Building Construction

Here's a quick one on the importance of preplanning and getting out in your district. First, VCSing stands for Various Courses and Speeds. It might not be the politically correct definition, but if you don't get out in your district more often than not you will miss what's going on.

A cement mixer punched through a parking deck. The Toms River TRT responded to shore the deck prior to a crane lifting the mixer out.

The next few paragraphs and pictures are from Andrew Brassard. The prop he built to talk about fire behavior worked great. Check it out and talk about the stages of fire with your crew. What are you looking for when, where, and why as you crawl into each building.

The prusik makes it easy to adjust where you want the working end of the jackhammer to be. This can also be accomplished with a tool being held by two personnel.

The sign on the door states "Emergency access only. To be used by local fire department." The only way to access this door from the outside is via extension ladders due to limited access and an overhang.

Sit this pic on the kitchen table and talk about how the smaller line coming into our standpipe connection may affect pressure and volume.  Then get out and look at a few of your systems. “LIKE” FIRST DUE TACKLE ON FACEBOOK Pass it on!

Just last month it was brought to my attention that one of the pics from that training was used in a magazine advertisement by PBI Products. Maybe they will toss a few sets of gear our way and get some product review advertisement as well.

The contractor started knocking out the bottom row of cinder blocks from the inside of the structure. With one block to go they took a sledgehammer to the final block in the center of the wall. Immediately, the wall collapsed and fell outward unexpectedly.

During a recent company training we pre-planned a local strip-mall. When we were looking at the back of the building we noticed that the mortar holding the bricks together at the bottom of the parapet wall was missing.

FF Gadd took a couple pictures of a strip mall that is getting a bit of a face lift. We don't always get a chance to see the inside guts of overhangs and facades, so be sure to take advantage if an opportunity like this happens in your area.