高层建筑火灾可能是一个最具挑战性的事件or a firefighter or fire department: Thousands of people could be in an enclosed structure from which there are very limited means of egress and in which the fire load is extremely heavy. And, even though high-rise fires can be the most challenging and dangerous, they are among the least frequent types of fires to which we respond. This is as true for firefighters who work in high-rise districts as for those who don’t.
Firefighters who work in suburban or rural areas may think, “There’s not a high-rise building anywhere in my response area.” Are you sure of that? What exactly is a high-rise building? Departments and building codes define high-rise buildings differently. In general, a high-rise is any building tall enough so that its top cannot be reached by your department’s tallest aerial apparatus. That can be a building as low as six or seven stories. Today, most communities have at least one six- or seven-story building in their area. And whether a fire is on the 70th floor of the Sears Tower in Chicago or the seventh floor of a hotel in a small town, firefighters face similar challenges. They have to rescue or shelter in place occupants who cannot escape through doors and windows, and they have to move firefighters and equipment up and down many floors to accomplish their tasks.
And even if one-story ranch houses and restaurants are all you have in your territory, if a major fire were to break out in a high-rise building on the other side of town, your company, and even companies from many miles away, may have to respond. You may have seen the photos of fire trucks running hot across the Brooklyn Bridge and other outer-borough bridges into Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001. That obviously was an extreme situation, and none of us hopes or expects to respond to another 9/11, but the principle remains the same.
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