Fact: MANY Fire departments are profoundly unprepared for highrise fires

Few cities are without highrise buildings. Yet through no fault of their own, few fire departments really know much about managing highrise emergencies. They tend to treat them as big house fires, rushing to get water on the fire with no consideration of building occupants. They equip engine companies with standard hose packs that are incompatible with some of their standpipe systems. They calculate their pump pressures using formulas intended for old dry pipe systems, resulting in ineffective streams. They don't prepare firefighters for the intricacies of elevator systems. Their firefighters know nothing of the smoke control systems they are expected to interface with. They know nothing of the possibly debilitating nature of PRVs, of redundant power systems, of the threat smoke towers may impose on them. Highrise fires don't happen often. A firefighter or officer may only get one chance at it. This book gives him/her the tools needed to perform intelligently…professionally.

After 36 years with the Houston Fire Department, Matt Stuckey retired as a district chief. Ten years before retiring he took a part-time job with a well known highrise consulting firm and continued at it another ten years after retirement. In that job he recognized a huge disconnect between what firefighters know and what they desperately need to know.