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By Glenn P. Corbett For those of us who have been around awhile, we remember the discussion of fire behavior in our basic firefighter training programs of the 1960s and 1970s. We were taught the three sides of the fire triangle (soon to become a tetrahedron and gain a fourth dimension, the mysterious uninhibited chain reaction) and the three methods of heat transfer. We were shocked about the emerging understanding about the dangers of smoke, particularly from plastics. We learned about compartment fires, flashover and backdraft, and the different methods of fire attack. We also estimated fire loads in terms of pounds per square foot of wood or synthetic materials using British thermal units (Btus) per pound. We conversed in a language that had very few numerical terms: temperature [Fahrenheit (°F)], water volume (gpm), and water pressure (psi). It was that simple. In recent years, significant advances have included computer…