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You are listening to the FDNY Pro Podcast featuring members of the New York City Fire Department. We want to share stories from the field, best practices, lessons learned and help save lives.
New York City is home to thousands of high-rise buildings, from legacy skyscrapers to modern day glass towers. Their height can range from seven stories to over 100 stories, and the FDNY responds to fires and emergencies many times over. As a result, the FDNY has its proven strategies and tactics, but also allows for change and adaptation as the situation sees fit.
Welcome to the FDNY Pro podcast. I am your host, Battalion Chief Anthony Pascocello of Battalion 9, working in Midtown Manhattan
Today with me are three members that I work on several different collaborations with that are going to discuss high-rise firefighting with me. Lieutenant James Pirot, Lieutenant Dan Gordon and Captain Chris Collier.
I'll have each of them introduce themselves and give a brief bio of their background. Jim?
Hi. My name is Jim Pirot. I started off my career in Engine 160 on Staten Island. Went to 18 Truck in the Lower East Side.
Then went to Squad 61 in the Bronx. Got promoted out of there. Had some time in Ladder 46 in the Bronx. And now I'm back.
covering in SOC.
Great. Jimmy. Thank you. Dan?
Lieutenant Dan Gordon, assigned to ladder two in Midtown.
Previously, worked in Squad 61 and Ladder 47.
And Chris.
I started off as a firefighter and Ladder 49, before I went to Squad 61 in the Bronx. When I got promoted to lieutenant, was in Engine 16, Ladder 7, and Squad 61. And now I'm captain covering in the Third Division, detailed to the Bureau of Training.
Great. So, I just want to give the listeners a little background on how we got together. So, a couple of years ago,
Lieutenant Pirot had given a lecture at the Fire and Life Safety Directors Association on mechanical equipment rooms and chiller units and HVAC units. And at that conference was, at that time, Lieutenant Collier and the three of us started talking about high-rise operations and how complex and how it's always evolving and so forth.
But we were also cognizant of the problem of of a lack of information for new officers and new chiefs. So what we did was we decided about the idea of collaborating on some training videos.
Well, that led to another collaboration, which was training the new lieutenants in the first line supervisors training program on high-rise operations. From there, another idea had come to
the forefront, and that was how about the FDNY hosting a high-rise symposium on our operations, on what we do on a daily basis?
Well, this collaboration ended up leading to a three-day symposium that was just recently held here in New York City.
Chris, would you mind touching on initial operations by a first arriving officer at the scene of a high-rise building?
So some initial company officer tactics we'll go over is,
conducting the investigation. One of the first things we do when we want to get to the building is we want to make contact with the building staff, especially in a high-rise commercial building. In a high-rise residential, there may be no staff to meet you. You're gonna have to figure it out on your own.
In a commercial building where we have staff, we have a fire and life safety director. They can usually help us. They're trained
and certified by the fire department. So, they have kind of an understanding of what we're looking for. Engineering staff in the building is, you know, intimately familiar with the building. And then you'll have security personnel.
And sometimes security personnel aren’t as familiar with the building, as we may think that they should be. A lot of times their post is at the entrances, and they don't know
the intricacies of the building past their security post. So, you may not get the information you're looking at from them, but you might be able to get access from them.
Fire command station is going to be the first place we want to go when we get into the building. Take a look at the fire alarm panel. Whether we receive the run via the fire alarm via a class three system, or we got a phone alarm for the, for the address, the fire command station is going to give us information whether the fire alarm was activated, if it was where the activation is, and if there's any other things going on, like a sprinkler activation or something like that, that we might be interested in.
Even if I wasn't going to use the building information card, I would usually ask for that when we were at the fire command station. As a company officer, I try not to get too deep into that and waste a lot of time. But you might want to at least look at the pictorial side and see what access stairs you have in the building. In the area of that, you're going to,
what stairwell and what elevators will take you to the, the reported fire area. And some of these investigations are very long. The source of the odor or the smoke might be very remote from where the caller or the fire alarm activation is. It'll take you a long time to work through the process and find it.
But that's just the nature of these buildings, and you have to stick with it and see the investigation through. Before the chief gets there, we want to look at three main topics. We could possibly spend a day on each one of these—transportation, communication and water. Those are the three big topics with really any fire, but in particular high-rise.
On the transportation topic, elevators, we have to get control of the elevators, whether we're going to use them or not. And then if we are going to use them, we need to know which ones go where and which ones are going to take us closest to our objective without putting us in a bad position. Stairs—or if we have remote stairs or access stairs or scissor stairs— access stairs, especially if they're in the area of the fire
we want to know, so that we don't put ourselves in a bad position. You know, operating above a fire with access stairs
Communications—we're going to see if we can use our regular handie-talkie, you know, communications, depending on how far we are from the lobby and from the command post. If the building has an ARC system or building repeater, we can activate that and use that.
We can do a radio relay. We can use the post radios to communicate, warden phones if we need to. And always on the topic of communication, especially if I'm in the truck, I try to pay attention to where I am and how I got there. I may have a good picture in my head of how I got to where I am, but to put that into words over the radio, to tell the engine where we need them to bring the line can sometimes be difficult, especially if you lose track of that along the way and don't have a rolling plan in your head to describe to them exactly where you are at any given time.
And then water—standpipes. We want to figure out what's stairs is going to be the attack stair, designate that and make sure that's communicated, multi-zone standpipes, especially if we're operating in vicinity of the of the break of the zones. We need to make sure that the engine company is hooked up, to the correct zone, at the fire department connection or if we're going to be hand stretching is also a possibility.
So, we may not want to overcommit the engine company members too far into the building before we locate the approximate fire area. If we're going to a loading dock, a basement, a parking garage, or even a lower floor, we may end up hand stretching from the rig.
Some great points there, Chris. A couple of things, right. You mentioned the building information card. So, that's a key component to anything with a high-rise building. You know, information is knowledge. Knowledge is power. So having that information about that building on that card is is key.
We rely on it pretty heavily. Like you said, anything related to the standpipes or elevators or stairwells, all key components?
You touched on three major points that are crucial in all high-rise fires. That is transportation, communications and water. Without those three or a failure of one of those three, we could have a serious issue.
And on the last point, about hand stretching hose lines. In high-rise buildings, the majority of the time we use the standpipe system to connect our hoses to operate and, attack the fire. But in fires in below grade areas, or, like you said, parking garages and so forth, loading docks,
those areas are more ideal to hand stretch for the fact that we're hooking up in this safe environment. And we don't have the issue with a contaminated stairwell, for our members. It also acts as a safety guide for us to get out in case of an emergency or to get additional help in, rapidly.
So, Chris, on communications, can you give us some examples of what the company officer would relay back to the chief or commanding officer?
So, the standard report format that we use is the CAN report—conditions, actions and needs. So, you want to tell them what you have, what you're doing about it and what either you need resource wise or what still needs to be done. So, I like to give that report immediately when I get into the lobby. If the chief’s in, I'll give it to the chief. If the chief's not there, I'll usually give it to the truck chauffeur, or just put it out over the air so everybody knows where we're going, what we're looking for, and what the general topic we're going to investigate is.
I try to give updates at least every few minutes and any time conditions or my location changes, specifically when conditions change, everybody needs to know that so they can operate accordingly. And the operation follows an organized, kind of operational tempo. And then as far as when my location changes, want to let the chief know that so that they can account for me and my personnel and where we are.
And also, it's a comms check to make sure that since we've changed locations, we still have communication with the chief or with someone that's going to relay our information to the chief.
That's all good information. The relay is an important part because, like you said, depending where you are in the building, some of those communications may not go out over the radio due to some limitations. So, the other members are usually cognizant of that, and they'll jump in on the flow of that and add in as a relay in case it's not getting acknowledged by the chief
let's say.
So, all good points on, aspects of the first to company officer arriving at the scene of a fire. I had a senior captain years ago when I was a lieutenant covering said to me, you know, when you're the first arriving officer, your actions set the pace for the rest of that fire. And it was a very true statement. So
initial actions are very important for the successful outcome at a high-rise fire.
Dan, early in your time as a lieutenant in the third division, you were the mega high-rise coordinator. I wonder if you could tell us today what the differences are between a mega high-rise and a regular high-rise?
