Fire · Topic 2 · Ch. 3
The FLS Director and the FLS staff
What your coach says about this topic
Coach FLSDAI
Why it matters
The exam is for the FLS Director: this chapter says what is yours, what belongs to each member of the staff and how many of each you need. It mixes numbers (500 people, 7,500 sq ft) with exceptions (what the deputy cannot do) that are easy to confuse.
This topic is worth about 8 of the 120 questions of the Fire exam (estimated from the booklet's pages).
Texts prepared by AI from the official FDNY booklet. Not a person and not the FDNY.
≈ 8 of 120 questions
Estimated from the FDNY booklet; the FDNY does not publish the exact distribution.
How it's estimated
This topic takes up 14 of the 206 pages of chapters 1-12 of the booklet (6.8%). 6.8% of the 120 questions of the Fire exam = 8.2 ≈ 8.
Official data (FDNY Notice of Exam F-89/T-89, p. 3): the General Topics and Fire course (Component 1: Part I, chapters 1-8, and Part II, chapters 9-12) lasts at least 20 hours; the Non-Fire course (Component 2: Part III, chapters 13-17; Part IV, chapters 18-19; Part V, chapters 20-22) at least 11 hours. Those are class hours, not exam questions, so they are not part of the estimate.
What to memorize
- The FLS Director must be present during regular business hours and whenever there are more than 500 people, or more than 100 above or below street level (§3.1(1), p. 80).
- The deputy covers the Director except for one duty: the Director personally supervises all FLS staff training (§3.2, p. 82).
- Neither the Director nor the deputy can be brigade members. The EAP brigade includes the building manager, the chief engineer and the director of security (§3.3, p. 82).
- One FLS warden per floor; one deputy warden for each 7,500 sq ft (or portion) of each employer on the floor: 20,000 sq ft = 3 (§3.5, pp. 83-84).
- Searchers: at least one male and one female per employer on each floor, and they check every area visually, not by waiting for a voice to answer (§3.5.1 and §3.6, p. 84).
- Computer-based training can replace live instruction for no more than half of the required sessions per year (§3.8, pp. 85-86).
Memory trick
Replacements go one step down: no warden, the deputy warden covers; no deputy warden, the searcher covers. For deputy wardens, divide the square feet by 7,500 and round up.
Ch. 3, §3.5.2 and §3.6, p. 84
Practice this topic
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Next: topic 3, Firematics: how fire and smoke behave
Sources
- FDNY, Fire and Life Safety Director Curriculum, Version .02 (2022)
- FDNY, Notice of Exam F-89/T-89 (2022)
Questions and texts are our own, written from the official FDNY material, with help from AI. If anything differs, the FDNY material prevails.