Hartin explains that humans have been "putting the wet stuff on the red
stuff" for centuries, without really analyzing the effects. What's been
overlooked is the fact that the invisible gases produced in a fire can
be much more dangerous than any flame.

Especially in enclosed spaces, these gases tend to become superheated,
flammable, and highly mobile.

The result: backdrafts, flashovers, and gas explosions - the three main
varieties of so-called extreme fire behavior. Every year, scores of
firefighters around the world die because they've been trained to deal
with this volatile mix of physics and fire gases by using an
old-fashioned strategy: duck.

Hartin thinks it's time for a change. He's the first fire chief in the
US to embrace a tactic known as 3-D firefighting - 3-D because it takes
into account the gases that fill a room, not just the surfaces of the
structure on fire.

Using thermal-imaging equipment, firefighters gauge the thermodynamics
of a blaze and then attack both the seen and unseen elements using
split-second pulses of fog. In Sweden and Britain, where it is now part
of the official firefighting method, 3-D has led to a more than 50
percent drop in fatalities caused by extreme fire behavior.

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