hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2851.txt

Episode: 2851
Title: HPR2851: An introduction to the work of fire fighters
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2851/hpr2851.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 12:10:25

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This is HBR episode 2008-151 entitled, an introduction to the work on Firefighter.
It is hosted by your own pattern and is about 31 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is a small introduction into the work on Firefighter.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
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Hello there and welcome at another episode, another podcast by me, Jerome Betten.
This time I would like to talk to you about Firefighting.
The reason for that is, well, sorry, I've been a Firefighter for almost 10 years.
So I did my share as a volunteer firefighter, so it's something you do next to your job.
And I thought, yeah, let's make a podcast about it.
There's a lot to tell, it's an intriguing kind of work, it has a sort of adventurous sound
to it, I guess.
Anyway, one thing is for certain, it's a job where you can make an actual real life difference
in somebody else's life.
And hopefully for the better, of course.
So I could tell stories about the stuff I did and what we encountered, but I would like
to start this podcast with, well, you know, just talking about everything that from a
technical perspective is attached to it.
So what do people do when they're firemen or firefighter or whatever you call it?
Mind you, I'm Dutch, so everything I tell you, procedures I tell you, they relate to
working as a volunteer firefighter in the Netherlands.
So it's very well possible that other countries have other procedures.
And if for some reason you're one of those people and you live another country, you know
that you do stuff completely different, just make a podcast about it.
And that way I learn something new about this, what I think is still an amazing type of
work.
Anyway, so what does firefighting and till, because it's more than just fighting fires, if
there's anything like that, I mean, it's not like you put on some judo clothing and
you start fighting a fire, it's a little different.
Well, basically what the definition that's used in the Netherlands is that the fire brigade
is there to save man and animal.
That's it.
Save man and animal.
That's what we're there.
We're not there to control traffic, we're not there to bring medical aid, although it's
related, but we're there to save man and animals.
And that can be out of a fire, hence the term firefighter.
But it can also be out of a car wreck or train wreck or plane wreck or anything.
You know, when people are stuck in a car, often accident, and well, they really like
to get out, and there's a lot to be told about that as well.
But also save people from heights, maybe they climbed up a tree, I know the proverbial catch
up in a tree thing, but nevertheless, people that are on a rooftop and suddenly they don't
get to come down.
But also from depth, as in well, spelunking, you know, there's not a lot of natural spelunking
to do in the Netherlands, so that's easy.
But we have got our own fair share of wells, water wells.
So you could fall into that or you get into trouble when you're in water.
So that saving man and animal, what we also do is then fight fires, of course.
We do also the prevention of fire.
So we consult with people, persons, organizations about how to detect and prevent fire as much
as possible, which also means checking the firefighting equipment that's on site somewhere,
or checking if the emergency exits are not blocked and are readily available.
What we also do is, well, the fire we get is pumping out water after, for instance, you
had a large, large rain, heavy rain, and you're suffering from, well, you're not personally
suffering, but you've got too much water in your house, then there are some pumps that
can be deployed to get it empty.
And the other thing is that with, there's a sort of a triangle in the Netherlands, you
have the police, you have the emergency responders as in the ambulances, and we have the third
as then the fire brigade, of those three, whenever there's a combined effort to do something,
the fire brigade is in charge here, hierarchically, are they at a higher level.
Anyway, so, back to the technical stuff, something very boring, probably you all know that,
and that's related to a fire.
What is a fire?
Well, a fire is an uncontrollable chemical reaction that needs three things to happen, to
make that reaction possible.
And as for one, there's a flammable substance, it can be a salt, it can be a liquid, it can
be a gas, but nevertheless, a flammable substance, something that could burn.
You need oxygen, because without oxygen, there is no fire.
And the other thing is you need a temperature suitable enough for the fire.
And with these three things, as in something flammable, oxygen and the temperature, that's
a fire triangle, and you need all three things to have a fire.
Now, the simplest way to extinguish a fire is just get rid of one of those three parameters.
So, if you take away the oxygen, the fire stops, if you take away the flammable substance,
the fire stops.
