Recently had a discussion at a meeting about using class a foam on grass/wilfires.  I argued the point of using less water, preventing rekindle, use as fire break, etc.  dept recently received truck for wildfires that is equiped with Class A foam.  We were told not to use class a foam on grass fires despite my objections.  any thoughts? 

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As the other guys said, saves time and water. get back into service faster. It cut down on the smoke so you can see. look for the smokers where the hot spots are,  you can  use  the foam at has been sprayed on the fire to overhaul  the hot spots.  cut down on rekindle etc etc.

The department I am s member of is smaller rural one. We don't exactly have enough funding to use foam a lot. But we do use it on heavy fuels when needed to save time.

we dont use foam much in our dept.  we rarely seem to get a fire that needs foam.  when a fire is small and burning slowly we squirt water on it and go.  the other type of fire we have burns 33000 acres in an afternoon and foam dosent seem to increase our effectiveness as much as twenty more engines showing up does.  having said that, foam during mop up is great especially out of a mop up wand on heavies.

I had a discussion yesterday at our county convention parade with a firefighter from one of our fire companies about their brush unit. Their unit has a Class A foam tank. We agreed that our county should have more brush units with foam tanks and high pressure pumps to save on water and be sure that the fires not rekindle.

Another thing was use of leaf blowers on brush fires. They use theirs to make a fire breaks. I said they could get attachments to put a tank and nozzel on it to add water or maybe foam mixture to the operation.

They will be adding a Gator unit with a skid unit and have a small foam trailer built for the brush unit to tow to calls. 

One thing I have also talked about with others is the ccounty fire service   having some sort of loader or dozer with different attachments for the fire service use. There have been times when needing one and not having to wait hours for. We can get the state forestry to bring one depending on where its coming from. Public works depends on time of day or weekends to get a operator and if the unit is loaded on a transport.

The department I'm on all of our brush trucks and engines have class A foam capacity.  We have a type 1, type 3, and two type 6 engines.  Using foam on a wildland fire is a very good idea.  Like other people mentioned earlier it makes water wetter.  One other attachment that work amazing is a CAFS system.  Compressed Air Foam Systems add air to the hoseline and you can adjust it to make the foam a number of different densitys, making it to look like shaving cream.  Class A foam is another tool in the tool box that should be used.  While using foam can add costs, we spend the money on all the fancy equipment, but dont wanna spend money on using foam sounds kinda rediculas to me.  It can save property, lives, and equipment.

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