r/Firefighting • u/Launch_Rockface • Jul 10 '25

General Discussion Unpopular Opinions In the Fire Service

I am curious what other peoples unpopular opinions of the fire service are? I know there are alot of things we are doing or trying to do to improve the fire service as far as training and wellness, but I also know alot of it is just not that great in my opinion.

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u/Calm_Ad_8538 Jul 12 '25

Any brand new pumper of any kind (tankers, wildland rigs, and quints are included) that is built without a foam system is already out of date, and any nonpumper unit that is built brand new without some sort of fire suppression capability outside of a couple of cans and extinguishers (except for ambulances and command/support vehicles) could also be outdated.

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u/BobBret Jul 12 '25

Piqued my curiosity. Why does a pumper need foam to be considered up to date?

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u/Calm_Ad_8538 Jul 13 '25

Some of the building materials used in buildings, especially type 5 structures, a lot of the clothing worn today, the furniture in a lot of places, and other miscellaneous items are either petroleum based or have petroleum based components, and a good portion of which is either water-resistant or waterproof, which means using straight water for these fires isn't efficient and causes a lot more polluted runoff than using a finished foam product. Also a finished foam product, being water-based, does also does some cooling, it also smothers the fire, and if it sticks to the surface of whatever may have been burning, then the fuel would be less likely to ignite. Finally, having a foam system is just handy to have available if needed, and could be set up a little bit quicker than having buckets of foam and a separate foam eductor. I like cafs in particular, but I understand those systems can be complicated, especially older model systems. This is based on my opinion, which is based off of some of my training I've received, and mostly off of some of the research I've did, so if I'm factually wrong about something, or if I'm missing something important, please let me know. Again this is my unpopular opinion.

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u/BobBret Jul 13 '25

Interesting take. I once rejected sales pitches for Class A foam because I felt that the promised performance improvement was much too small to justify adding any cost or complexity to our operations. Almost without exception, structure fires that got away from us did so because burning fuel surfaces were shielded from water application. Unless a proposed change could help us overcome shielding, it was probably solving the wrong problem. Synthetics had been common for forty years and we knew that they readily yield to fuel-surface cooling.

I didn’t consider the runoff issue though. I can imagine some scenario sets where it would be important.

Conventional wisdom at the time was that, at a minimum, one third of a department’s pumps should have Class B foam capabilities, with more foam-capable pumps added for any special hazards in the area. In practice, many departments (including us) had foam capabilities on every pump. The downsides were reliability issues and overhead (cost, maintenance, training).

Thanks for explaining.