Hi there Nonners,

I’m so glad that I’ve been able to help. Always feel free to ask away, and I’ll see you on the fireground.

~529

Hello there!

So the short answer to this is that size is a factor, but it really boils down to tax base. Funding determines whether or not an agency can afford to hire and salary full-time staff. Some agencies depend on paid-on-call responders, while others use a mixed staffing model where there are full-time staff supplemented by volunteers, and some are entirely volunteer. You could have a small, but very wealthy, communnity whose tax base will support a full-time career department, while others of the same size could only afford to equip a volunteer department but not pay them. Of course, larger cities usually have the tax base to support full-time departmants for their fire protection services. However you could have a sparsely populated location (like a county) that can only support a small service. 

Determine what the settting of your story will be and use that information to determine what resources that location could feasibly support. It would be just as strange to see a remote, rural county with full-time fire service agencies as it would be to see a large metropolitan city with only volunteers.

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps!

~529

Hi there nonners!

Generally the rank structure is as follows:

Chief

Assistant/Deputy Chief

Battalion/District Chief (Though a district chief may outrank a battalion chief in some departments)

Captain

Lieutenant

Senior Firefighter (Not always used) 

Firefighter

This rank structure may vary from department to department but it generally falls somewhere in here. You could easily eliminate some of these for a smaller department and maintain realism. 

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps.

~529

Hi there @kasperaura,

In incidents like this, the first order of business if obviously to assess the general conditions of your patient from the outside of the vehicle. Typically there will also simultaneously be vehicle stabilization operations being conducted. 

Once the vehicle is stabilized, rescuers being the two processes. The first is called disentanglement, which is essentially removing the car from the victim. This can take the form of anything as simple as removing a door to something as complex as lifting and rolling the entire dash of the vehicle upward. The second of the two processes is the more common of the two terms, extrication. That is, the removal of the patient from the vehicle.

Scenes of this nature can be extremely stressful for trapped victims for a number of reasons. They become blindingly bright, loud, and hectic very quickly which you can imagine is not a fun time for the disoriented and possibly injured person that’s trapped in the vehicle. This is what makes it so crucial to communicate everything that will occur to the victim both before and during the operation. 

After the patient is extricated, EMS personnel will package the patient, and transport them to the nearest/most logical treatment facility where the people that get paid the big bucks (aka trauma docs with degrees and everything) will take over their care. 

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps.

~529

Hi, @dying-redshirt-noises,

This is a tough one to answer because every department’s policy is different on what facets of their operations they’re willing to divulge to the public. Your best bet is to try to get a hold of their public relations officer and go from there. Calling the department’s listed non-emergency line is usually a good place to start.

As always, thanks for asking, and I hope this helps.

~529

Hi there @letterbird,

So the NFPA does in fact deal with search and rescue and the training standards for them. I’d recommend doing some digging around inter-library loan systems for books and youtube for more information as, unfortunately, I am but a wee structural firefighter. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help, but I hope this points you in the right direction.

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps.

~529 

Hi there nonners,

So we would never ignore any person found downed in a fire for a number of reasons. 

1) Our first responsibility is to protect life and property regardless of criminal status or lack there of.

2) Our job is not to presume the innocence or guilt of any person found in a fire.

3) We leave arson investigation and criminal sanction to arson investigators and law enforcement and the courts. It’s just not our job.

That being said, of course any death in a fire weighs on you. There will always be the thought in the back of your head about whether or not you did everything you could to save a person. If you follow your training the answer to that question should be yes.

As always, thanks for asking, and I hope this helps.

~529

Hi there!

So this should be short and sweet. Metal sheathed concrete as far as the eye can see, that’s about it.

Thanks for asking, and I hope this helps!

~529

Hi there, and welcome to the family! 

Generally speaking, fires don’t reach that size very often. When they do its often due to a combination of factors. Namely the building construction style (wood frame, heavy timber, fire resistant, etc.), fire load in the building (filled with books? concrete parts? Flammable chemicals?), ventilation (open windows/doors and the like). In addition, a fire of that size would take time to develop, but of course good ventilation would help it along.

In your case, It would be pretty difficult to get a modern apartment building to burn beyond what’s known as a room and contents fire because of the way they’re constructed. Your best bet would probably be an electrical fire in a pre-1950 apartment complex.

Thanks for asking, and I hope this helps!

~529

Hello there!

This is actually a pretty common thing, for one cities often have no use for old fire stations after they’ve moved to a new building so sometimes they sit for a long time unused. Cities will also often sell the unused buildings, this happened pretty recently near me and the building was sold to be used as an art studio by the local university so that’s not at all a far fetched scenario. 

However, if the station was simply unused and vacant but still owned by the municipality, it introduces an entirely new conundrum. How does one illegally enter and occupy a government owned facility without being noticed? 

Your best bet is to have your characters somehow acquire the building through legal means and then use it to their heart’s content.

Thanks for asking, and I hope this helps!

~529

Hi there nonners,We're all a big family at the house, including the actual families of our brothers in fire. Its pretty common for us to hang out in our off hours and for families to drop by the station just to visit or even better, with treats.Thanks for asking, and I hope this helps. ~529

Hi there nonners!

So, the speed at which a tent would burn depends entirely on the material that it was constructed of. You have several options from that time period, including but not limited to: wool, leather, silk, and linen. 

In terms of fire resistance, leather would be your best bet. In fact, you would have an easier time burning the items inside the tent than the tent itself. 

After leather, comes wool. Wool DOES NOT like to burn at all, it has a tendency to smolder and then go out a opposed to actually igniting.

Silk has a tendency to melt as opposed to burning, and it doesn’t really want to light. 

Last, there’s linen. Linen WILL burn, and it will burn fast. However, because of the speed with which it burns, it wouldn’t do a whole lot of damage.

Overall, because of how thin the fabrics used to construct tents, as well as their various flammabilities, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the contents of your tent came out okay, if a little smoky.

As always, thanks for asking an I hope this helps!

Hello there @b0bth3w0nd3rchick3n,

We tend to work on a 24 hour clock, aka military time. 

As always, thanks for asking and I hope this helps!