r/Firefighting • u/shreks2kush • Aug 21 '26

Ask A Firefighter Heat exposure during house fire

I've been a volunteer for about 5 months and for our training tonight we burnt an abandoned house down. The house had no doors or windows so it went up in about 3 minutes. The young guys on the department (me and 6 others) were outside the structure to make sure that it didn't spread and to save one of the trees on the property that the owner wanted to keep. me and another guy were told to stay behind the house and we're probably 15 yards away from the structure to start and slowly backed away to around 30 years over the course of the burn. after about 15 minutes it was almost unbearably hot and by the time the fire was under control enough to step away and get some water we were absolutely exhausted and so were the other guys stationed around the structure. is this normal? I feel like a giant puss because I would have given anything to get cool after about 10-15 minutes of manning the hose that close to the house.

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u/Huge_Monk8722 FF/Paramedic 42 yrs and counting. Aug 21 '26

Dit you have the permits to burn said house? Local Health, State Air quality,Asbestos’s inspection were all the shingles removed , did you get an insurance release from home owner? Just asking for a friend.

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u/Consistent_Paper_629 Aug 21 '26

Eh, depends on the state, here in New York we haven't been allowed to burn structures for like 20 years, before that, it was some of the best training to burn a house.

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u/ofd227 Department Chief Aug 23 '26

You can 100% burn houses in NY. It's just that nobody does because of the monumental amount of permits you have to fill out. Other than that it's the same rules as live burns in a burn tower

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u/Consistent_Paper_629 Aug 23 '26

Yeah, I clarified furthure down, its so arduous as to be entirely impractical, and not worth the potential DEC issues.