In this video instructors Chris Collier & Nate DeMarse demonstrate conventional forcible entry techniques for outward opening doors. At first glance this door appears to be only locked by a key in the knob lock. The halligan is set approximately 6″ above the knob but when the door is pried it becomes obvious that there are other locking devices in place. If you are prepared for, and expect auxiliary locking devices you will easily overcome them when they are encountered. In this case, there were FIVE locking devices securing the door. They are listed below from the bottom to the top:
- A foot-bolt (slide-bolt) that secured into the floor
- A vertical dead-bolt below the knob
- Key-in-the-knob lock
- Slide-bolt just above the knob (4 screw holes, lock fell off)
- Slide-bolt a few inches above the last lock shown in the video
All FIVE of these locks were forced in approximately a minute.
Had this key in the knob lock been a panic hardware device firefighters attempting the “framing square” technique would have been defeated and had to return to conventional forcible entry.
Fire service tools have been invented and modified over the years. A few were intended for fire service application and others were borrowed from other trades. Many fire service tool adoptions and adaptions are worthwhile and useful. The ones that we (Brotherhood Instructors LLC) disagree with are the ones that have a very limited scope of use and require extra equipment. Our goal is to keep fire ground operations simple and systematic while sticking with tactics that have proven themselves to be valid.
We apologize for the digital skipping and glitch while we were driving the adz to the frame. We shot this video from two angles, and this was the best with this segment.