If you take away the temperature, because it gets too cold, the temperature stops.
It's difficult, tricky one, I know that, but nevertheless.
So how do you extinguish a fire?
Well, you could use materials to extinguish a fire.
One of the most used ones is water.
And why?
Because it cools down the location that's burning.
Until it's below the temperature that would start the reaction.
The other thing you can do is also you could put in CO2, CO2 gas, as a way to extinguish
a fire.
And what does CO2 do?
It's a gas, but it doesn't burn from itself.
It's very stable that way.
And it gets rid of the oxygen, because where CO2 there's no oxygen, so, and by removing
oxygen out of our equation, we get rid of the fire.
Now, the third one is foam.
And foam is, well, it just puts a layer on top of your fire.
And that way, it locks the oxygen out.
And foam is very light.
And it's main advantage, because you can't use water to extinguish a fire from gasoline,
because gasoline floats on water.
So if you put water on it, you just make the area that's burning larger, so that's not
really what you want.
Foam is so light, you just put foam on top of burning gasoline, and the fire is immediately
out.
And the last one is powder.
And powder is something also that you can put on a fire from a fire extinguisher, and
it covers the material that's burning with this powder, and that way also, it locks
the oxygen out.
Well then, in the analysis, of course, numerous materials at firefighters use, but that's
some graphic stuff, so it's hard to talk about it.
But what we do have in the Netherlands is we have in every residential area, or in the
street, at the distance of 80 meters apart, we have what we call a below ground fire hydrant.
So it's not a fire hydrant, as you may be know from movies, the ones in America, they
are standing by the sidewalks.
Now it's below street level, and it's just sort of, I don't know what the word for
this, but some sort of iron cast plate that you remove, and then you expose the area where
you can put a certain pipe on top of it with handles, and you can get your water out
of there.
Now, every 80 meters in every residential area in the Netherlands, and to find it, because
you can wander the street and looking for a lid, but it's more easy than that.
We have red sort of plaques on the front of houses, and they have a sort of a white tea,
and a couple of numbers on it, so the number below the tea will tell you the difference
from the building to the fire hydrant in a perpendicular direction.
And if there's a number on the left or on the right of that specific white tea shaped
thing, if it's on the right, then you also have to move a certain distance to the right,
and it's if it's on the left, you have to move a certain distance to the left to find.
So it's sort of a chassis, you know, like what you can do with chess with the horse.
You have to make a small, yeah, you don't have to make a small dance, but that's what
you could, but normally during a fire, you probably won't.
And yeah, the other thing when we're talking about fires is that there are a few,
really, really, really annoying things regarding the general public and firefighters.
One is if a fire truck arrives at a house that's on fire, you see people running in without
a hose, and you're standing by, and well, these days people are getting really horrible,
and they think this is worked on by amateurs, I don't know what they think, but everybody
starts yelling, you need to bring your house with you, you put some water on the fire,
etc.
Don't really don't, and I'll tell you why.
One liter of water on a fire immediately produces 1,600 liters of steam boiling hot steam.
Now imagine you're lying on the floor in a burning house, you're not feeling too well
if you're still alive.
If somebody comes in with a hose, puts water on the fire, you get, well, you get boiled
like a shrimp or a lobster, and that's not really what you want.
Now they go in at first without a hose, they have their own breeding apparatus on, and
they start to scan the house for possible survivors or humans at least, and animals to get
them out as quickly as possible, and only after that, and only after that, they will start
putting water on the fire and extinguishing the fire.
So next time you know why they don't immediately do that.
The other thing is, and that annoys me to know when every party that you are, every
birthday party, when you say, well, you know, what's your job?
Well, I do this, I do this, and I'm also a volunteer firefighter, oh yeah, right.
Most of those guys are paramanics, really, guys, no, it's, I'm not fascinated by the flames
of a fire, it just doesn't do it for me at all.
I am somebody who likes to help people, that's what motivates me, helping other people.
Well, you know, if there's a large building on fire, and everybody is out, and it's just
a huge structure that's completely lit up, yeah, I think that's impressive.
