For the people who
run inside.
Structure fire is a job that punishes hesitation and rewards trained instinct in equal measure. We’re building a machine that can take the highest-risk part of the call — the interior — while you stay in command of the scene.
Firefighting concept of operations
You don’t need software. You need another hand on the line.
The firefighter we’re designing for is the one in full structural PPE, on air, walking into a room they can’t see across. Heat signature ambiguous. Floor structurally unknown. Civilian count unknown. Layout from the box-alarm pre-plan, if there is one.
You’re trained for this. The training is the answer. But you’re also a human with a finite SCBA bottle, a finite VES window before the room turns on you, and a chief outside who needs an honest read on what’s actually happening on the second floor.
Vertex is building for that exact moment — not the dispatch center, not the post-incident review, not the kid’s career day. The moment you cross the threshold.
- Disorientation in zero-visibility smoke. Even with TIC, depth perception collapses. Getting lost on the second floor of a bungalow is how MAYDAYs happen.
- Floor failure under fire load. Engineered I-joist construction fails in 4–6 minutes of fire exposure. You don’t hear it coming.
- Victim profile under furnishings. A child curled behind a couch reads identical to a couch cushion on a 4-channel TIC.
- Cylinder time pressure. A standard 45-min bottle gives you ~18 working minutes interior. The clock starts when you mask up at the engine.
- Backdraft signatures the eye can miss. Pulsing smoke from a small opening — you know it; the new firefighter doesn’t yet.
- Carcinogen exposure. The cancer-cluster reality of the modern fire ground. Anything that keeps a body out of the soot is a win you’ll feel in 20 years.
Vertex is designing toward an interior policy that extends—not replaces—the engine company. The target system would cross the threshold first, build a structural read, and act only under doctrine and authority set by the incident command.
rescue_first vs hand_off is policy you set, not a code path.Everything the policy does on a structure-fire call is graded against published, citable doctrine — the same way our reconnaissance scenarios are graded against ATPs in Colosseum. No invented rubric. No vibes.
This is the trace schema we are designing toward—not a deployment record or live-model trajectory. Values below illustrate how sensor state, proposed action, and doctrine citation would remain together.
We intend to build with firefighters through structured doctrine review, live-burn observation, RIT drills, and ride-alongs. A future field-day program would be arranged with participating departments, with compensation, safety requirements, and permissions agreed in advance.
If your department wants to host a field day, or if you’ve got a specific failure mode you’re tired of watching, tell us.
Partner with us.
Ride-alongs, RIT-drill scenarios, training co-design, and the long-term model-card collaboration. We bring the engineers; you bring the floor.