Urban Tanker/Tender Shuttles

I live in an area that has hydrants. A couple of years ago a company had a large fire with little to no water supply. They called for engines were most carry 750 to 1000 gallons. No one had a drop tank so it was fill into an engine and move on. This would have been a perfect chance to run a real tanker shuttle or at least bring in a drop tank.

But in urban/suburban area's we don't think about it or practice it. People might say we have hydrants everywhere so we don't need to practice that. 3 reasons you might - a looped hydrant system. We assistanted on a fire several years ago in an industrial complex. Large lumber yard. had 4 hydrants but the problem was they were part of a loop so after using 2 you were just wasting your time. The next closest was several thousand feet away.

A large fire on a highway. overturned tanker with spread onto the roadside.

A large incident that knocks out the water supply. This just happened with the Gasline explosion in CA. Listen to the radio transmission, several times you could get hydrants were out of service. How much hose would you drop looking for a hydrant. And then how far would the next working hydrant be.

Even if you don't have tankers or tenders you need to practice setting up an engine shuttle. Its not as easy as it sounds. Engines have different connections. Finding a place to turn around. Having the right engines involved. You might have 10 engines but what good is a 500 gallon engine in this case. How many times as a driver drafted in a city or suburban area. I've done it once in 30 years and it was on a 4 alarm fire. Heck, you had to be able to draft to be qualifed as a driver but not anymore.

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Permalink Reply by Just Plain Craig Moyer on September 21, 2010 at 12:25am

I'm surprised more urban department members haven't responded.

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Permalink Reply by John Sees on September 21, 2010 at 12:36am

A rural company might have the opposite problem. They might use dump tanks and have to draft from a water source so often that using a hydrant might seem strange. In 12 years I don't remember every seeing our engine at a hydrant. We had a pump class and the instructor could not understand why we have a 6" butterfly valve on both of our steamer connections, this allows us to draft from both sides of the engine. We also carry a low level strainer in the compartment by the pump, this is so it is handy when drafting from a dump tank. We carry our hydrant adapters and a 25' secton of 5" LDH on the opposite side of the engine, for when we might have to hit a hydrant. I never though about having to draft all the time till I was talking to my brother and he said that he could not remember the last time he had to draft, it had been years.

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on September 21, 2010 at 12:59am

Surely they can see that the need may occur, one day? It happened to your FD, it's happened to my brigade.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Salinger on September 21, 2010 at 6:13am

Tankers not having a large enough pump to do a pump relay.
i have seen tankers used in pumping relays on many occasions. Have a pumper of some sort at the water source and then tankers of similar pumping capacity all the way to the fire. We run minumum of 2 lines between trucks as it is almost always possible to get 2 into 1 inlet with the use of a collector. The tankers need to have 2 outlets of the right size though.

Through out the summer wildfire season we have a 33,000L (8700 Gal) tanker supplied by a local milk company available for us to use. Once it rolls they start filling another to replace it when its empty.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Salinger on September 21, 2010 at 6:28am

exactly, what happens when you blow a main or suck them dry?, which was done at a shop fire near us only a few months ago, and they had called for a aerial appliance, had to shut down all other firefighting operations and still shuttle water to keep up with it.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Oomkes on September 21, 2010 at 8:23am

I guess we're fortunate, we're about half and half with a water system.

However, we have a few "manufactured home parks" (trying to be politically correct) that have no municipal water system so our tanker is second out or first out when running MA in one of these.

So we have a good mixture of using hydrants, drafting\dump tanks and nursing ops.

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Permalink Reply by John Karl Ambrusch, III on September 21, 2010 at 8:48am

As a matter of fact, my company just got done a barn fire out there on the edge of our county where tanker shuttles are almost a specialty here. Now, we were one of about 8 tankers in the task force and our tanker alone carries 3750 gal. It's the largest by capacity in the county.... we made three dumps. I took the liberty of attaching a picture of it.

I have to tell ya, even if you have a municipality where hydrants are relatively plentiful, seeing a tanker task force in action in action really is a logistical wonder and a great training oppurtunity for water supply operations & tactics!

If you ask me, tanker ops are just as important and pump ops. Having a tanker around makes pumping so much more fun and interesting. All you need is that one time getting caught with your backside in the wind.

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Permalink Reply by John Dobson on September 21, 2010 at 9:42am

Here is couple of photos of engine 22. We just put it in service it's primary misson it to do water shuttle but has 1250 gpm pump, 2000 gallon tank and a LDH discharge.

Attachments:

140.jpg, 212 KB
138.jpg, 184 KB

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Permalink Reply by John Dobson on September 21, 2010 at 9:54am

Are trucks are too long we have tried that. If I had a say we would have intakes plumbed in on the front or back or both just for this when we spec a truck.