Salisbury Fire Department

Members of the Salisbury Fire Department spent a couple of hours today honing their VEIS and wall breeching skills. 

Wall breeching is a tactic sometimes utilized to either gain access to victims who may be trapped, or by firefighters who have, themselves, become trapped.  By breeching a wall, a trapped firefighter may gain access to a more tenable room, affording him/her precious time to make an effort to find an alternative way out of a burning structure.

Vent-enter-isolate-search (VEIS) tactics are generally applied to residential dwellings, especially at night. The concept is that the bedrooms represent the highest probability of finding a victim trapped or overcome by fire/smoke during evening/nighttime fires. VEIS is not intended to replace a more comprehensive interior search, but rather to take tactical advantage of what firefighters should expect to find. To execute a VEIS, a ground ladder is thrown to break out the targeted bedroom window (vent) and the crew ascends the ladder, enters the room, and begins to search.  Firefighters make an attempt to quickly locate the bedroom door, sneak a quick peek into the hallway to ascertain fire and smoke conditions or see if there is a possible victim located in close proximity to the door, then close to door to isolate the search room.  This reduces or shuts off the flow path the fire has to the room and “buys” time for the crew to search for any victims in the room and remove them remove from the structure. 

Remember:  Practice the way you want to fight, because you will fight the way you practice!