From a fire on Wednesday that began in the garage of this home. Here are details from the description with the video:
North Star Volunteer Fire Department with assistance from Ft. Wainwright Fire Department respond to a structure fire on Crescent Ct.
The North Star VFD is in Fairbanks, Alaska and serves North Pole, Fairbanks and Fort Wainwright Army Post.
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- Raw video: Garage fire in North Attleborough, Massachusetts. – October 29, 2011
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All the usual "holy crap, look at this sumbitch" stuff on arrival, plus throw in a decent amount of snow on the ground to flop around in, and not only did they beat the new AZ standard of flowing water in 120 seconds, but they had multiple lines off and the fire knocked in 120 seconds. Nice job, troops.
Gawd, I'm so NOT looking forward to snow.
Just looking at that video makes me want to move southward.
Statter
Whoa, flashback alert. For the first few seconds of this video I was reminded of the freelancing ventilation fire where a FF systematically breaks out all the indows on the C side of a split level gray house in the winter.
Only in this vidoe, there isn't a FF caused flashover and the North Star company gets right to work. Good job guys.
It would be interesting to see the 2 videos side by side.
I just realized the Noth Star company covers (the) North Pole! That's an important company!
Brrrrrrrr what can you say but JOB WELL DONE… first line darkened down the cockloft then went in to finish up…. second line cool the tank and darken down addition…. all on tank water. Please let some of the other company's on here watch this video to see how it is done! Fine Job!, other than the snow. Strike the Box!
No moth to a flame stuff here, they knew the first line needs to be INSIDE as soon as possible. They did better in 8 inches of snow than some departments do when it's 70 and sunny.
I don't normally comment on fire videos. I wasn't there and I don't know what is going on but….. Darn good attack. They moved quickly past the burned up what ever that was and moved to the unburned side and cut the fire off from getting into the main house. Good Job North Star VFD!!! Dave why are you showing this?
North Star FD apparatus, from their web site: http://www.northstarfire.org/apparatus.html
They have a some big rigs!
When you gotta bring your own water to most calls…bring a lot of it.
I lived inside there service area while stationed in AK. The BIGGEST thing they have against them is there are NO building codes, and the weather. The winter time they inventory on the rigs change to include a torpedo heater for vehicle extracation!!!!
It looks plenty cold there, and that fire is generating some heat! I'll punch the first guy who puts this out!! LOL!
Good job North Star VFD.
Its nice to see a video of firemen being good firemen. I really liked how the guy on the first line went buy the part that was already burned up and lost, and went to where the fire was going to stop further damage. very nice
That isn't much snow. lol
The other tidbit is that most likely in addition to limited manpower, no hydrants, weather; they also more than likely have quite an extended response time. Depending on if anyone was home, it may have been an extended notification time.
Someone show this video to Firedoc. Another example of doing what needs to be done with what you have at hand. No excuses, no ORM BS, just put the fire out and the operational risk goes away.
And if there's ever a location that has ColdFire, Alaska would be it.
Thanks for posting the video here and all of the comments.
North Star Volunteer Fire Department is a combination department serving 106 Sq miles and a population of 23,000 responding out of 4 stations. In Alaska terms if we were a city we would be the fourth largest in the State. Our service area borders the City of Fairbanks and Ft. Wainwright, surrounds the City of North Pole, and goes south to border on two sides Eielson Air Force Base.
We typically don't have the great depth of snow that other areas of the State do by we do get the cold temps. If I recall on the day of this fire it had warmed up to the -20's after over an almost two week period of -40's. Our temp extremes runs to highs in the summer in the 90's and low's down to the -60's. I should note these are ambeint temps, we get very little wind.
We have Auto-aid agreements with four of our neighboring departments, and mutual aid with the remaining and depending on the location of the call we may get one or two departments also responding on a first alarm. In this case an engine company from Ft. Wainwright. All of the departments in our area work very closely with each other to provide a pretty good response.
North Star Volunteer Fire Department has a very active Facebook page so if you are interesting in seeing how it is to respond to emergencies in the heart of Alaska you are encouraged to be our "friends".
Thanks
Jeff Tucker, Fire Chief
Thak you Chief Tucker. I had a feeling the video would get some positive comments. Stay warm.
Statter
Thanks Dave!