The Art of Reading Buildings

by John Mittendorf, Dave Dodson

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

430 pages, Hardcover

First published December 20, 2014

About the author

John W. Mittendorf was battalion chief with the Los Angeles City Fire Department until his retirement in 1993. He is an active member of the Engineered Lightweight Construction Technical Advisory Committee, National Fire Protection Research Foundation.