As Furniture Burns Quicker,
Firefighters Reconsider Tactics
House fires have changed. The New York Fire Department is rethinking its tactics for residential fires, while trying to hold onto its culture of “aggressive interior firefighting” — charging inside burning buildings as fast as possible.
Plastic flllings in sofas and mattresses burn much faster than older fillings like cotton, helping to transform the behavior of house fires in the last few decades, fireflghters and engineers say. With more plastic in homes, residential flres are now likely to use up all the oxygen in a room before they consume all flammable materiais.
“Years ago you could break a window and it took the fire several minutes to develop — or tens of minutes”, a fire battalion chief in Queens, George K. Healy, said. “Now we’re learning when you vent that window or the door, the fire is developing in, say, a minute.”
LIBRADO, R. Disponível em: www.nytimes.com. Acesso em: 15 jun. 2013 (adaptado).