So, defined, a mega high-rise is 800 feet or greater above ground level. That does not deal with the number of stories. So, you could have floors that are, a variety of different amounts that we'll talk about in a minute. But 800 ft is basically the defining, height for a mega high-rise. And that's not to be confused with 600ft, which is the defining height for a zoned standpipe system. So, a mega high-rise will have a zone standpipe system where you have, multiple Siameses is that go to, multiple zones of the standpipe system. But when we talk about mega high-rises, it's kind of a, a free for all in some ways, they run the gamut of heights. They run the gamut of occupancy types. Many are mixed occupancies where they'll be partially commercial, partially residential.
These mega high-rises, whether they're residential or commercial, are going to have a lot of those, you know, very advanced features in them. A couple of things that change some of our tactics, maybe not, per se, with, the books, but in reality, is that one of the big things is that no two floors are generally going to match. So, a lot of times you're going to have a variety of different, style apartments, size apartments. You're going to have duplexes, triplexes, which is kind of the residential version of access stairs. You may find elevators in the individual apartments,
pools, jacuzzis, you know, of various sizes. So, a lot of hazards that—not that we're not used to them on a day in day basis, in the fire department, but we're not generally used to them being six, 800, 1000 ft up in the air. So that definitely can change things a little bit.
With elevators, we run into a lot of, various features such as double-decker elevators. So we're not going to get into the specifics of those, but, you know, elevators with two different heights, in some buildings are putting in elevators that have two cars that are separate from each other, that run in the same shaft. And so there's a lot of different variety of,
features that these buildings want to install.
That also plays a big part when we talk about construction versus marketing floors, which is not unique to a mega high-rise scenario where it's essentially at the end, we're talking about skipped floors. So, you could have buildings that may have,
for example, 99 stories from the ground up, if you count one, two, three, four, but then when you actually get into the elevator and go to push a button, you see that it maxes out at 137, for example.
And so, within those 100 stories, there are almost 37, 38 stories that are essentially skipped. We also get into in the transportation side of destination dispatch elevators. And so that's, it's not a hindrance to us. It's it can just be a complication if it's not trained on and realized early on
in how to operate a destination dispatch elevator, particularly in phase two operations.
And then not to overlook the fact how far underground some of these buildings go. And so not just worrying about, you know, going up to the 100th floor and being, you know, 800ft above the ground, but some of these buildings go down three, 4 or 5, six stories below grade. And so now you have a very dangerous situation in that avenue as well.
So kind of a little bit of mix of everything. There's no way to size it up from the outside. There's really no way to classify them other than being over 800ft and having a lot of I mean, if you're a resident, really cool features, but as a firefighter or as a fire department, a lot of things that could definitely, you know, throw a monkey wrench in things.
Yeah. I mean, just the fact that it's not just a mega high-rise, but a mega command issue, too. You know, we have approximately 40 in New York City right now, and there's more coming. And I think these buildings, you know, have the potential to change our operations. I mean, we already enhance our signals and equipment responding on these buildings once it’s identified as a working fire. But like you said, there's features in there that change a lot of the game, especially when you start running into swimming pools or triplex apartments, etc.
Again, touching on the basis of, below grade, that's a huge, huge, operation if there's a fire below grade for us and everything. But great points. And, I know to some of our listeners, they may say, well, we don't have that same height restriction here where we are. But the fact of the matter is, there's features like you said, the difference between marketing floors and construction floors, looking around the country or around the world, really that high value add on living on an upper floor is definitely there. And it does affect our operations as, firefighters.
So, Dan, in regards to these elevators and mega high-rise buildings, how does that affect fire department operations—
elevators that have, you know, double decker elevators,
or, you know, blind shafts, things like that.
A lot of those are not necessarily new to the city. We're just seeing more and more of them lately. And in the end, the fireman service phase one and phase two operate the same way as they always have, including, destination dispatch.
It will be a little bit different once you get inside. There'll be a panel that you have to access. But in terms of the operations, phase one and phase two really do not change much. What does change with a double decker elevator is just that you need to make sure that you clear the other part of the elevator of occupants before you start utilizing the elevator to get,
in close proximity to the fire floor.
So, the operation does have a couple nuances to it, and
They're not all over the place. Right? They are a unique feature. And so most first two companies are aware that
they have those in their area. And it's incumbent on those companies to get out there and train on those elevators and be able to, you know, do what's called clear that lower level and make sure that, you know, we're not taking occupants on a ride up and down, to, you know, two floors below the fire floor or floor below the fire floor during our operations. Or even worse, if we're utilizing that elevator to potentially go above the fire, that we're not bringing occupants with us.
There's a lot of safety mechanisms built in, including cameras and stuff like that, but really just falls on those first two companies to understand their buildings, and especially with the mega high-rises. You know, as you said, there's 40 out there, but, 40 in in a tremendous city does leave the ability for companies to, you know, know they're two or 3 or 4 that they have in their first due area and know how to operate in and around them.
That's great stuff. And like you said, one of the things that we do in a high-rise operation like that is we do search those elevators not just once, but multiple times, just to make sure that there is no civilians or workers trapped in a more, unconscious in them.
And recalling and accounting for all those elevators and searching for them can take a significant amount of time and personnel to do that. All the buildings that we use when we do the high-rise class for the new lieutenants, all of those buildings have 50 plus elevators in them, and not all of them reach the ground. Some of them are access elevators on upper floors that just serve one tenant space in a multi-tenant occupancy. And we have to recall all of those, search all of those, and even if we're not using them for a second or third floor fire. If we're going to use the stairs to access the fire floor, we still have to recall all of them. So, there's not civilians running around in elevators all over the building,
above the fire floor while we're operating.
Good point. Jim, did you have anything to add?
Yeah,the area that I work in, elevators are,
valued. And we do use them quite often, but just because you're banking on them working doesn't mean that they work 100% of the time. We quite often run into the situations where we we recall them, but once they come down to the lobby, they're not actually working, or they just malfunction, because of usage, because of abuse or just because of, water damage from water going down the shafts.
So, it is something to keep in the back of your mind that we all want the elevators to work the whole time, and we all like it when the elevators work the whole time. But that's not necessarily the case that you'll have that access to that elevator during the whole duration of the operation.
Jim makes a good point about water intrusion into the elevator shaft, too. When I'm responding as a company officer, if my company is, later arriving unit and we may or may not be used in this operation, I try and get my company up to the forward staging area, or to floor below the fire as fast as possible, before we get water intrusion into the elevator shaft.
And that puts the elevators out of service, and we have to walk up. We've had pretty good success in the FDNY with stacking up unused, roll up section of hoses in front of the elevator doors on the fire floor to block some of that water from going down the elevator shaft and rendering the elevators, you know, useless or out of service.
So just things to consider if you have a, active fire or especially a sprinkler activation in the public hallway that could cause water intrusion into the shaft and put those elevators out of service.
And the other thing to, you know, make sure that if you have them to be aware of and we're finding these in all new high-rises, but particularly in mega high-rises, would be the FSAE elevators. So fire service access elevators, which are you know, we're not going to get into all the details, but they have their own little vestibule and they're protected from water, smoke and other contaminants that we find on the fireground. And so those are an excellent option to utilize for firemen service to be able to get us to the upper floors because, you know, if we lose elevators, then things get significantly more difficult.
Yeah. I think those are some great tips right there. Right.
utilizing what we have at hand, turning it on and, and, using it as a block to prevent the water from entering those shafts is key and everything. Good stuff.
So Dan, with mega high-rise buildings, how are communications affected with those?
So, the first thing to understand is that communications don't really, abide by a rule of height or, you know, number of stories. And so, what I mean by that is we all go to ten-story buildings where we won't have sufficient communications throughout the building, and then we'll go to other mega high-rise buildings that do have sufficient communications throughout the entire building. This is one of the reasons to, knowing that you're going to a mega high-rise. You'll see that it will say mega in the CIDS, and on a transmission of a 1076 or a 1077, a communications unit, gets dispatched for a mega high-rise building as well, so that we have some of those additional communications, pieces to the puzzle over there.
The one thing that most mega high-rises are going to have. And now many, pretty much all high-rises are going to have is that ARC system. And so that's something to keep in mind if you have that to be able to activate that, even as a first two truck or engine officer, to be able to establish a line of communication throughout the building.
It's just it's not going to be, foolproof to use the handie-talkies on Channel One in some of these larger style buildings. And so if you have that ARC system establishing that early giving a radio check and then potentially setting up a relay as well is going to be very important for the communications.
The other thing is just to keep your ears open, meaning if you haven't heard from the incident commander in a few minutes, you know, maybe give them a tickle and make sure that
you still have communications with them. Because it may be times where they're trying to communicate with you and they cannot reach you.
