

Why is the article using diagonal screen size as their measurement for phone size? In that case you could have a phone the exact same size get “bigger” just because bezel sizes have shrunk over the years.
They specifically call out the iPhone SE as a “small phone” that they seem to want. But the newest iPhone, the iPhone 16 is only 6% bigger in width and height. Fractions of an inch larger. I can totally understand why somebody would want a phone with smaller overall dimensions, but why on earth would your metric for an ideal phone be a smaller screen?
Ok so a couple things here. You mention your knowledge is decades old. If you’re talking more than two decades ago there’s a chance your definition was correct a very long time ago. But to be clear, today in the year of our lord 2025, in the United States of America, your definition is not correct. There are no “narrow” and “broad” definitions. There is a single definition for each in the context of firefighting in the U.S.
One of the things you’ll want to get in the habit of doing, is not quoting Wikipedia as your source, but rather the source that Wikipedia refers to when it says something:
The disagreement mentioned here refers to the long history of loose definitions in the distant past of fire science as these phenomena were being studied and categorized, as well as differences between scientific and firefighting applications, and European/ US entities. If you follow that reference in your quote [5],
You’ll see it goes over the history of the terms and how we’ve ended up with the current definitions. In the U.S. based fire service, the be-all end-all of these terms in NFPA 921-2004 which is as follows:
The source goes on to explain:
The whole “All backdrafts are flashovers but not all flashovers are backdrafts” comes from studies done by the Swedes in the 1980s which, depending on how long ago you spoke with your lieutenant, may have been what he was referring to. The source article touches on these as well, but again, these are not acceptable terms today.
So if in your article you wanted to use the non-specific broad definition of these phenomena, you’d use “Rapid Fire Progress”. But if you wanted to use terms like flashover or backdraft, you’d need to use the correct one for the phenomena you’re trying to describe because they are not interchangeable any longer.
Here is another great article in PDF format about RFP and its categories that really goes into detail on their differences. It also explains the issue I take with your article, which is that these terms are still to this day sometimes casually misused as if they’re unimportant and interchangeable. This is harmful when presented in an educational context (like your article is to some degree), because these terms need to be clear, distinct, and have a universal meaning so that conditions can be accurately communicated when you’re fighting a fire.