COLUMBIA, S.C. — Capt. Trey Smith has been with the Charlotte Fire Department for 25 years, but what he saw in a firefighter training program last year blew him away.
"There are always new technologies out there that you can use to make things better, and safer," Smith said.
The training effort going on all week at the fire academy in Columbia, S.C., is called "Kill the Flashover," and it's really two parts.
The first is about the waste that comes from throwing thousands of gallons of water on a house fire.
"It's wasteful and very inefficient," said Bill Oke, a former fire marshal who works with the program.
Flashover is when flammable material suddenly ignites in an enclosed area. The blast of flame and scalding steam from the fire hoses often injures firefighters.
The training aims to show firefighters how adding chemicals into their water tanks limits the danger by putting out fires faster.
Most furniture is coated with water repellant products like Scotchgard. Such products hinder firefighters because water from their hoses rolls off the burning furniture instead of soaking in. Many of the new chemical additives for fire suppression solve that problem.
The chemical additives being demonstrated were not expensive to use.
The Albemarle (N.C.) Fire Department spends about $3,000 a year on the foam chemicals, only a fraction of the department's roughly $3 million annual budget. However, other larger departments don't often use them. Some said that's not because of cost as much as tradition.
State Fire Marshal Shane Ray said this new approach and new technology is a learning curve for everyone.
"What we want to do is take the science and research and translate that into training," he said.
Another issue is how firefighters attack a fire. Conventional wisdom often had fire crews breaking out windows and cutting holes in the roof of a structure to vent the fire. The message at this training session is "close the door."
Firefighters now say that a fire should be trapped and closed off in order to snuff it out faster, and prevent more destruction.
"If it's a bedroom fire, you shut the door and it's contained," Smith said. "That's what you can do to help save your home -- is shut the door when you leave."
On Wednesday, on the grounds of the South Carolina Fire Academy, teams of firefighters loaded up a concrete-built test house with furniture, then ignited it. Instead of venting the house, they covered the door to try and keep the fire contained to one room, and minimize the damage.
Firefighters told Channel 9 that there are long-standing traditions and practices in the fire service than can be slow to change.
However, many feel that time is now.
"This is about saving lives," Oke said. "This is about doing what we can do to protect our firefighters."
Firefighters learning new techniques to fight fires
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