That's where sometimes the one-way PA systems can work. The incident commander can utilize those in the lobby, or even, you know, as rudimentary as it sounds sometimes, I always carry my cell phone. My job-issued cell phone or the rig-issued cell phone so that we have that, backup communication link there to the incident commander as well.
Yeah. The key with communications is redundancy. Right. So, like Dan said, the ARC system that stands for Auxiliary Radio Communication system, that's an in-house, repeater system
that we have access to in the fire department. It's a great system to use. But again, sometimes it may not always be functioning. So, then we have to rely on an alternate means.
Redundancy is key to us. So, the PA system can work. We still have the floor warden phones. Or in some jurisdictions, it's known as the standpipe phone. Those work excellent. So hardwired system and it still works as an additional, redundant communication system from the fire command post all the way up to, the units operating throughout the building.
Dan, in regards to mega high-rise buildings, one of the unique scenarios that we encounter is augmenting or pumping water from our pumps into the, standpipe system. You had touched on marketing floors. Can you just describe to, the listeners out there the difference in some of the charts that we use for pumping?
Yeah, absolutely. So, when we talk about augmenting, mega high-rise or any, any building, that's, you know, I'll even call it over 600ft, because then we have a zoned standpipe system. And when we have a zoned standpipe system, we're going to have multiple, gravity tanks, multiple fire pumps within that building, most likely.
And, as you mentioned, you know, when we get into marketing versus construction floors, not only will, the actual height that we are at not correlate to the number of actual floors that are in the building, but each floor may not be ten feet.
So, a lot of times calculations are based off of, you know, ten foot per floor. And so, as we get to 100-story building, we're looking at 1000ft. That's not the case, especially with mega high-rise buildings where, you know, the vaulted ceilings, Cathedral ceilings, are, you know, pretty standard in a lot of these really high end apartments.
And so, what you end up with is you end up with maybe, let's say, the 50th floor being 700 and 800ft in the air or some standard like that. So there really is no rhyme or reason in terms of if you're looking at the building and saying, okay, this is the 40th floor, you really can't go to a chart and say, okay, the 40th floor is this tall. Now that's changing because of some of that code work that you talked about. A lot of the new mega high-rise buildings are going to have, height indicators at the standpipe outlets so that we will know,
at each floor what the height is. But let's simplify it. We can also just kind of break the building up into thirds or quarters, depending on how tall the building is.
And you can easily find out how tall. Pretty much any building in New York City is, even with something as easy as Google just to type in, you know, how tall is this building? And then you can break it up into thirds or quarters, depending on how tall it is and kind of, supply the building based on approximately where the fire is located within that height. That's, you know, basic. But if you don't have an actual height calculation, then you can utilize that. However, the one thing that we've really tried to instill in our chauffeurs is to wait and see what's going on with that first hand line before we start putting 500, 600 hundred PSI into these Siamese connections that may not even be rated for that high of a pressure.
And so, initially kind of letting that first and second engine hook up, that first hose line and utilize the building pumps to give them sufficient pressure, utilizing the gravity tanks to give them sufficient pressure, and only then if they're not getting a proper flow or a proper pressure, then we can augment the Siamese to the PSI that are required.
Yeah, that's very important. We don't want to damage that system because then it'll affect or delay the outcome of the operation.
Jim, one of the things that we respond to a lot of is alarms and so forth in the mechanical equipment rooms. And every one of them is different. It's a very complex area in a high-rise to address. Can you let the listeners know what a mechanical equipment room is and what it encompasses?
So mechanical equipment room in high-rise building is, a central
point in the building that they can have all the mechanical equipment. You want to have it all centralized in one point, because square footage is priced at a premium in New York City. So rather than having everything spread out, the mechanical equipment is centrally located in one part of the building.
That being said, some of the buildings are going from a central chiller plant to other types of mechanical equipment, where
it may be spread out on various floors. These are called things like DX units. Sometimes you'll find them in the basement, or sometimes you'll find them on the top floor. Or they'll have multiple machine rooms spread out throughout the building.
So, when we’re responding to these types of alarms, we have to be familiar with the large, complex layouts of machine rooms, because there's a lot of heavy equipment in these rooms that can
Pose a lot of danger to us, for both chemical burns and refrigeration burns, along with just hazards such as steam, high voltage electric. And chains used to open and close valves,
may pose danger for us getting wrapped up in them. So mechanical rooms have their own situations that could cause problems later on down the road.
And for, a situation like that. We'd want to have direct contact with the engineering staff.
Correct. So, the engineering staff is the vital key to these buildings. The engineering staffs are the ones that know the buildings inside and out. They know where the fans are, how to operate the fans, where the chillers are, how to operate the chillers and the ins and outs of the building. They know the hidden passageways in buildings. They know the easy ways to get places, and they know how to solve a lot of the problems,
when we get there. So, when you get to a lot of these buildings, majority of these buildings will have engineering staff on hand.
If they're able to help you out, I would use their knowledge and experience of the building to help mitigate the problem that's in that building, because they are the subject matter experts of that building.
Great point. So, Jimmy, we talked about a lot of the hazards in a mechanical equipment room, but on the same token, those rooms can also aid us at a fire or an emergency,
correct?
Right. So they build these buildings, both residential buildings and commercial buildings, to be airtight. They don't want the
air conditioning to escape the building in the summer. And then they don't want the coldness to come into the building in the winter. They want the heat to stay in. So the only way they get some kind of air movement in these buildings is with the mechanical systems. What you can do is you could purge the building out, meaning you can't break a lot of the windows in the building, if any. So you have to use the mechanical features within the building themselves to vent it out. We have a standard, protocol for that, but the mechanical, engineers, they can actually manipulate the fans themselves to do so.
They can go into the machine room, get on their computer or their BMS system and close something called a mixing damper and
get out all the air that's in the building and intake fresh air. Also it can be done is at some of the buildings. They could use it, at the fire command station, they could purge the system out, meaning that the incident commander can actually override that from the engineering staff and they can purge out the building themselves during an operation.
Yeah, and that's a huge point. I mean, if we can get the smoke out as soon as possible. Using the purge system, that's a key element in success of a high-rise fire. Like Jim had brought up. Right? We just can't break windows, you know, 50, 40 stories high. Having glass coming down like that to to do a simple vent,
like in a smaller type building where we're able to do that. So, we're relying on the mechanical system in the building to help get that smoke out, for our benefit and for the civilian benefit in the building. So regarding these mechanical equipment rooms, Jimmy, how should members operate in there?
So the key to that to acting safe in a machine room is not walking in there blindly. Get as much information about the machine room as you can before entering the machine room. There are safety features, required for some of the larger chillers
in the city. But that may not be true in other parts of the country. How do you get that information? How do you know what's going on in the machine room? Grab the engineer. The engineer knows the machine room inside and out. He knows the chemicals. He knows the type of refrigerant. He knows what's the,
main drive for the compressor. And he may be able to help you and guide you throughout that machine room. Not go in the machine room with you, but actually guide you through the areas on where you can go and where you can't go. Something we touched on earlier, cooling towers. Cooling towers—the chemicals used to keep the cooling tower at a certain level or keep the algae
and the other, growths that happen in those
cooling towers. Their chemicals are super concentrated in the machine rooms. You can find them there. So, you don't want to be walking around a machine room and touch some of the biocides or descalers that you find in machine rooms, it could have a harmful result on you.
Also, some of the, the drives that are used for these compressors, they’re steam. Obviously, steam can burn you, high voltage electric—that has very bad consequences if you touch that as well. So, walking around the machine room, don't do it blindly. Get as much information from the engineer as you can. If there's no one there, you know, they should have MSDS sheets on hand or the BIC card. Get something before you walk into a machine room and don't walk in there blindly.
So earlier I discussed the high-rise symposium that was sponsored by the FDNY Foundation a few weeks ago here in New York City. And it was a three-day event. Day one was, a day of lectures, in addition to an opening ceremony. Day two was
a field trip where we compared a legacy high-rise to a modern-day high-rise. And day three was conducted at the New York City Fire Academy, where we highlighted all of the different aspects on our operations and equipment related to high-rise operations.
What I'm going to do now is I'm going to ask each of our guests to explain what occurred on each of those days as they, spearheaded each of those days on their own accord. Chris, you handled day one. Could you tell the listeners about that?
Yeah. So, when we started this symposium initiative, it was the chief and the three of us. So, to naturally split it up into three sections with each of our company officers taking charge of a day and the chief overseeing the entire thing kind of worked out nice. And I wound up with, day one and the breakout presentations.
