Understanding Residential Fire Attack

The UL Firefighter Safety Research Institute is currently conducting a 3-year project on the impact of fire attack utilizing interior and exterior fire streams on firefighter safety and occupant survival. The project includes several sets of experiments to examine different principals of fire attack. Air flow experiments were conducted to determine how air moves within a structure dependent on the type of hose stream chosen and how it is applied given various ventilation openings and interior versus exterior deployment. Water flow experiments were conducted to determine water mapping within compartments based on the type of tactic chosen utilizing an interior or exterior stream. The project culminated with a series of live-fire experiments in test props to see the interaction of hose streams with the residential fire environment and its potential impact on firefighter safety and occupant survival.