Tanker shuttling, catching the hydrat, or setting up drop tank, oh and drafting

Which of these types of water delivery does your department most commonly use or is able to use, some fire disticts are not supplied with hydrats everywhere!!!

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by paul michael komandt on November 5, 2009 at 5:57pm

We set up a minumum of 2 dump tanks on every fire. We carry a 2100 and 3000 gallon on our tanker.

Permalink Reply by Travis Bowers on November 6, 2009 at 7:51am

Luckly almost our whole district is equipped with hydrats throughout, however we do have places were srop tanks are needed. We have used both before, and we also have a lake in our district to draft from, but have never had to use it. Let's hope we dont.

Permalink Reply by Lee Huff on November 10, 2009 at 12:57am

Usually, we have a hydrant to work with. If not, we usually use a tanker shuttle although we're starting to use drop tanks more often. Our new engine has a rear inlet, so we can set up the tank behind the engine and not have to shut down the whole road.

Permalink Reply by WFD318 on November 16, 2009 at 2:10am

We run automatic mutual aid to the county fire/ems service, so outside of the city limits hydrants are scarce and usually under 500gpm. Both of our first out engines have dump tanks on them, as do the county tankers that are sent to assist. Usually our water supply is limited to a dump-tank or shuttle operation.

Permalink Reply by Bill Anderson on March 12, 2010 at 7:26am

We use drop tanks and a tanker shuttle. Usually set up the tank and empty our 1500 gallon tanker and start refilling with the next in tanker. On a good day we can have 4 tankers working, 5 if we have the man power with our second engine, 1100 gallons. Usually just have 3 operating. Occasionally we will spot the engine and feed directly from the tanker if we have enough access.

Permalink Reply by Travis Bowers on March 26, 2010 at 2:28pm

Fortuantly for us, we have pre fire plans, which meens our County E-911 Communications center has on the CAD system which stations to dispatch for each situation and how many stations it will require, and how much water is required to put out a certain building at a full-involved state. Our district one half has hydrats that are functional, and one half doesnt. So we must use all of our resources and we try to roll both Tankers if possible, and for sure have our three engines in route and most likely a squad or 2.

Permalink Reply by Eddie Rogers on April 14, 2010 at 1:27pm

We use all of the above, relay pumping, tanker shuttles, dump tanks, hydrants (least of all). We have a 3000 gallon tanker, 2 - 1000 gallon pumpers, so we are set up for several options. We are blessed. I personally like to relay pump but thats just me. Each fire or scene will dictate what we use. If a hydrant is available we will catch it, we have relayed up to 1/4 mile, just whatever we need to do.

Permalink Reply by Michael Coombs on August 11, 2010 at 5:37pm

We rely on tanker shuttles on 95 percent of all fire calls requirering large voluums of water and we have two porta tanks but no transfer device or attachment to the suction hose to transfer the water between tanks and does anyone have a design for a in house device that we can build with material we have available to us and save us from spending the limited funds we have. Any info greatly appreciated.

Permalink Reply by Engineer k7 on September 28, 2010 at 1:25pm

We setup one porta tank ( 3000 ) gal plus 3000 gal tanker plus 1000 on the engine.

Permalink Reply by Louise Thornton on November 1, 2010 at 8:02am

The department I was on we drafted mostly because the size of our district was small and we had a very large lake. We did some shuttling no hydrant in the district or drop tanks. If we had to refill the tank we had to use the city hydrants. We work with the city very well and they cover us when we were empty at the station.

Permalink Reply by Mark Poznanski on May 7, 2011 at 2:29am

In our district we have areas that have hydrants available; while others the hydrants our miles away, along side the road (who knows if they work). Every fire call we go on, is a two box alarm. It's looked at...get them all responding; we can always turn them around. Generally, I would say we snag a hydrant 90% of the time/ or hydrant can be caught by the second engine in, and then forwarded to the other. We had a large building fire over a year ago, in which we had 8 Depts respond for water/plus we had the city Dept sent out for help also.

Permalink Reply by Ted Glick on May 15, 2011 at 2:32pm