Advances in Fire and Rescue Technology?

He Definitely Didn't Inhale asks: "As anyone could imagine, being trapped inside a burning building would be terrible, but people risk their lives every day to save people stuck in that situation. While fire sprinklers are installed in some buildings they are far from ubiquitous, and also tend to cause plenty of water damage during their use. Some server rooms are isolated and can be filled with an inert gas in the case of a fire, but people - and fire - need oxygen to live. Another idea has recently been patented (USP#6,446,731), whereby a truck mounted high capacity fan is used to remove smoke and heat from burning buildings through the use of an extensible tube. This could make it much easier and safer for firefighters to rescue building occupants and put out the fire. Are any similar technologies or methodologies in use today? What are some design issues that may need to be resolved before this concept can be used safely and effectively? Are there any reasons not to pursue the development of this potentially life-saving idea?" Earlier this year, Ask Slashdot discussed Halon systems. Folks interested in this topic may want to give that previous article a read.

Comments

Re:fanning the flames...

[psykocrime]

Oh yeah, I should probably also say that while PPV is a valid technique, and what I think one of the parent posts was referring to, it's NOT what the patent is referring to, as best as I can tell. The patent seems to clearly state that the idea is to suck the fire and gases OUT using a vacuum, which is the exact opposite of PPV.

My considered opinion is that the "inventor" of this particular device doesn't know much about firefighting, if he seriously intends to try to fight fire this way. Doing it this way, would most likely just make matters worse, as several people have pointed out.

Of course, he could turn it around, and he'd just have a truck-mounted PPV fan.

Then again, ventilation fans already exist for doing both positive and negative pressure ventilation, and I question whether simply truck-mounting it either way, is sufficiently different enough from existing practice to justify granting a patent anyway.