Question: Will the Wall Fall in a Fire?
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[If the walls could talk in downtown Du Quoin, what would they tell Du Quoin Fire Chief Bob Shaw, who has raised the bar on mutual aid firefighter training.
They are telling him a lot as this seasoned firefighter whose career spans 29 years takes his study of structural integrity and how fire affects it seriously. It's a brick and mortar anatomy class and what he is already telling us is fascinating.
"We have a beautiful downtown and I was glad to see how many people are keeping up their buildings. For us--as firemen--it's a matter of finding the weak points," Shaw said.
"I don't think we have big, big problems, but we need to know the weaknesses in case we have a fire in a building that has seen better days," he said.
For several days this month, Shaw is trading a fire hose for a digital camera and walking the streets of Du Quoin to photograph the unique characteristics of the town's buildings.
They run the gamut from the very ornate Grand Theater to the Indiana limestone facade of the Du Quoin State Bank, probably the most substantial building in the City of Du Quoin.
The faces of some buildings have large ornamental iron stars that are actually part of the structural integrity, The "stars" are steel face plates with one-inch rods that run clear through a building and come out the other side. They contribute to holding the walls together.
Many of the facades have been tuckpointed over the years and look solid from the front. But, if you look at the ends of many of the upper parapets (walls that extend above the roof line) you see the separations and the bowed walls. The weaknesses scream at you.
Every building is different, says Shaw. There are five types of buildings and we don't have to talk about each one, but there are some things of interest.
Metal buildings expand when they get hot. Block buildings are prone to several different kinds of collapse. There is a "curtain collapse" similar to what happened at the twin towers of the World Trade Center. There is a "90 degree collapse" where an entire wall simply falls over. There is a "hinge collapse" where the a wall my buckle both in and out on its way down.
For a firefighter, the most dangerous building is an old building that has been remodeled, then remodeled again with ceilings that have been dropped from 12 feet down to eight feet and full of hidden spaces throughout. "A fire can be burning for 10 or 15 minutes before anyone sees it," Shaw said.
He said other things that worry firefighters are heavy heating and air conditioning systems sitting atop buildings that were never meant to handle the weight. Something called "bowstring" trusses can be a problem. A half dozen buildings in Du Quoin have that system.
"When one truss falls they all fall," he said.
Things like church steeples and bell towers are another problem.
He said of a building fire that gets larger and hotter than the hoses can handle, the firefighter in charge tells everyone to clear out. "Then we go into a defensive mode to try and protect the things around it," he said.
Shaw said some of the largest fires in Du Quoin have been the Du Quoin Packing Co., Midwest Dairy, William and Virgie Leach home, Erwin Florist on South Washington Street, The Eagles Lodge in downtown Du Quoin and Green's IGA foodliner at the intersection of Rt. 51 and Rt. 14.
Shaw said all of his department's work goes to pre-planning for fires. In time, Du Quoin firefighters will have an updated book that will be placed in the cab of each fire engine. Firemen will be able to look up the location, locate water hydrants in the area with the best flow rate, know where the entrances and exits are, a drawing of the building's interior and the location of all natural gas, propane gas and electrical shutoffs as well as anything else about the building that may be of benefit or a hindrance in fighting a fire.
Shaw's current work will be part of a Power Point presentation during a full day of training at Rend Lake College on June 23. It is part of the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS) of mutual aid throughout the state.
"This is all about getting ready for what may happen," he said.