So, we had 28 breakout presentations on day one, across six time slots. That worked out pretty nice. Was a nice mix. We tried to have something for everyone in each time slot. We had 50 presenters. Almost every presentation had two presenters. Some had three. Some people were paired up to speak together that had never met before presented on that topic, and present multiple sides of the same topic from fire operations, fire prevention, EMS operations, and some of our outside partners like Underwriters Laboratories, the IAAF, John Jay University, Con Ed, NYPD, and the Fire and Life Safety Director's Association.
So, we were able to get a nice, comprehensive look at each of those topics from multiple angles. Some of the presentations had over 100 attendees, and some of the niche topics had, only a few attendees. But everybody that went to those ones, especially the niche ones, really wanted to see that topic and were appreciative that we had something for each topic, you know, available to them.
At the beginning of the day, we started off by recognizing the founding members that started and ran the symposium back in the 90s. It's hard to go forward and move, this initiative along without knowing where we've been and where we started.
Yeah. On that presentation, it was a unique thing. I mean, those gentlemen from, 1994 that had the original high -rise symposium, they kind of set the standard for us. That was a very well received program. And, we recognize them for their efforts and thanking them, for all that they did. We also held a little memorial tribute to those that are no longer with us, particularly those that were unfortunately taken from us on September 11th. And it was a nice tribute, to them as well. As you said, it wasn't just about firefighting operations. It encompassed a lot of people right off Fire Prevention Bureau personnel, our EMS personnel, and what it did was it partnered with some of those outside agencies. It was people from the fire and life safety, you know, code subject matter experts
that deal with these issues as support personnel or a code
enforcement type, regulator. And, it was a good mix of everything showing how high-rise buildings are really a complex operation, and it's a little bit of everybody participating to have a successful outcome during a fire and emergency.
So, on day two, like I said, we took a field trip, and
going to let, Lieutenant Pirot, who spearheaded that day, explain what happened on that.
Thanks. So, day two was meant to give a little bit of substance behind day one. We were trying to get the two days to work hand-in-hand together, meaning you could hear someone speak all day. But actually, being in a building and seeing the building and hearing the building adds to that presentation of day one.
So, we reached out to, Tom Burke from Related Properties. He oversees Hudson Yards. We work with him also with the FLSTP program, which is the training program for new lieutenants.
We wanted to display, the fire and life safety directors’
command post, the fire pumps, the machine rooms along with elevators and how to properly use an elevator. So, we
were able to set up a tour at Hudson Yards with their buildings to showcase this. And then we wanted to compare it to something. So, we also reached out to Rockefeller Center, who's managed by Tishman Speyer, and we spoke to Andrew Burns, and he was able to work with us and put the same type of display on for his property as well. You were able to see, a legacy building compared to a newer building. And we were able to see firsthand some of the dangers that you may not necessarily pick up on during a fire, such as the chemicals in machine rooms super concentrated for cooling towers. The refrigerants themselves,
how the signage reads, the direction and how actually to get to various parts of the building. They're very complex, and the layouts of them can turn anybody around. So being there, walking through it helped display the problems that may be associated with these rooms. The fire pumps—we were able to see how to put these things online. The difference between an automatic pump versus a manual pump. And along the elevators.
Having control of the elevators, safely using the elevators. Getting the elevators to one central point so you don't lose them is something that you need to know while fighting these fires.
And just how to communicate with the staff at the fire command station. Now, we touched on it before that some of these buildings or some of the buildings in your area may not have an engineer or or a fire command station, but there are other mechanical features in the buildings that you're going to be presented with that have their own problems, such as a rooftop unit or a pollution control unit.
The more knowledge you have on the building, the better off you're going to be if something does occur in these buildings. And that was what the point of day two was, to get you in the building, to get you to see the building, and to get to actually, relate what you saw on day one to how it actually is in real life.
Yeah. Well, good points, Jim. I mean, I was at the Rockefeller Center site and, for me, it was a great opportunity because that's one of my buildings in my first due response area. So, it kind of reinforced a lot of what I would face at an actual fire or an incident there. So it was a good experience for me.
Also, just to kind of reinforce what we do on a daily basis. You had touched in there about like pollution control devices. So, our listeners, if they heard one of our prior podcasts when we did Duct Fires with Chief Mulry, you're aware of what a electrostatic precipitator is. And that's what Jimmy's alluding to, because they were a feature that are prevalent in high-rise buildings. Both of these locations actually do have them there on site, and everything.
At the conclusion of the walk through both Rockefeller Center and Hudson Yards, we did a roundtable. Right. It consisted of myself, Assistant Chief Tom Currao, who's the Chief of Fire Prevention, and Assistant Chief Mike Meyers, who's the Chief of Training and Lieutenant Gordon. And Chris, you moderated it, right? You basically kept it kind of controlled where we
touched on the three topics, right? Transportation,
water operations, and communications. Can you just go over that real quick? Because it was kind of well, received by the attendees on that.
So, we saw quite a few positive reviews from the attendees about the roundtable at the end of day two. They liked the timing of it, that they got to have that discussion after seeing the buildings to kind of recap anything, or ask questions about anything that they weren't 100% sure on at the end of the walkthroughs.
So, like you said, we had the, the four members on the panel, the chief fire prevention chief of training, you and Lieutenant Gordon. And then we had a few other subject matter experts sitting at a table in the front that we were able to call on. You know, when we needed for a particular topic? We had Captain Cicero who heads up the, fire Department’s elevator task force and works on our emergency water supply group, talking about water supply issues and high-rise buildings if the standpipe is damaged or broken or not working for whatever reason.
Those topics came up, and it was great to have him there to explain those those issues.
Jim Pirot talked a bit about refrigerants, leaning into his background as a high-rise building engineer, and we had Bruce Johnson from UL, talk a little bit about batteries and emerging technology and things that we might be seeing in the future.
The, the attendees also really liked the availability and accessibility of our staff chiefs and their willingness to talk to them and pass along information. Also, the presenters from day one, the facilitators and the FDNY members, that that taught or helped with any of the various sections of the, three days. Everybody really liked how accessible they were, how happy they were to answer questions, and a lot of comments about the depth of the answers that they got from everyone. Yeah, it was a really positive experience. And even on day three, people were still talking about the roundtable after that.
Dan, day three was conducted at the New York City Fire Academy. Could you just go through on what occurred that day?
Yep. So, on day three, we had all the attendees come to the Rock, which is always an exciting experience for people that have never seen it before.
We set up a variety of different demonstrations that utilize subject matter experts throughout the job in order to
demonstrate our operations at various high-rise, not just incidents, but operations as well. So, a list of those we started with, opening ceremony and going through the EFAS, our
fast track accountability system, as well as the incident command app. Just a quick demonstration to kind of show how that works and how we utilize that on the Fireground.
Then we utilized, both special operations as well as the rope unit in order to demonstrate a high angle rope demonstration of a suspended window washer as well as a lifesaving rope demonstration.
Then we broke up into groups, and they rotated throughout twelve
different demonstrations throughout the day. Everything from glass cutting to, the high-rise nozzle to water mapping, robotics, FDC supply, high pressure pumping, standpipe operations, the KO curtain, positive pressure ventilation and the rebreather station as well. So, there was a lot of variety. Some things that you may not think deal with high-rise. We kind of put showed how it can, still relate a little bit. I thought day three went pretty well. And that's just a credit to, you know, all the instructors that were out there that day.
I think everyone got something out of it.
Yeah, definitely. It was a very positive day.
We hadn't had a, large scale high-rise symposium like this since 1994. And, the feedback that we've gotten back so far from the attendees and vendors and other participants has been very positive, that there's been a request to possibly have a future symposium next year. And that is something that's being looked into at this time.
You know, FDNY Pro has touched on, high-rise fire operations in the past, right? I, I did duct fires a little bit related to that. The crane tower and fire of 2023. We also talked about the fire with the multiple rope rescues at the 37-story building. We've had, subject matter experts on wind impacted fires and so forth. High-rise, it's an interesting topic that occurs on a daily basis. And we know our listeners like to, you know, get as much feedback as possible from the FDNY on that. And that's why today we focused strictly on that topic.
I want to thank you guys once again for your continued participation, not just with the symposium, but with the training videos and training on new lieutenants and other,
experts out there.
And with that, I would like to thank you all for listening to the FDNY Pro podcast. I'm your host, Battalion Chief Anthony Pascocello. For more training and information from our subject matter experts, go to FDNYPRO.org.
