Venting the Roof – Video

Here is something you rarely see in my department. Venting the roof on a single family dwelling. It isn’t that we don’t want to do it and it isn’t that we don’t know how to do it. It is more of a culture of firefighting that hasn’t included venting roofs on SFD’s. Manpower certainly has something to do with it…but I think the culture is more so the culprit.

This isn’t a bad thing. If you look around my town you will not see any plumes of smoke from fires still burning because we didn’t vent the roof. Actually, we are a very aggressive fire department and have managed to get by w/o venting roofs all the time. That being said, as most of you all know who are on departments who do vent roofs on sfd’s, it certainly has its benefits and its place in firefighting!!!

One thing that my department would have done that wasn’t done from what we can see in this video is setting ground ladders. My dept. would have thrown at least 2 ground ladders: one to the roof and one to a second floor window.

Did you notice anything you might have done differently? Maybe something your department doesn’t do that you wish they did.