In part one of this vertical ventilation series, Instructor Mo Hein of Lafayette Fire goes over the tactical steps that need to be taken when venting from the roof is deemed necessary, in order to prevent hazardous conditions for interior crews, victims and the ventilating firefighters themselves, at the 2026 Weld County Women’s Skills Day at Aims Community College in Windsor, CO

* The training views expressed in this video are those of the training instructors, and not Fire Spotlight. The actions in this video are inherently dangerous and could result in death; should the viewers choose to adopt any views expressed in this video, he/she is doing so at his/her own risk. Fire Spotlight encourages viewers to review his/her department’s Standard Operating Procedures when adopting any new training views.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:

  Things to be thinking about is, like, do we even need to vent? It’s a tactical decision. It’s not an automatic task. So why are we venting? Read the smoke. What color smoke are you getting? How much? What’s the volume of it? What’s the velocity, the density, the color? Because that also helps us understand if we should be venting or not.

Coordinate the openings when we decide, yes, we should be venting. It’s not just an automatic go up and cut. We’ve gotta coordinate that with the interior crews, with the incident command, uh, so that we don’t create a hazardous condition for the interior crews or even victims that were inside. Have safe means of egress, so at least two escape routes.

So if you have one ladder up, you better have a second ladder up somewhere, and that’s just for your safety. If your egress gets cut off, you have a second way down the roof. Uh, sounding, uh, that’s a really big, important part for our safety up there. Know what’s under you, so what kind of roof material, what kind of construction, right?

Is this a residential roof? Is it a commercial roof? What kind of material is it? What saw’s gonna work for that roof? Because it may not just be chainsaw. It may be a circular saw for commercial. Cut with a plan. Like, as we show up, we’re always getting our situational awareness, right? So what is the fire doing?

Where is the fire? Where are we making that hole? Like, we’re not just gonna go up there and just pick a random spot and cut a hole. Just know where you’re gonna cut your hole, how big it’s gonna be. And then complete the assignment. So just ’cause we cut it, and we overlap our cuts, we don’t just stop there, right?

Like, we gotta get the material out of the way, and it might not just be that top deck. It might be further down in there as well.* The training views expressed in this video are those of the training instructors, and not Fire Spotlight. The actions in this video are inherently dangerous and could result in death; should the viewers choose to adopt any views expressed in this video, he/she is doing so at his/her own risk. Fire Spotlight encourages viewers to review his/her department’s Standard Operating Procedures when adopting any new training views.