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You are listening to the FDNY Pro Podcast featuring members of the New York City Fire Department. We want to share stories from the field, best practices, lessons learned and help save lives.
New York City is home to thousands of high-rise buildings, from legacy skyscrapers to modern day glass towers. Their height can range from seven stories to over 100 stories, and the FDNY responds to fires and emergencies many times over. As a result, the FDNY has its proven strategies and tactics, but also allows for change and adaptation as the situation sees fit.
Welcome to the FDNY Pro podcast. I am your host, Battalion Chief Anthony Pascocello of Battalion 9, working in Midtown Manhattan
Today with me are three members that I work on several different collaborations with that are going to discuss high-rise firefighting with me. Lieutenant James Pirot, Lieutenant Dan Gordon and Captain Chris Collier.
I'll have each of them introduce themselves and give a brief bio of their background. Jim?
Hi. My name is Jim Pirot. I started off my career in Engine 160 on Staten Island. Went to 18 Truck in the Lower East Side.
Then went to Squad 61 in the Bronx. Got promoted out of there. Had some time in Ladder 46 in the Bronx. And now I'm back.
covering in SOC.
Great. Jimmy. Thank you. Dan?
Lieutenant Dan Gordon, assigned to ladder two in Midtown.
Previously, worked in Squad 61 and Ladder 47.
And Chris.
I started off as a firefighter and Ladder 49, before I went to Squad 61 in the Bronx. When I got promoted to lieutenant, was in Engine 16, Ladder 7, and Squad 61. And now I'm captain covering in the Third Division, detailed to the Bureau of Training.
Great. So, I just want to give the listeners a little background on how we got together. So, a couple of years ago,
Lieutenant Pirot had given a lecture at the Fire and Life Safety Directors Association on mechanical equipment rooms and chiller units and HVAC units. And at that conference was, at that time, Lieutenant Collier and the three of us started talking about high-rise operations and how complex and how it's always evolving and so forth.
But we were also cognizant of the problem of of a lack of information for new officers and new chiefs. So what we did was we decided about the idea of collaborating on some training videos.
Well, that led to another collaboration, which was training the new lieutenants in the first line supervisors training program on high-rise operations. From there, another idea had come to
the forefront, and that was how about the FDNY hosting a high-rise symposium on our operations, on what we do on a daily basis?
Well, this collaboration ended up leading to a three-day symposium that was just recently held here in New York City.
Chris, would you mind touching on initial operations by a first arriving officer at the scene of a high-rise building?
So some initial company officer tactics we'll go over is,
conducting the investigation. One of the first things we do when we want to get to the building is we want to make contact with the building staff, especially in a high-rise commercial building. In a high-rise residential, there may be no staff to meet you. You're gonna have to figure it out on your own.
In a commercial building where we have staff, we have a fire and life safety director. They can usually help us. They're trained
and certified by the fire department. So, they have kind of an understanding of what we're looking for. Engineering staff in the building is, you know, intimately familiar with the building. And then you'll have security personnel.
And sometimes security personnel aren’t as familiar with the building, as we may think that they should be. A lot of times their post is at the entrances, and they don't know
the intricacies of the building past their security post. So, you may not get the information you're looking at from them, but you might be able to get access from them.
Fire command station is going to be the first place we want to go when we get into the building. Take a look at the fire alarm panel. Whether we receive the run via the fire alarm via a class three system, or we got a phone alarm for the, for the address, the fire command station is going to give us information whether the fire alarm was activated, if it was where the activation is, and if there's any other things going on, like a sprinkler activation or something like that, that we might be interested in.
Even if I wasn't going to use the building information card, I would usually ask for that when we were at the fire command station. As a company officer, I try not to get too deep into that and waste a lot of time. But you might want to at least look at the pictorial side and see what access stairs you have in the building. In the area of that, you're going to,
what stairwell and what elevators will take you to the, the reported fire area. And some of these investigations are very long. The source of the odor or the smoke might be very remote from where the caller or the fire alarm activation is. It'll take you a long time to work through the process and find it.
But that's just the nature of these buildings, and you have to stick with it and see the investigation through. Before the chief gets there, we want to look at three main topics. We could possibly spend a day on each one of these—transportation, communication and water. Those are the three big topics with really any fire, but in particular high-rise.
On the transportation topic, elevators, we have to get control of the elevators, whether we're going to use them or not. And then if we are going to use them, we need to know which ones go where and which ones are going to take us closest to our objective without putting us in a bad position. Stairs—or if we have remote stairs or access stairs or scissor stairs— access stairs, especially if they're in the area of the fire
we want to know, so that we don't put ourselves in a bad position. You know, operating above a fire with access stairs
Communications—we're going to see if we can use our regular handie-talkie, you know, communications, depending on how far we are from the lobby and from the command post. If the building has an ARC system or building repeater, we can activate that and use that.
We can do a radio relay. We can use the post radios to communicate, warden phones if we need to. And always on the topic of communication, especially if I'm in the truck, I try to pay attention to where I am and how I got there. I may have a good picture in my head of how I got to where I am, but to put that into words over the radio, to tell the engine where we need them to bring the line can sometimes be difficult, especially if you lose track of that along the way and don't have a rolling plan in your head to describe to them exactly where you are at any given time.
And then water—standpipes. We want to figure out what's stairs is going to be the attack stair, designate that and make sure that's communicated, multi-zone standpipes, especially if we're operating in vicinity of the of the break of the zones. We need to make sure that the engine company is hooked up, to the correct zone, at the fire department connection or if we're going to be hand stretching is also a possibility.
So, we may not want to overcommit the engine company members too far into the building before we locate the approximate fire area. If we're going to a loading dock, a basement, a parking garage, or even a lower floor, we may end up hand stretching from the rig.
Some great points there, Chris. A couple of things, right. You mentioned the building information card. So, that's a key component to anything with a high-rise building. You know, information is knowledge. Knowledge is power. So having that information about that building on that card is is key.
We rely on it pretty heavily. Like you said, anything related to the standpipes or elevators or stairwells, all key components?
You touched on three major points that are crucial in all high-rise fires. That is transportation, communications and water. Without those three or a failure of one of those three, we could have a serious issue.
And on the last point, about hand stretching hose lines. In high-rise buildings, the majority of the time we use the standpipe system to connect our hoses to operate and, attack the fire. But in fires in below grade areas, or, like you said, parking garages and so forth, loading docks,
those areas are more ideal to hand stretch for the fact that we're hooking up in this safe environment. And we don't have the issue with a contaminated stairwell, for our members. It also acts as a safety guide for us to get out in case of an emergency or to get additional help in, rapidly.
So, Chris, on communications, can you give us some examples of what the company officer would relay back to the chief or commanding officer?
So, the standard report format that we use is the CAN report—conditions, actions and needs. So, you want to tell them what you have, what you're doing about it and what either you need resource wise or what still needs to be done. So, I like to give that report immediately when I get into the lobby. If the chief’s in, I'll give it to the chief. If the chief's not there, I'll usually give it to the truck chauffeur, or just put it out over the air so everybody knows where we're going, what we're looking for, and what the general topic we're going to investigate is.
I try to give updates at least every few minutes and any time conditions or my location changes, specifically when conditions change, everybody needs to know that so they can operate accordingly. And the operation follows an organized, kind of operational tempo. And then as far as when my location changes, want to let the chief know that so that they can account for me and my personnel and where we are.
And also, it's a comms check to make sure that since we've changed locations, we still have communication with the chief or with someone that's going to relay our information to the chief.
That's all good information. The relay is an important part because, like you said, depending where you are in the building, some of those communications may not go out over the radio due to some limitations. So, the other members are usually cognizant of that, and they'll jump in on the flow of that and add in as a relay in case it's not getting acknowledged by the chief
let's say.
So, all good points on, aspects of the first to company officer arriving at the scene of a fire. I had a senior captain years ago when I was a lieutenant covering said to me, you know, when you're the first arriving officer, your actions set the pace for the rest of that fire. And it was a very true statement. So
initial actions are very important for the successful outcome at a high-rise fire.
Dan, early in your time as a lieutenant in the third division, you were the mega high-rise coordinator. I wonder if you could tell us today what the differences are between a mega high-rise and a regular high-rise?
