Often, smoke issuing from a building is the only clue available to predict fire behavior and the likelihood of a flashover or rapid fire spread. First-arriving officers must read smoke before choosing attack tactical priorities! Incident Commanders and Safety Officers must know how to rapidly read smoke in order to keep firefighters within an acceptable risk-profile.

In this video, instructor Dave Dodson explains: Why do we read smoke?; The "advanced" basics of reading smoke; Hostile fire events and warning signs; The "reading smoke" process; Tricks and short-cuts.

The video includes several practice examples that are shown twice to test your smoke-reading abilities, first without interpretation and then pointing out significant observations and what each means.