens right, right, so already heat saturated yeah, it's a cumulative effect.
Speaker 4From five fires ago, water for the win.
Speaker 1It's a cumulative effect from five fires ago Water for the win.
Speaker 2Well, we'll leave it right there. Josh Bloom, john Adachiko, eric Phillips and Grant Light thanks so much for being on the B-Shifter podcast today. We appreciate your time, gentlemen, and sharing all that you did. We will continue this conversation on down down the road until next time. Thanks so much for listening to V shifter.