So, defined, a mega high-rise is 800 feet or greater above ground level. That does not deal with the number of stories. So, you could have floors that are, a variety of different amounts that we'll talk about in a minute. But 800 ft is basically the defining, height for a mega high-rise. And that's not to be confused with 600ft, which is the defining height for a zoned standpipe system. So, a mega high-rise will have a zone standpipe system where you have, multiple Siameses is that go to, multiple zones of the standpipe system. But when we talk about mega high-rises, it's kind of a, a free for all in some ways, they run the gamut of heights. They run the gamut of occupancy types. Many are mixed occupancies where they'll be partially commercial, partially residential.
These mega high-rises, whether they're residential or commercial, are going to have a lot of those, you know, very advanced features in them. A couple of things that change some of our tactics, maybe not, per se, with, the books, but in reality, is that one of the big things is that no two floors are generally going to match. So, a lot of times you're going to have a variety of different, style apartments, size apartments. You're going to have duplexes, triplexes, which is kind of the residential version of access stairs. You may find elevators in the individual apartments,
pools, jacuzzis, you know, of various sizes. So, a lot of hazards that—not that we're not used to them on a day in day basis, in the fire department, but we're not generally used to them being six, 800, 1000 ft up in the air. So that definitely can change things a little bit.
With elevators, we run into a lot of, various features such as double-decker elevators. So we're not going to get into the specifics of those, but, you know, elevators with two different heights, in some buildings are putting in elevators that have two cars that are separate from each other, that run in the same shaft. And so there's a lot of different variety of,
features that these buildings want to install.
That also plays a big part when we talk about construction versus marketing floors, which is not unique to a mega high-rise scenario where it's essentially at the end, we're talking about skipped floors. So, you could have buildings that may have,
for example, 99 stories from the ground up, if you count one, two, three, four, but then when you actually get into the elevator and go to push a button, you see that it maxes out at 137, for example.
And so, within those 100 stories, there are almost 37, 38 stories that are essentially skipped. We also get into in the transportation side of destination dispatch elevators. And so that's, it's not a hindrance to us. It's it can just be a complication if it's not trained on and realized early on
in how to operate a destination dispatch elevator, particularly in phase two operations.
And then not to overlook the fact how far underground some of these buildings go. And so not just worrying about, you know, going up to the 100th floor and being, you know, 800ft above the ground, but some of these buildings go down three, 4 or 5, six stories below grade. And so now you have a very dangerous situation in that avenue as well.
So kind of a little bit of mix of everything. There's no way to size it up from the outside. There's really no way to classify them other than being over 800ft and having a lot of I mean, if you're a resident, really cool features, but as a firefighter or as a fire department, a lot of things that could definitely, you know, throw a monkey wrench in things.
Yeah. I mean, just the fact that it's not just a mega high-rise, but a mega command issue, too. You know, we have approximately 40 in New York City right now, and there's more coming. And I think these buildings, you know, have the potential to change our operations. I mean, we already enhance our signals and equipment responding on these buildings once it’s identified as a working fire. But like you said, there's features in there that change a lot of the game, especially when you start running into swimming pools or triplex apartments, etc.
Again, touching on the basis of, below grade, that's a huge, huge, operation if there's a fire below grade for us and everything. But great points. And, I know to some of our listeners, they may say, well, we don't have that same height restriction here where we are. But the fact of the matter is, there's features like you said, the difference between marketing floors and construction floors, looking around the country or around the world, really that high value add on living on an upper floor is definitely there. And it does affect our operations as, firefighters.
So, Dan, in regards to these elevators and mega high-rise buildings, how does that affect fire department operations—
elevators that have, you know, double decker elevators,
or, you know, blind shafts, things like that.
A lot of those are not necessarily new to the city. We're just seeing more and more of them lately. And in the end, the fireman service phase one and phase two operate the same way as they always have, including, destination dispatch.
It will be a little bit different once you get inside. There'll be a panel that you have to access. But in terms of the operations, phase one and phase two really do not change much. What does change with a double decker elevator is just that you need to make sure that you clear the other part of the elevator of occupants before you start utilizing the elevator to get,
in close proximity to the fire floor.
So, the operation does have a couple nuances to it, and
They're not all over the place. Right? They are a unique feature. And so most first two companies are aware that
they have those in their area. And it's incumbent on those companies to get out there and train on those elevators and be able to, you know, do what's called clear that lower level and make sure that, you know, we're not taking occupants on a ride up and down, to, you know, two floors below the fire floor or floor below the fire floor during our operations. Or even worse, if we're utilizing that elevator to potentially go above the fire, that we're not bringing occupants with us.
There's a lot of safety mechanisms built in, including cameras and stuff like that, but really just falls on those first two companies to understand their buildings, and especially with the mega high-rises. You know, as you said, there's 40 out there, but, 40 in in a tremendous city does leave the ability for companies to, you know, know they're two or 3 or 4 that they have in their first due area and know how to operate in and around them.
That's great stuff. And like you said, one of the things that we do in a high-rise operation like that is we do search those elevators not just once, but multiple times, just to make sure that there is no civilians or workers trapped in a more, unconscious in them.
And recalling and accounting for all those elevators and searching for them can take a significant amount of time and personnel to do that. All the buildings that we use when we do the high-rise class for the new lieutenants, all of those buildings have 50 plus elevators in them, and not all of them reach the ground. Some of them are access elevators on upper floors that just serve one tenant space in a multi-tenant occupancy. And we have to recall all of those, search all of those, and even if we're not using them for a second or third floor fire. If we're going to use the stairs to access the fire floor, we still have to recall all of them. So, there's not civilians running around in elevators all over the building,
above the fire floor while we're operating.
Good point. Jim, did you have anything to add?
Yeah,the area that I work in, elevators are,
valued. And we do use them quite often, but just because you're banking on them working doesn't mean that they work 100% of the time. We quite often run into the situations where we we recall them, but once they come down to the lobby, they're not actually working, or they just malfunction, because of usage, because of abuse or just because of, water damage from water going down the shafts.
So, it is something to keep in the back of your mind that we all want the elevators to work the whole time, and we all like it when the elevators work the whole time. But that's not necessarily the case that you'll have that access to that elevator during the whole duration of the operation.
Jim makes a good point about water intrusion into the elevator shaft, too. When I'm responding as a company officer, if my company is, later arriving unit and we may or may not be used in this operation, I try and get my company up to the forward staging area, or to floor below the fire as fast as possible, before we get water intrusion into the elevator shaft.
And that puts the elevators out of service, and we have to walk up. We've had pretty good success in the FDNY with stacking up unused, roll up section of hoses in front of the elevator doors on the fire floor to block some of that water from going down the elevator shaft and rendering the elevators, you know, useless or out of service.
So just things to consider if you have a, active fire or especially a sprinkler activation in the public hallway that could cause water intrusion into the shaft and put those elevators out of service.
And the other thing to, you know, make sure that if you have them to be aware of and we're finding these in all new high-rises, but particularly in mega high-rises, would be the FSAE elevators. So fire service access elevators, which are you know, we're not going to get into all the details, but they have their own little vestibule and they're protected from water, smoke and other contaminants that we find on the fireground. And so those are an excellent option to utilize for firemen service to be able to get us to the upper floors because, you know, if we lose elevators, then things get significantly more difficult.
Yeah. I think those are some great tips right there. Right.
utilizing what we have at hand, turning it on and, and, using it as a block to prevent the water from entering those shafts is key and everything. Good stuff.
So Dan, with mega high-rise buildings, how are communications affected with those?
So, the first thing to understand is that communications don't really, abide by a rule of height or, you know, number of stories. And so, what I mean by that is we all go to ten-story buildings where we won't have sufficient communications throughout the building, and then we'll go to other mega high-rise buildings that do have sufficient communications throughout the entire building. This is one of the reasons to, knowing that you're going to a mega high-rise. You'll see that it will say mega in the CIDS, and on a transmission of a 1076 or a 1077, a communications unit, gets dispatched for a mega high-rise building as well, so that we have some of those additional communications, pieces to the puzzle over there.
The one thing that most mega high-rises are going to have. And now many, pretty much all high-rises are going to have is that ARC system. And so that's something to keep in mind if you have that to be able to activate that, even as a first two truck or engine officer, to be able to establish a line of communication throughout the building.
It's just it's not going to be, foolproof to use the handie-talkies on Channel One in some of these larger style buildings. And so if you have that ARC system establishing that early giving a radio check and then potentially setting up a relay as well is going to be very important for the communications.
The other thing is just to keep your ears open, meaning if you haven't heard from the incident commander in a few minutes, you know, maybe give them a tickle and make sure that
you still have communications with them. Because it may be times where they're trying to communicate with you and they cannot reach you.
