Rex Orcutt from East Pierce Fire and Rescue in Pierce County (WA) sent in these photos of something they recently ran into at a residential fire. The house was equipped with metal rolling shutters. Prior to entering the structure, the shutters were in the open position. While operating inside, the crew heard a loud bang, and the window went dark. The shutters had automatically lowered themselves into the closed position. Some quick work with the rotary saw took care of the issue. After the fire they started to determine how the shutters operated.
As you can see from the photo below, the shutters are operated from the inside by a hand crank mechanism that is attached to the shutters by a nylon strap. The heat from the fire melted the strap causing the shutters to lower into position.
When the shutters are stored in the open position, they maintain a low profile, and can easily go unnoticed prior to making entry.
Obviously having the shutters close during our operations can cause a number of issues. Having a crew ready to defeat them once the lower may be a viable option, but is far from ideal. Preventing them from lowering in the first place is key to making this a successful operation. One simple solution could be a simple pair of vise grips secured to the track from the outside to prevent the shutter from being able to lower.
Thanks Rex and the East Pierce FD for sharing the info. While I have not seen this setup on the “Best Coast” I mean the East Coast …..yet.
I am sure that its only a matter of time.
Those shutters certainly can and will make a bad situation worse!!
Know your buildings! And how they are trying to hurt and kill firemen!
These are NOT uncommon. There are also some styles that operate from an outside fusible link.
Be careful.
These rolling shutters, or security blinds, are common in Europe. I have always been surprised that we don’t see more of them here.
Here is a link that covers installations, strength issues, residential/commercial uses, etc. I just “googled” for european window shutters: http://www.enviroblind.com/
Thanks for the heads up. If I had these shutters in my first due I would head to Harbor Freight and buy about a dozen sets of cheap vise grips to use on each set of shutters.
For the guys who have these shutters in thier area, do you guys know if you can simply lift the shutters to open them? I am sure shutters with a more positive operating system would be difficult to overcome the opening/closing mechanism. I am not too familar with the residential version and didn’t know how easy they were to force without a saw.
We have plenty of these on the Texas coast. We actually started carrying the rods used to operated the blinds from the exterior on our trucks.
These are very common in SW FL for hurricane protection and seasonal residents who drop them in the off season. Recently had a residential worker where my crew enacted some progressive RIT and was able to pry the whole assembly off the outside walls with the pry end of a 6′ roofmans hook. This would work where the entire assembly is mounted from the outside and below the soffit. We were able to provide egress and vent for the inside crews fairly quickly. One of the few times where most everything went as planned…or maybe the installer used too short a Tapcon!