By John F. "Skip" Coleman, Technical Editor
We all should have read Francis L. Brannigan's Building Construction for the Fire Service. In this text, he says (and I paraphrase) that you should never work above or below a truss space involved in fire. Although I readily agree with the statement as it relates to working above a truss assembly involved in fire, I am not sure the word "never" should be used as it relates to working below a truss assembly. You need to know what's below the assembly and if what is below is also supporting the assembly.
Think of what was below the truss assembly at the Hackensack Ford fire, which claimed the lives of five firefighters in 1988, compared with what is below the truss assembly in a garden-type apartment building. One had wide open spaces with absolutely nothing supporting the roof but the roof (trusses) itself that would prohibit or stymie a truss failure from falling to the floor below. The other has many wall assemblies (separating the different apartments and rooms therein) that aid in stopping or stymieing the truss assembly from falling to the floor below.
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