I think everybody thinks that's impressive, and that doesn't make everybody a paramanic.
I've seen large buildings burning, and it was not residential, it was just a plant on
the plant, and nobody in sight, only some, a heap of, I don't sort of beans or something,
you know, that's, okay, they get lost, you know, happens.
Yeah, and the complete structure was wood, so there was a large wooden building on fire,
and I think that's impressive.
But for the rest, it didn't do it for me at all, yeah, well, so that's what I can tell
you about fire.
Now, then there's the other thing, and it has to do with what we, I think what we would
call technical aids, so all those things where there's no fire related to it, or evolved
in it, it isn't.
Most of the time, it's traffic accidents, and in the Netherlands, there is this sort
of a saying called the golden hour, the golden hour, and the golden hour means if you get
to a crash site, and you can get the victims out, and within an hour in a hospital, their
chances of survival increase dramatically.
So you try to do this not hastily, but within an hour.
Until the 70s of the former century, 70s, 80s, the usual procedure was we get at a car
crash, we pull out the victims as quickly as possible, no matter what happens, and rush
them to the hospital, and that most of the part did more bad than good, because they were
maybe stuck, and we just pulled them out, and no regard for if they got stuck somewhere.
So a lot has changed since then, or really a lot has changed.
What we try to do, first is, well, most of the time we're there together with the ambulance
guys, and they will first focus on stabilizing the victim, making sure that their condition
doesn't deteriorate, and at the same time, we're busy as firefighters to try to get them
out of the car as safely and as quickly as possible.
To do that, there are four steps to take.
One is stabilizing the vehicle.
As you know, the vehicle stands on a couple of tires together with some springs under
it, and shock absorbers, and it just moves around.
So what we do is stabilize the vehicle just by putting blocks of water or plastic beneath
the vehicle until it's completely stable, it doesn't move left or right.
The next step is what we call glass management.
Of course, you know, there's a glass involved in the car, and some of those glass windows
have to go just to get into it.
So we have a small thing with a very pointy tip.
You put it to the side of a side window, and the window crashes without any big noise or
physical, large physical stuff, it's just very easy.
Now the front window windshield is something else, because today it's layered, so there
are other things to get that out.
You could use a glass saw, you can use a wire, if it's glued, you can...
But most of the time, it's also very likely you just let it...
You don't do anything with it at that particular time.
Then the third step is to remove parts of the car that are in the way of getting the
victim out of the car, and then step four, of course, is getting the victim out.
Now, so stabilizing, we do with big plastic blocks, and let's see, after that,
we have hydraulic equipment, and that consists of a hydraulic pump with a motor attached
to it, and that just produces oil at a very high pressure.
There's, of course, a hose connected to it, and the hose is connected either to a spreader
or to a scissor, a hydraulic scissor, and a hydraulic spreader.
And those two, you can do almost anything with it.
You can cut away the rooftop, and if you then fold it forward, you don't have to do any
glass management with the windshield, because it will just break at where it's banded,
because it's layered, nothing glass-wise, nothing really happens.
You just fold the top of the car to the front of it.
That's what you do most of the time, so what we like to say, we make a cabrio out of it.
Yeah, well, that's basically what doing stuff on a car accident involves.
The other thing Fires Brigade does is they're involved when there are hazardous materials,
incidents, leakage, or other way, otherwise, something that you don't want.
And there are very special suits that are on the fire truck that are completely enclosed
and individual and are very resistant to corrosive liquids and et cetera.
So with your breathing apparatus on and then enclosed in such a large plastic suit,
nothing can harm you in a way.
So you can take a look at hazardous materials and decide to wrap it in something,
in something you to contain it or spread some grit that will absorb the material,
the liquid or whatever.
There's one thing you sweat like a pig in such a thing.
It's really, really, really warm, even in the dead of winter,
simply because it's very isolated.
So you heat up just simply by your own body warmth and that's 37 degrees.
So yeah, it's it's hot.
