PRIMARY SEARCH IN A CENTER HALLWAY

This document is to breakdown the primary search, specifically for a center hallway structure. The following is not intended to cover how to search each room or apartment, this is intended to be a chapter that will be a part of a search manual. This is a living document and by no means meant to cover every center hallway configuration or fire situation.

Knowing building layouts and understanding fire behavior is paramount for aggressive and efficient searches.

What is a Center Hallway

A building with multiple occupancies either residential or business in which their main entrance is accessed from a common hallway. Their footprint comes in many forms: E, H, I, L, O, T, U.

Building Occupancies with Center Hallways

Apartments, Hotels, Businesses, Care Facilities, Schools, Hospitals

Search Size-Up on a Center Hallway Building

The Building: When arriving into the area be efficient with this time and keep your eyes up. Size-up as much of the structure as possible, before the air brake is set. The number of floors will decide how the crews will split, while the shape will decide the search pattern and assist the crew to maintaining orientation. The building footprint can indicate locations of egress, fire doors, stairwells & forecast man power needs to perform an efficient and effective search.

Fire & Smoke: Attempt to locate the fire floor and location from the exterior. Has it extended outside its box of origin, is it auto-exposing to the floor above? This can be valuable information when you go to the interior and find hostile hallway conditions. Determining the fire room floor and location can be difficult in these conditions and can increase exponentially if there are open stairwells or fire doors blocked open. Prioritize getting to the hallway and get an interior size-up: stairwell locations, smoke conditions, and if the fire has taken the hallway.

Interior or Exterior Entry: Firefighters being able to occupy the hallway determines if it will be interior or exterior means of entry for the search. If conditions allow, primary search starts from the entrance with the first objective being to locate the fire room. If the fire room door is open and you are able to confine the fire by shutting the door, then do so.

Hallway Access (Interior Access)

Hallway Discipline: If people have self evacuated, they most likely took off in a hurry and left entry doors from the hallway into the occupancy open. Be disciplined in the assignment and control all doors as you make your way to the fire. This should occur no matter the hallway conditions since they can change abruptly.

Arriving at the Fire Room/Apartment: When searching in front of the hoseline, size up the fire room at the door. Read the smoke (pushing, breathing, etc.), does it smell like a cooking fire, what is the temperature of the door? Use this information along with your exterior size-up to determine if your passing or attempting to occupy the fire room for search. If the door is currently holding back the fire and smoke from the hallway, the decision to force and make entry will effect hallway conditions. Opening a well involved single room can drop the hallway smoke to the floor. If

the building has open stairwells, the same will happen on the floors above. This will have an impact on the civilian evacuation routes and decreases the search efficiency and effectiveness. This is an educated risk/benefit decision to make.

Entering the Fire Room/Apartment: If the decision based on the size-up is that a firefighter can occupy the space. Force the door, make entry and have the water can ready to knock the fire back. After entry, it is imperative to control the door then complete the primary search. Be prepared to quickly close, the door to keep the hallway as clean as possible if the room is not tenable for a firefighter.

Not Initially Entering the Fire Room/Apartment: If smoke is pushing out the jamb or breathing, showing signs of being well involved (too much work for the can) and not allowing the search team to occupy the room. Skip over the fire room and coordinate with fire attack to either have them perform the search or do so during or after they have provided protection with an attack line.

Searching the Exposure Rooms/Apartments

Exposure Rooms/Apartments: The second priority is the room above and another crew should be simultaneously performing on this floor. From there the adjacent rooms to the fire room become your priority. Size-up the conditions for each of the exposure occupancies.

Exposure Rooms/Apartments with Favorable Conditions: Commit one firefighter per room with the crew leap-frog cross-searching. This type of search pattern allows for a thorough hallway search due to the criss cross pattern it creates. While leap frogging maintains crew integrity and search efficiency by not passing a room that has not been searched. If the crew splits with one searching each side of the hallway in low visibility conditions, the crew may not be aware of the progress on the opposite side.

Exposure Rooms/Apartments with Adverse Conditions: Perform an oriented search, the oriented firefighter has to live in the hallway. The oriented firefighter has three tasks: staying oriented to the entry/exits and their searchers, monitoring conditions in the hallway and listening to the radio. Dedicated positions increase our efficiency and situational awareness. The oriented firefighter continually monitors hallway conditions, which can be difficult to recognize change if they are not living in the hallway. The firefighter enters and isolates the room. The search firefighter has three tasks: search, increase tenability for possible victims and increase the search efficiency by opening/breaking windows creating horizontal ventilation. Simultaneously, the oriented man

moves down to search the hallway and find the next room. Attempt to open the door, if conditions permit do a bodies length search into the room (staying at the door) and scan with the TIC. Isolate the room and go back to the room being searched. This allows for the oriented man to continue to search more ground (although not an entire room or hallway) as well as staying oriented to the structure and egress while pre-planning the next move. This technique increases the crews efficiency and effectiveness while also sharing the workload and keeping a “true” oriented man.