That's where sometimes the one-way PA systems can work. The incident commander can utilize those in the lobby, or even, you know, as rudimentary as it sounds sometimes, I always carry my cell phone. My job-issued cell phone or the rig-issued cell phone so that we have that, backup communication link there to the incident commander as well.
Yeah. The key with communications is redundancy. Right. So, like Dan said, the ARC system that stands for Auxiliary Radio Communication system, that's an in-house, repeater system
that we have access to in the fire department. It's a great system to use. But again, sometimes it may not always be functioning. So, then we have to rely on an alternate means.
Redundancy is key to us. So, the PA system can work. We still have the floor warden phones. Or in some jurisdictions, it's known as the standpipe phone. Those work excellent. So hardwired system and it still works as an additional, redundant communication system from the fire command post all the way up to, the units operating throughout the building.
Dan, in regards to mega high-rise buildings, one of the unique scenarios that we encounter is augmenting or pumping water from our pumps into the, standpipe system. You had touched on marketing floors. Can you just describe to, the listeners out there the difference in some of the charts that we use for pumping?
Yeah, absolutely. So, when we talk about augmenting, mega high-rise or any, any building, that's, you know, I'll even call it over 600ft, because then we have a zoned standpipe system. And when we have a zoned standpipe system, we're going to have multiple, gravity tanks, multiple fire pumps within that building, most likely.
And, as you mentioned, you know, when we get into marketing versus construction floors, not only will, the actual height that we are at not correlate to the number of actual floors that are in the building, but each floor may not be ten feet.
So, a lot of times calculations are based off of, you know, ten foot per floor. And so, as we get to 100-story building, we're looking at 1000ft. That's not the case, especially with mega high-rise buildings where, you know, the vaulted ceilings, Cathedral ceilings, are, you know, pretty standard in a lot of these really high end apartments.
And so, what you end up with is you end up with maybe, let's say, the 50th floor being 700 and 800ft in the air or some standard like that. So there really is no rhyme or reason in terms of if you're looking at the building and saying, okay, this is the 40th floor, you really can't go to a chart and say, okay, the 40th floor is this tall. Now that's changing because of some of that code work that you talked about. A lot of the new mega high-rise buildings are going to have, height indicators at the standpipe outlets so that we will know,
at each floor what the height is. But let's simplify it. We can also just kind of break the building up into thirds or quarters, depending on how tall the building is.
And you can easily find out how tall. Pretty much any building in New York City is, even with something as easy as Google just to type in, you know, how tall is this building? And then you can break it up into thirds or quarters, depending on how tall it is and kind of, supply the building based on approximately where the fire is located within that height. That's, you know, basic. But if you don't have an actual height calculation, then you can utilize that. However, the one thing that we've really tried to instill in our chauffeurs is to wait and see what's going on with that first hand line before we start putting 500, 600 hundred PSI into these Siamese connections that may not even be rated for that high of a pressure.
And so, initially kind of letting that first and second engine hook up, that first hose line and utilize the building pumps to give them sufficient pressure, utilizing the gravity tanks to give them sufficient pressure, and only then if they're not getting a proper flow or a proper pressure, then we can augment the Siamese to the PSI that are required.
Yeah, that's very important. We don't want to damage that system because then it'll affect or delay the outcome of the operation.
Jim, one of the things that we respond to a lot of is alarms and so forth in the mechanical equipment rooms. And every one of them is different. It's a very complex area in a high-rise to address. Can you let the listeners know what a mechanical equipment room is and what it encompasses?
So mechanical equipment room in high-rise building is, a central
point in the building that they can have all the mechanical equipment. You want to have it all centralized in one point, because square footage is priced at a premium in New York City. So rather than having everything spread out, the mechanical equipment is centrally located in one part of the building.
That being said, some of the buildings are going from a central chiller plant to other types of mechanical equipment, where
it may be spread out on various floors. These are called things like DX units. Sometimes you'll find them in the basement, or sometimes you'll find them on the top floor. Or they'll have multiple machine rooms spread out throughout the building.
So, when we’re responding to these types of alarms, we have to be familiar with the large, complex layouts of machine rooms, because there's a lot of heavy equipment in these rooms that can
Pose a lot of danger to us, for both chemical burns and refrigeration burns, along with just hazards such as steam, high voltage electric. And chains used to open and close valves,
may pose danger for us getting wrapped up in them. So mechanical rooms have their own situations that could cause problems later on down the road.
And for, a situation like that. We'd want to have direct contact with the engineering staff.
Correct. So, the engineering staff is the vital key to these buildings. The engineering staffs are the ones that know the buildings inside and out. They know where the fans are, how to operate the fans, where the chillers are, how to operate the chillers and the ins and outs of the building. They know the hidden passageways in buildings. They know the easy ways to get places, and they know how to solve a lot of the problems,
when we get there. So, when you get to a lot of these buildings, majority of these buildings will have engineering staff on hand.
If they're able to help you out, I would use their knowledge and experience of the building to help mitigate the problem that's in that building, because they are the subject matter experts of that building.
Great point. So, Jimmy, we talked about a lot of the hazards in a mechanical equipment room, but on the same token, those rooms can also aid us at a fire or an emergency,
correct?
Right. So they build these buildings, both residential buildings and commercial buildings, to be airtight. They don't want the
air conditioning to escape the building in the summer. And then they don't want the coldness to come into the building in the winter. They want the heat to stay in. So the only way they get some kind of air movement in these buildings is with the mechanical systems. What you can do is you could purge the building out, meaning you can't break a lot of the windows in the building, if any. So you have to use the mechanical features within the building themselves to vent it out. We have a standard, protocol for that, but the mechanical, engineers, they can actually manipulate the fans themselves to do so.
They can go into the machine room, get on their computer or their BMS system and close something called a mixing damper and
get out all the air that's in the building and intake fresh air. Also it can be done is at some of the buildings. They could use it, at the fire command station, they could purge the system out, meaning that the incident commander can actually override that from the engineering staff and they can purge out the building themselves during an operation.
Yeah, and that's a huge point. I mean, if we can get the smoke out as soon as possible. Using the purge system, that's a key element in success of a high-rise fire. Like Jim had brought up. Right? We just can't break windows, you know, 50, 40 stories high. Having glass coming down like that to to do a simple vent,
like in a smaller type building where we're able to do that. So, we're relying on the mechanical system in the building to help get that smoke out, for our benefit and for the civilian benefit in the building. So regarding these mechanical equipment rooms, Jimmy, how should members operate in there?
So the key to that to acting safe in a machine room is not walking in there blindly. Get as much information about the machine room as you can before entering the machine room. There are safety features, required for some of the larger chillers
in the city. But that may not be true in other parts of the country. How do you get that information? How do you know what's going on in the machine room? Grab the engineer. The engineer knows the machine room inside and out. He knows the chemicals. He knows the type of refrigerant. He knows what's the,
main drive for the compressor. And he may be able to help you and guide you throughout that machine room. Not go in the machine room with you, but actually guide you through the areas on where you can go and where you can't go. Something we touched on earlier, cooling towers. Cooling towers—the chemicals used to keep the cooling tower at a certain level or keep the algae
and the other, growths that happen in those
cooling towers. Their chemicals are super concentrated in the machine rooms. You can find them there. So, you don't want to be walking around a machine room and touch some of the biocides or descalers that you find in machine rooms, it could have a harmful result on you.
Also, some of the, the drives that are used for these compressors, they’re steam. Obviously, steam can burn you, high voltage electric—that has very bad consequences if you touch that as well. So, walking around the machine room, don't do it blindly. Get as much information from the engineer as you can. If there's no one there, you know, they should have MSDS sheets on hand or the BIC card. Get something before you walk into a machine room and don't walk in there blindly.
So earlier I discussed the high-rise symposium that was sponsored by the FDNY Foundation a few weeks ago here in New York City. And it was a three-day event. Day one was, a day of lectures, in addition to an opening ceremony. Day two was
a field trip where we compared a legacy high-rise to a modern-day high-rise. And day three was conducted at the New York City Fire Academy, where we highlighted all of the different aspects on our operations and equipment related to high-rise operations.
What I'm going to do now is I'm going to ask each of our guests to explain what occurred on each of those days as they, spearheaded each of those days on their own accord. Chris, you handled day one. Could you tell the listeners about that?
Yeah. So, when we started this symposium initiative, it was the chief and the three of us. So, to naturally split it up into three sections with each of our company officers taking charge of a day and the chief overseeing the entire thing kind of worked out nice. And I wound up with, day one and the breakout presentations.