Getting to another type of incident,
when, for instance, a bike, a bike gets in an accident with, let's say, a bus or a truck
or sometimes even a car, and they're just jammed beneath the car,
then there are these pneumatic pillows that we can use to put under the car,
put some compressed air in it and we can lift the car very slowly,
very safely to remove the person involved.
Those pillows are relatively small.
There are also very big pillows available and that's for, let's say,
if you would have, for instance, a truck that's laying on its side and you,
and that you have no other option to rotate it back on its wheels,
you can put those very, very large bags on one side and that way lift the complete truck
until it rolls over and stands on its wheels.
So that's basically, well, this is basic knowledge, actually.
What it was there to say, well, getting to fires, for instance,
if you're, as a firefighter, going into a house that's on fire,
then you have your breathing apparatus, so that's all fine,
but you don't see shit.
You don't see anything.
It's just clouds, it's just sort of a grave fog in front of you,
and well, you're not familiar, of course, with that specific house you've never been there before.
So you have to wonder about, and the way to do that is,
it's sort of a physical exercise where you use one hand always keeps touch with the wall.
So you're always, always, always touching a wall.
I don't know left side or on the right side, but you're always touching a wall.
And you do that with not a palm of your hand, but the backside of your hand,
because if you would hit, for instance, a bare wire, that's electrical wire,
then your hand would clutch into a fist and thus keep you safe.
If you would touch the wall with the palm of your hand and you would touch a wire,
hot wire, it would make your hand into a fist and you would grab the wire,
which is clearly unhealthy.
The other thing is, the other hand keeps waving in front and above you.
So it's a 90 degrees angle, yet you're constantly making to the top of you,
to the front of you, to the top to the front, to be prepared for any obstacle
that you might encounter that you don't see.
So that's what you do with your hands, then you have your feet, one feet, your foot,
your standing on, and the other foot is just sort of touching in front of you
if there's still some floor left, because you never know, maybe there's a hole in the floor,
maybe it's a wooden floor and there's a burn hole in it.
If it's a concrete floor, then that's not happening, that will not happen very soon,
but then sometimes you have these, for instance, a door to, also word for it in English,
a cellar to a cellar.
And after the door is open, you can tumble into the cellar, which is clearly also unhealthy.
So you really need to touch in front of you quickly to see if there's anything.
And that's the way you try to find your way into a house that's on fire.
If it's a residential area, that's relatively easy.
If it's commercial property, it's more difficult, because anything goes regarding the interior
of such a building, there's no, you know, in a normal residential house, you have your
living room, you have your kitchen, you have sleep room, sleeping rooms, maybe your cellar,
maybe a toilet.
But in a commercial property, it's clearly, don't have a living room, but you have, I don't
know, a place where people are working, maybe there are containers of some highly inflammable
gas that are in use, and even if they're closed, then there's nothing wrong with it.
But if they're in a building that's on fire, they can still get hot and explode after
all.
A blevy, a boiling liquid, explosion, something, it's called a blevy anyway.
It's always pretty impressive to witness from a distance, don't mind you.
Actually, I once had a colleague who lost the lower part of his leg because of such an
exploding gas bottle, bottle of gas.
But he survived for the rest, yeah, it comes with a trade, I guess.
Why do people do this kind of work, you may wonder, and the thing is,
if you've done your education and you have learned all there is to learn about this kind
of work, it just doesn't feel dangerous anymore because you feel prepared for any and all
eventuality.
And there's always Murphy.
So it really doesn't hold up in practice, but nevertheless, you feel confident enough
to go about your business.
Yeah, that's, you know what, let's leave it at that for this moment, for this time.
Half an hour talk about firefighting, some theory.
If you have additional questions, just put a comment below the show and I'll be happy
to gather the questions and make a new show about it and answer all your questions.
Yeah, let's do it like that because there's a lot to tell, stories to tell, theories to
tell.
But yeah, let's respond to your questions, I think that will be a good idea.
So just leave a comment below the show notes and I'll respond to that in due time.
Okay.
Well, that's it for this time, it was nice talking to you again, I hope you enjoyed
this podcast and till we meet again, okay, bye-bye.
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