Exposure Room/Apartment Above the Fire: The search on the floor above is performed in the same pattern as the fire floor. Due to this type of building layout and that the priorities are to multiple floors, their should be a minimum of one crew per floor. To locate the room above the fire: compare the room number, use a TIC or observe pyrolysis taking place on the floor.

Vent Enter Search (Exterior Access)

If the interior size-up determines that the hallway is not tenable for firefighters, Vent Enter Search should be considered. VES does not change the room priority, but due to the building design adjustments will be needed. Crews will now be split by building side designation (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta) instead of by floors. Upon every room search, open the hallway door to perform a sweep of any possible victims and to continue the interior size-up. If hallway conditions improve, consider to continue your search from the center hallway. If you split crews to VES each side of the building, communicate with the other search crew that the hallway is now tenable and coordinate the search by floor. Notify command if there is a change in tactics to complete the search. The same rules apply as above for one firefighter VES vs two, its dependent on the room conditions.

Rescue Egress

Firefighters being able to occupy the hallway determines the search entry access. An initial and ongoing size-up is needed to determine how rescue egress will be performed. Taking a civilian through the interior, even in moderate smoke conditions could be fatal.

Coordinated fire attack and egress stairwells shall be considered. The size-up on the building shape, size, stairwell locations, civilian abilities and h a l l w a y c o n d i t i o n s h o u l d b e considered when deciding to remove them back through the building. Not all occupants need to be evacuated or rescued and can be sheltered in place. Consider rescuing victims through a window or balcony from

their room. Removal from a window in a common hallway building keeps the search team in an advantageous position to continue the search. The type of rescue is based on many factors and can be very labor intensive, depending on the number and condition of civilians needing to be evacuated or rescued.

Nuances of the Center Hallway & How to Support the Search

The building layout funnels a majority of the occupants through the hallways creating a high chance of potential rescues. In center hallway multi-family dwellings, consider automatically being in Rescue Mode.

Do not force the fire room door in front of the hoseline, unless you deem the conditions being firefighter tenable to allow for the search. In this specific type of structure you may create hallways that are not tenable for civilians and causing a larger search and rescue problem.

Vent for Life: Isolate a room and open/break out a window for horizontal ventilation. Vertical ventilation is typically requested when the fire is still contained to the box of origin and smoke has banked down in the hallway. When there are open stairwells, vertical ventilation can occur over the stairwell even on fires that are below the top floor. If fire has taken the hallway, requesting ventilation can pull the fire and create undesirable effects.

Even if your not assigned search and rescue, every firefighter needs to know the search priority in every type of building layout and occupancy. This knowledge will allow you to be able to throw ladders to the correct windows for rescue and egress. 

Priority: 1-Fire Room/Apartment, 2 - Room/Apartment Above the Fire, 3&4 Adjacent Rooms/Apartments on the Fire Floor, 5&6 Adjacent Rooms/Apartments on the Floor Above. (This can change if the fire gets out of the original box)    

Fire Attack needs to bring a line to the interior to protect the egress.               

Coordinate a Fire Attack and Egress stairwell.

Create your own common hallway between the rooms, by breaching through the walls. This can become necessary if the conditions become adverse in the hallway and need to continue the

search in other rooms. This may also be used to keep a clean hallway, enter an adjacent room, perform a search and breach into the fire room. This will keep a clean hallway for egress and only dirty the one room that you have already searched (if isolated from the hall). You can always plug the breached hole if isolating the two rooms is necessary. Understand construction when breaching from apartment to apartment, like rooms typically share common walls. Breaching through bathroom and kitchen walls are a last resort. They commonly have fiberglass and tile walls with electrical wire, vent pipes and plumbing lines through the wall space. If you are looking for egress due to adverse conditions, bathrooms typically have windows that are higher and smaller which can make for a difficult egress.

Tools on the Interior

Common hallway buildings typically have many occupancies that are secure, expect several doors in the hallway needing forced. When smoke conditions are to the floor and your crew has low visibility, the demand increases. Have you practiced forcing in low visibility situations or one firefighter door forcing? Always lay your tools down the same way, smoke conditions may change with zero notice.

Two lights - (A smoke cutter lens with will help reduce back-scatter, which is the reflection of light off the smoke particles.)

Webbing - Victim rescueMega-Mover - Victim rescue (Holds up to 1000lbs)Personal Safety Rope - Victim rescue (Length dependent on your buildings in

your area)Carribeaners - Victim rescue (Non-Locking preferred)Long Tool - Sounding floors, Controlling doors, checking for fire aboveHalligan - Forcing Entry/Egress, High Step, Sounding/Feeling FloorsFlat Headed Axe - Striking Tool, WedgeDoor Chalks - Controlling Doors, WedgeWater Can - Leave it by the fire room door if not neededTICRabbit Tool - Commercial Structures

RESOURCES:Brian Olson, Firefighter - Eagle Fire Department

THE AUTHOR: Support The Primary Search