So, we had 28 breakout presentations on day one, across six time slots. That worked out pretty nice. Was a nice mix. We tried to have something for everyone in each time slot. We had 50 presenters. Almost every presentation had two presenters. Some had three. Some people were paired up to speak together that had never met before presented on that topic, and present multiple sides of the same topic from fire operations, fire prevention, EMS operations, and some of our outside partners like Underwriters Laboratories, the IAAF, John Jay University, Con Ed, NYPD, and the Fire and Life Safety Director's Association.
So, we were able to get a nice, comprehensive look at each of those topics from multiple angles. Some of the presentations had over 100 attendees, and some of the niche topics had, only a few attendees. But everybody that went to those ones, especially the niche ones, really wanted to see that topic and were appreciative that we had something for each topic, you know, available to them.
At the beginning of the day, we started off by recognizing the founding members that started and ran the symposium back in the 90s. It's hard to go forward and move, this initiative along without knowing where we've been and where we started.
Yeah. On that presentation, it was a unique thing. I mean, those gentlemen from, 1994 that had the original high -rise symposium, they kind of set the standard for us. That was a very well received program. And, we recognize them for their efforts and thanking them, for all that they did. We also held a little memorial tribute to those that are no longer with us, particularly those that were unfortunately taken from us on September 11th. And it was a nice tribute, to them as well. As you said, it wasn't just about firefighting operations. It encompassed a lot of people right off Fire Prevention Bureau personnel, our EMS personnel, and what it did was it partnered with some of those outside agencies. It was people from the fire and life safety, you know, code subject matter experts
that deal with these issues as support personnel or a code
enforcement type, regulator. And, it was a good mix of everything showing how high-rise buildings are really a complex operation, and it's a little bit of everybody participating to have a successful outcome during a fire and emergency.
So, on day two, like I said, we took a field trip, and
going to let, Lieutenant Pirot, who spearheaded that day, explain what happened on that.
Thanks. So, day two was meant to give a little bit of substance behind day one. We were trying to get the two days to work hand-in-hand together, meaning you could hear someone speak all day. But actually, being in a building and seeing the building and hearing the building adds to that presentation of day one.
So, we reached out to, Tom Burke from Related Properties. He oversees Hudson Yards. We work with him also with the FLSTP program, which is the training program for new lieutenants.
We wanted to display, the fire and life safety directors’
command post, the fire pumps, the machine rooms along with elevators and how to properly use an elevator. So, we
were able to set up a tour at Hudson Yards with their buildings to showcase this. And then we wanted to compare it to something. So, we also reached out to Rockefeller Center, who's managed by Tishman Speyer, and we spoke to Andrew Burns, and he was able to work with us and put the same type of display on for his property as well. You were able to see, a legacy building compared to a newer building. And we were able to see firsthand some of the dangers that you may not necessarily pick up on during a fire, such as the chemicals in machine rooms super concentrated for cooling towers. The refrigerants themselves,
how the signage reads, the direction and how actually to get to various parts of the building. They're very complex, and the layouts of them can turn anybody around. So being there, walking through it helped display the problems that may be associated with these rooms. The fire pumps—we were able to see how to put these things online. The difference between an automatic pump versus a manual pump. And along the elevators.
Having control of the elevators, safely using the elevators. Getting the elevators to one central point so you don't lose them is something that you need to know while fighting these fires.
And just how to communicate with the staff at the fire command station. Now, we touched on it before that some of these buildings or some of the buildings in your area may not have an engineer or or a fire command station, but there are other mechanical features in the buildings that you're going to be presented with that have their own problems, such as a rooftop unit or a pollution control unit.
The more knowledge you have on the building, the better off you're going to be if something does occur in these buildings. And that was what the point of day two was, to get you in the building, to get you to see the building, and to get to actually, relate what you saw on day one to how it actually is in real life.
Yeah. Well, good points, Jim. I mean, I was at the Rockefeller Center site and, for me, it was a great opportunity because that's one of my buildings in my first due response area. So, it kind of reinforced a lot of what I would face at an actual fire or an incident there. So it was a good experience for me.
Also, just to kind of reinforce what we do on a daily basis. You had touched in there about like pollution control devices. So, our listeners, if they heard one of our prior podcasts when we did Duct Fires with Chief Mulry, you're aware of what a electrostatic precipitator is. And that's what Jimmy's alluding to, because they were a feature that are prevalent in high-rise buildings. Both of these locations actually do have them there on site, and everything.
At the conclusion of the walk through both Rockefeller Center and Hudson Yards, we did a roundtable. Right. It consisted of myself, Assistant Chief Tom Currao, who's the Chief of Fire Prevention, and Assistant Chief Mike Meyers, who's the Chief of Training and Lieutenant Gordon. And Chris, you moderated it, right? You basically kept it kind of controlled where we
touched on the three topics, right? Transportation,
water operations, and communications. Can you just go over that real quick? Because it was kind of well, received by the attendees on that.
So, we saw quite a few positive reviews from the attendees about the roundtable at the end of day two. They liked the timing of it, that they got to have that discussion after seeing the buildings to kind of recap anything, or ask questions about anything that they weren't 100% sure on at the end of the walkthroughs.
So, like you said, we had the, the four members on the panel, the chief fire prevention chief of training, you and Lieutenant Gordon. And then we had a few other subject matter experts sitting at a table in the front that we were able to call on. You know, when we needed for a particular topic? We had Captain Cicero who heads up the, fire Department’s elevator task force and works on our emergency water supply group, talking about water supply issues and high-rise buildings if the standpipe is damaged or broken or not working for whatever reason.
Those topics came up, and it was great to have him there to explain those those issues.
Jim Pirot talked a bit about refrigerants, leaning into his background as a high-rise building engineer, and we had Bruce Johnson from UL, talk a little bit about batteries and emerging technology and things that we might be seeing in the future.
The, the attendees also really liked the availability and accessibility of our staff chiefs and their willingness to talk to them and pass along information. Also, the presenters from day one, the facilitators and the FDNY members, that that taught or helped with any of the various sections of the, three days. Everybody really liked how accessible they were, how happy they were to answer questions, and a lot of comments about the depth of the answers that they got from everyone. Yeah, it was a really positive experience. And even on day three, people were still talking about the roundtable after that.
Dan, day three was conducted at the New York City Fire Academy. Could you just go through on what occurred that day?
Yep. So, on day three, we had all the attendees come to the Rock, which is always an exciting experience for people that have never seen it before.
We set up a variety of different demonstrations that utilize subject matter experts throughout the job in order to
demonstrate our operations at various high-rise, not just incidents, but operations as well. So, a list of those we started with, opening ceremony and going through the EFAS, our
fast track accountability system, as well as the incident command app. Just a quick demonstration to kind of show how that works and how we utilize that on the Fireground.
Then we utilized, both special operations as well as the rope unit in order to demonstrate a high angle rope demonstration of a suspended window washer as well as a lifesaving rope demonstration.
Then we broke up into groups, and they rotated throughout twelve
different demonstrations throughout the day. Everything from glass cutting to, the high-rise nozzle to water mapping, robotics, FDC supply, high pressure pumping, standpipe operations, the KO curtain, positive pressure ventilation and the rebreather station as well. So, there was a lot of variety. Some things that you may not think deal with high-rise. We kind of put showed how it can, still relate a little bit. I thought day three went pretty well. And that's just a credit to, you know, all the instructors that were out there that day.
I think everyone got something out of it.
Yeah, definitely. It was a very positive day.
We hadn't had a, large scale high-rise symposium like this since 1994. And, the feedback that we've gotten back so far from the attendees and vendors and other participants has been very positive, that there's been a request to possibly have a future symposium next year. And that is something that's being looked into at this time.
You know, FDNY Pro has touched on, high-rise fire operations in the past, right? I, I did duct fires a little bit related to that. The crane tower and fire of 2023. We also talked about the fire with the multiple rope rescues at the 37-story building. We've had, subject matter experts on wind impacted fires and so forth. High-rise, it's an interesting topic that occurs on a daily basis. And we know our listeners like to, you know, get as much feedback as possible from the FDNY on that. And that's why today we focused strictly on that topic.
I want to thank you guys once again for your continued participation, not just with the symposium, but with the training videos and training on new lieutenants and other,
experts out there.
And with that, I would like to thank you all for listening to the FDNY Pro podcast. I'm your host, Battalion Chief Anthony Pascocello. For more training and information from our subject matter experts, go to FDNYPRO.org.
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