Battalion Chief John Mittendorf (ret.) developed his skills over 30 years with the LAFD. 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 presented. Chief officers, training officers, engineers, firefighters, and fire science degree candidates will benefit from the wide range of building construction topics covered.

This workshop provides essential tools and practice in making rapid street reads on buildings. Emphasis is on classifying a building using a Type/Era/Use/Size model and then developing an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses (hazards) of a given building using that model. Rapid-read visual clues are explored and practiced during the class using videos of actual building 360˚ walk-arounds.This approach fills the gap between the teachings of Francis L. Brannigan (how buildings are built) and Vincent Dunn (how they fall apart).