Interstate Bank Building Fire;
EXPANDING OPERATIONS
It soon became evident from the exterior and the interior
that the fire was spreading upward. Companies successively
launched attacks from all four stairways onto the 13th,
14th, 15th, and 16th floors, often encountering heavy fire
from the point of entry and having to fight their way onto
the floors with handlines. At times active suppression efforts
were underway simultaneously on four levels as crews attempted
to push the fire back from the central core to the perimeter
of each floor. As more doors were opened, conditions in
the stairways deteriorated with heat and smoke going up
and water cascading down. (Appendix D shows a vertical cross-section
of the building and the fire floors.)
The Operations Chief communicated with the Command Officers
assigned to the floors above, directing tactical activities
and making assignments of fresh or recycled companies to
specific floors and stairways. Several companies handled
three or four different firefighting assignments as conditions
changed during the incident, with only short breaks to change
air cylinders at the 10th floor Staging Area.
The Operations Chief relied primarily on runners to communicate
with the floors above because radio communications were
overtaxed and disrupted by the building's steel frame. In
order to communicate with the Incident Commander, who was
located on the street level, a window was broken out and
a Battalion Chief stood at the opening with a portable radio
to provide line-of-sight communications between the 10th
floor and the Command Post. Attempts to use regular telephone
service were unsuccessful due to fire and water damage to
telephone circuits. An installed sound-powered emergency
phone system, linking all floors with the lobby, also proved
to be inadequate.
The strategy employed to stop the upward progress of the
fire was to use aggressive tactics on the 14th and 15th
floors to reduce the fire's intensity and the resulting
exposure to floors above, while setting-up with hoselines
and waiting for the fire to attack the 16th floor. This
strategy proved to be successful but required extreme efforts
by crews operating handlines on heavily involved floors,
with as many as four floors burning below them. Approximately
20 handlines were used by 32 attack companies on the five
involved floors.
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