Very true. We've filled basements with water trying to get a stubborn fire on the 2nd floor out - it's a bit of a tough decision, because when you don't have enough crew for a salvage crew below, you will loose everything, so you try to save something.

We now use Foam - the last house fire we worked had a full knock-down of a well-involved crawl-space and some burn through the floor with only about 100 gallons of water/foam mix. Compare that to the 500 or more gallons we might have needed.

But if you have a fire, there will be a lot of damage, no matter what.