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How do you handle Rural Water supply?
Our Dept uses the Dump and Pump system. Portable dump tanks and tankers. Water source is a dry hydrant, static source or on one end of the dist (5%) fire hydrants. Our neibors choose to use 2500-3000 tankers. Our guys if asked what is a fire hydrant used for the answer is filling tankers. They are few and far bettween.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Andrew Blevins on
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Our county has tankers that range from 2,000 gallons to 4,400 gallons. Usually we dump and pump just like you do and we have around 5% (maybe a little more) coverage by hydrants in our district. Even in areas where the hydrant is only a block or so away its more common for us to draw from our tanker before the hydrant because that is our accepted SOP, plus we have a ready source of water. Usually if it is anything large we will be calling for mutual aid tankers before we call for engines.
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Permalink Reply by Gregory R Bailey on
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You sound jusy like us. But our surrounding FD nurse tankers very, enefective. But when they come to us they have to dump. They do not like it but they are on our turf. Thanks for your esponse.
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As long as we have a descent hydrant we can generally count on our neighbor volunteer departments for reliable water shuttles. Not all the hydrants are working though, and thats our major problem currently, or the hydrant maps that we have are a little out of date and there are newer hydrants in the subdivisions that are closer or ones that are no longer there due to construction or other circumstances.
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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on
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We also have about 5% or less hydrant coverage, the rest of the district requires that we truck in water.
We have a number of houses that have long driveways so we carry 5 inch hose on our three pumpers. SOP is to have the second truck lay in from the road, the third hooks on and prepares to draft from a folding tank.
All tankers in the area are generally 2000 gallons or more not counting pumper-tankers. We have two tankers, 1800 and 1200 gallons, and a 1000 gal P-T.
The thing we need to keep in mind is that the 5 inch holds a gallon a foot so the first tankload of water just fills the hose. -
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I was curious today after really thinking about this topic and got a book out of the EKU Justice and Safety Library called Operation of Small Community Fire Departments, written by Warren Kimball for NFPA in 1968. I know the book is old but the tactics and procedures pretty much hold true to today's operations. He brings up the point that if the structure you are working/protecting is over 500 feet away from the hydrant source you should be hauling at least 1000 gallons of water with you to that fire scene. So, Combined with around 500 gallons on your engine you have a minimum of 1500 gallons to do initial fire attack, but it seems like we're all dealing with tankers of at least 2000 gallons here.
Just food for thought for today. -
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Our initail response is the first due engine is 1000 gal The second is 500 or 1000gal depends where the fire is in relation to the station. This is followed up by 1500 or a 2000 gal tanker next. But when it is a ways out the fire sometimes get a good start. It does not take long to use up the first 1000 gal. By that time we normaly have a dump tank on the ground and surrounding FD respond on automatic aid with tankers. We cover about 75 square miles from 2 stations. Only about 5% is cover by spread out hydrants ( all at one end). We get much more practice at dump tanks than hydrants. Some of our neibors have no hydrants but will not put a dump tank down. They have a maze of hose from one truck to each other. So your tanker has to stay on scene till it is all pump off. Not very efficen, dumping your water in a tank then leaving for the water source while the next tanker is arriving ( the tanker train) makes more sense. thanks for your input. Capt Bailey
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Permalink Reply by Justin Scott on
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my dept is the exact same way as michael. id say 2% of our area is covered via hydrant. thank god theres lots of steams
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Permalink Reply by Derek R. on
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We have no hydrants in our area. We get water from any sourse that can be found such as rivers, ponds, pools and lakes. We set up porta tanks and keep filling them with help from mutual aid.
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Permalink Reply by dano martinez on
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We have both rural and "city" patrons in our fire district. Scb. Rural shares coverage of the city of TERRYTOWN w/ the Gering VFD. There are hydrants in Terrytown and a few in our rural district, but we do a lot of tanker work to get water to our pumpers. We have two tankers (1500 gal. & 2000 gal.), that supply us w/ most of the water we need. If not we call for mutual aid w/ our neighboring depts. We hold drafting / rural water supply training often, so we are prepared when the time comes to be creative. We have floating pumps that we can drop into an irrigation ditch, stream or pond during Wildland Ops & porta tanks for structure use. We cover 140+ Sq.Miles of rural turf so sometimes H2O is scarce. We have one 4x4 & two 6x6's for wildland stuff, but they don't hold that much water (500-750 gals.) & knowing how to draft is paramount if the tankers can't get into an area.
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Permalink Reply by Oldman on
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Water is generally not as big an issue as manpower, even though less than 5% of our district has hydrants. Our 3 engines carry 1000 gallon each with a class A foam system on each. We also have a 4000 and 2200 gal tanker. It is common for us to have 7000 gallons on the initial box in 10 minutes. Our automatic and mutual aid companies will have up to 3500 additional gal per tanker depending which department is responding.
Most fires, we will just nurse with one tanker and shuttle the others. Commercial fires will almost always have dump tanks and multiple tankers in the shuttle. I love the look on the "city boys" faces when they roll up and see us supplying ladder trucks with dump tanks and shuttle. -
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Permalink Reply by Bekks on
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We have NO hydrants and only TWO dry hydrants.
Static water sources almost exclusively for refill. In the winter we carry augers to get through the ice for our water supply.
Our one tanker is 1200 Gal and our one pumper is 850 Gal.
We drop the portatank, dump the tanker and run like hell to refill.
If it is a decient sized fire, we call for mutual aid for tankers as soon as we get on scene.
Due to new laws for propane storage facilities in our province the LP gas companies have to ensure a proper amount of water supply to fight a fire and prevent a BLEVE. Currently, that does not exist at our two major storage facilities so they will have to either build a small lake for us to draft from or pay for the water main to be extended almost 5km from the nearest town with a municipal water system (and hydrants). This WILL have to happen this year or they will be shut down as our Chief has to sign off on their fire suppression plan in order to get their propane storage licence this year. It's about time! -
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Permalink Reply by Frank A Thallas Jr on
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We do the same(dump and pump?draft) in conjunction with tanker shuttles, up here in NE Wyoming we also suffer a sever lack of hydrants outside of city limits covering 5000 sq miles our department has to be resilent and think outside the box at times.
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