Hoarder fire. Picture Courtesy of sdfirephotos.com

Are you prepared to call a mayday, right now? One of the most often asked question from my students is how do you know when you should call a mayday. The answer always comes back to, anytime you can’t get yourself out or find yourself in need of assistance, PERIOD! There are many situations that require a firefighter calling the mayday and one that holds true is a firefighter who finds themselves inside the trenches of a Hoarder Home. Without knowing, an interior structural firefighter can find themselves with stacks of belongings that can extend up to ceiling level causing a huge problem in advancing hoses, searching for victims, and any other fire ground tasks.

How far do you push into these conditions? At what point do you call a mayday?

These are two questions that should be considered by the individual firefighter while using some common variables.

• How high are the stacks of Stuff
• Are we experiencing small collapse of belongings

How high:

Determining the level of belongings can alter an interior attack. Making this determination can be the challenge due to smoke conditions. Using the stream of your hose or an extended hand tool can give you an estimate of how high the stacks are. If you carry a 24-36 in haligan you could use it to sweep above your head to determine the height. If you choose this technique you will need to be mindful of the location of the other firefighters with you.

Either choice of techniques should be used with caution as the resulting collapse could cover up unannounced victims, secondary means of egress, or uncover hidden pockets of fire. Most often the only part of the hoarder stacks that are burning are the top layer. By knocking over the stacks you could expose more fuel, maybe even more flammable fuels such as newspapers that were once insulated from the heat source.

Collapsing Stuff:

Whether it’s caused by your sweeping tool or just by itself falling debris should be considered when inside the hoarder environments. Often the pathways, or “goat paths” , that traverse the interior of the hoarding can be narrowed to a level that causes the advancing firefighter to knock stuff over, just by traveling through them.

Hoarding Mess:

These two variables should be considered if you find yourself inside the hoarder environment. Both can cause an added level of danger to an interior firefighter. Often, hoarding conditions can NOT be identified from the exterior of a building. This can expose an interior firefighter to the dangers once they have passed the point of no return (5 feet inside a structure).

If you find yourself in this condition take these two variables into consideration when determining how far you want to push inside.

If you are experiencing ceiling level stuff or collapsing debris it might not be a fight that you want to take on. Even worse, if these conditions cause you to become disoriented, entangled or low on air make sure that you are ready to call the mayday and activate your pass alarm. It is better to call and cancel the mayday, than to find yourself in a collapsed stack of stuff and running out of air.

If you’re in a mess, use your pass and make sure that hoarding doesn’t trap you inside without a way to escape a rapidly progressing fire condition!

If you would like to learn more about hoarder firefighting make sure to check out the Learning Center here on ChambeofHoarders.com. 4 + hours of content on Hoarder Firefighting