Description

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The Art of Reading Buildings focuses on the practical art of reading a building and applying its positive and negative attributes in developing a size-up for fireground operations that center on structure fires. First-due company officers, incident commanders, and safety officers will appreciate the practical “street-wise” lessons captured in the book. Chief officers, training officers, engineers, firefighters, and fire science degree candidates will benefit from the wide range of building construction topics covered in this text.
• Learn on-the-spot building construction assessment using the authors’ custom rapid-read street guides• Understand the technical and practical aspects of building construction • Develop a quick construction size-up for immediate application to fireground operations • Recognize firefighter traps in newer and alternative-construction methods • This text covers objectives for the National Fire Academy’s Fire and Emergency Services in Higher Education (FESHE) Building Construction for Fire Protection course.

About the Author

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John Mittendorf is a 30-year veteran of the Los Angeles City Fire Department and held the rank of battalion chief until his retirement in 1993. He has been a member of the National Fire Protection Research Foundation on Engineered Lightweight Construction Technical Advisory Committee. He has provided training programs for the National Fire Academy, UCLA, and the British Fire Academy in England. He has acted in an advisory capacity for five college fire science advisory boards and is the author of numerous fireground articles for magazines in the United States and Europe. He is the author of the books Ventilation Methods and Techniques, Truck Company Operations, editions 1 and 2, Facing the Promotional Interview, and the recently released the DVD program, Ten Commandments Of Truck Company Operations, from Fire Engineering/PennWell. He currently lectures in the United States and the United Kingdom on strategy and tactics, truck company operations, fireground operations, ventilation operations, and the Complete Fire Officer. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of Fire Engineering magazine. In 2008, Chief Mittendorf received the Fire Department Instructors Conference (FDIC) Lifetime Achievement Award.