How do firefighters know how many hose lines and fire trucks are needed to control a fire?
There are several methods and “Rules of Thumb” that help us do this. The best methods involve experience and pre-fire planning. It is not uncommon for an officer to respond to several fires at the same apartment complex in his career. Past experience can help him or her decide what is needed on this or similar fires. We also drive our districts and visit businesses to establish plans for if a certain location has a fire. Another method that helps is an accepted mathematical formula for an estimate of the needed fire flow. If you take the area of each floor on fire (Length X Width) and multiply this by .33 (one third) you will get a very rough estimate of the number of Gallons Per Minute (GPM) you will probably need. Think about this. Some warehouses might be 30,000 sq feet. If half of this building is on fire, you might need 5000 gallons per minute to extinguish it. This is much more than one or even two standard engines can provide.
