The online news portal of TV5 NEW YORK - Firefighters will spend
the next two weeks setting homes ablaze on a small island in New
York Harbor for one purpose: Saving lives. Eighteen abandoned
townhouses on New York City's Governors Island, formerly housing
for members of the Coast Guard, have been turned into a setting
for roaring fires in experiments aimed to develop new strategies
firefighters can use to save lives. In one on Tuesday, a match
was lit near newspaper in the basement of a fully-furnished
home. Within five minutes thick black smoke began to billow from
the rear door; before ten minutes had passed, dark red flames
licked around the basement windows. Firefighters gradually broke
open the windows to change air flow, seeing how the flames
reacted to different ventilation. Under real-life circumstances,
air is added as soon as possible from immediately opening roofs,
windows and doors. "They are bringing the lab out to the
firefighters," said Dan Madryzkowsky, a fire protection engineer
from the Nat