The scenario: my mc runs into a burning building. He goes up to the second floor, trying to stay low to avoid smoke. He enters an apartment and rescues a little girl which takes about 10 minutes. He helps her escape, not leaving the building because reasons, but rather running back up the stairs, pausing at each floor to check for people. Because of one of his super powers, he takes maybe 30 seconds to check floors 3 and 4. On floor five, he finds a person trapped under rubble from a collapse. His super powers help him lift the rubble and help the trapped dude one other guy who has already passed out but wasn’t pinned. He takes them out of the building and then he collapses right in front of the door. At that moment, the firefighters run into the building to do their thing. In the end it ends up being about 20 minutes in the fire. So I have multiple questions:
For a normal human, how survivable is the scenario I presented (Yes, I broke it, I bought it. I just want to know what insurance policy I could have gotten per se)
How do fires act in a building e.g. do they go for the room’s contents first, then the structure?
The city is essentially modern day NYC. How long would it actually take for the fire department to arrive one they had been called?
What would the firemen do when they see the characters collapsed outside of the building? I’m assuming that they wouldn’t just leave them there, but paramedics are also there so…
Is there anything specific i should research to increase my understanding of the dangers my character will face with the fire?
Heavy duty questions. Heavy duty answers. Here we go.
1: Point blank, it’s not survivable. Period. Inhalation of smoke, let alone the myriad substances off-gassed by burning substances, would knock even a large human over in seconds.
2. The way a fire behaves depends on a number of factors: ventilation, materials, structure type, time, and others. Assuming that is was in a residential high rise in a city like New York, the building would probably be constructed of concrete or stone and lined with dry wall or, in an older building, plaster on lath. These types of structures tend to burn from the inside, leaving a shell of the building (assuming it burns completely) if they don’t collapse from heat-stress. If it’s a poorly ventilated fire, then you have to begin thinking about things like backdraft (Seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnUA04wyHg4). Flashover is also a concern, in instance like this fire would actually shoot across the ceiling of the structure and ignite the entire room (Seen here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtMmymOxdjc).
3. Using NYC as a model, response times for structure fire are on average 5 minutes with response times for medical calls at 8 minutes 11 seconds.
4: The firefighters would immediately transport your mc to waiting paramedics (likely also firefighters and employed by the FD) where medical care would be rendered.
5. The best advice I can give is watch all the helmet cam footage you can from sites like youtube. It’s a fantastic resource and will give you a much better idea of how fires behave and the dangers posed by them.
