While we're on the subject of Fire Departments...

Let's talk about another person out there, the "Outside Vent". This is a job or position, (We used to call them the OV Man or Outside Vent Man but there are quite a few women on the job nowadays).
The OV does just what the name implies, they vent the fire building from the outside.  

Now there is a little more thought involved here than just smashing windows. You see, as a fire burns it creates smoke, smoke builds up in the building and does a few things. First it makes it damn close to impossible to see, if Hollywood ever made a realistic fire fighting movie it would be pretty darn boring for the audience.Smoke is incomplete combustion of flammable or combustible materials. Unlike that nice light gray smoke at your camp fire, structural smoke has all kinds of nasty things in it. This is because you don't usually burn things like plastics, and vinyls at your camp fire. Some of these gases are not good to breath so the firefighter wears a mask (a compressed air breathing device). When you are inside a structural fire the smoke is deep dark brown, since there is usually no power at a fire there is no light, what you see is nothing. Turning a flash light on just turns the blackness into a swirling mass of brown with particles floating around. The easiest way for me to describe the inside of a heavy smoke filled room is a glass of Guinness.

Besides visibility, smoke, being made up of incompletely burned gases can, when it gets hot enough ignite, this is referred to as a flash over, everything in the room that can burn lights up at the same time when the temperature hits the right heat. Smoke can also explode, violently, this is called a smoke explosion or back draft. The OV, by removing the windows allows the smoke to clear, once that operation is done he heads to the roof to assist in the roof vent.

 By opening the roof and/or the windows the smoke leaves. The problem is as smoke leaves fresh air is allowed in which causes the fire to burn better. It is a really bad idea to vent a building if there is no water available to put the fire out.

 There is a video on YouTube taken a few years ago of a rescue unit that arrived on the scene of a fire just outside of Chicago. These men must have forgotten their training because they pulled up, grabbed a few 2x4s from a work site next door and smashed all the windows out of the fire buildings first floor. Seeing as this was in the middle of winter the engine company was delayed in arriving and when they got to the scene the two story building had fire out of every room. 

Anyway, I have come to the determination that the Outside Vent personnel in FDNY are just crazy. I watched one take the bucket of a TowerLadder (Mack Aerialscope) to the sixth floor as the engine company was making the stretch up the staircases. He opened the door and walked along the one foot wide ledge on the sixth floor to and around the corner of the building then worked his way back breaking windows behind him as he went. He then nonchalantly stepped back in the bucket and went to the roof. By the time the bucket rose the ten feet to get him there there were water streams shooting out the windows as the engine crew went to work.

Six stories up, strolling along like he was on a sidewalk. I used to work the roof, but I believe if I stepped out on that ledge all I would accomplish is to get my asshole to pucker.