RURAL FIRE COMMAND
Ganging Up
To deliver effective flow from a fill site, you may need to join several portable pumps together
By Patrick Pauly


I had the opportunity recently to review pictures from several rural fires in which portable pumps were used, and that prompted me to do a more thorough review of their operation. Portable pumps are a great resource in rural firefighting, but like most tools in the fire service, they have advantages and disadvantages. Knowing their uses and limitations will help you use them more effectively.

Not Our First Choice
There are many methods and theories to determine how much water is needed on the fireground. My theory: Keep things as safe as possible so everyone goes home. It’s the responsibility of the incident commander (IC) to make sure the water supply is sufficient to extinguish the fire and protect exposures. Regardless of what method is used to determine flow requirements, if we don’t have the water, we can’t put out the fire.

If we lay a supply line from a fire hydrant or other source of water, much of the work is done for us. But when we have to get our water from a source too far away to lay hose from—a situation that’s quite common in rural areas—we must factor in additional elements.

One of those elements is the method in which we get the water from the source. If we’re utilizing a static water source, such as a river, creek, pond, cistern or well, we’re probably relying upon a drafting operation. When possible during such operations, we prefer to use a rated pump or the fire engine as opposed to a portable pump.

Why? If we’re not pumping water through a long length of hose, we’re probably filling tankers/tenders. There are many methods to filling tankers/tenders; one that has been widely accepted in many areas of the United States and certainly in Pennsylvania is the rapid-fill method through pre-piped fill lines on the tankers/tenders. These lines go directly into the tank at the rear or over the top. Various connections are made to these pipes or lines; I prefer quarter-turn couplings.

The rapid-fill method is probably the safest and fastest method to fill large-capacity tanks. But filling tanks rapidly requires large-capacity pumps. Portable pumps are typically rated between 150–350 gpm. If we need to quickly fill tanks that hold 1,500 to 5,000 gallons, portable pumps are not necessarily our first choice.

A 1,500-gpm pump on your fire engine is a much better way to fill the tanks. Using large-diameter hose (LDH) and a four-port manifold, we can have two lines hooked to a tanker/tender filling that tank and two additional lines hooked to the next one, ready to begin as soon as the first tank is full. The rate of this operation should be close to 1,500 gpm if done correctly.

Doubling Up
But as we know, we don’t always get our first choice when it comes to fireground operations. All too often, we’re unable to get our engine close enough to a static water source because of obstacles, such as steep banks, narrow lanes, fences, trees snow, ice or other objects. Or we may have a water source that’s not very deep.

The portable pump provides a solution to these obstacles. But just setting up one portable pump may not be enough. If we expect to keep a flow of so many gallons per minute, we need to have a pump of more than that capacity. We shouldn’t be surprised if our 250-gpm portable pump doesn’t maintain a flow of 250 gpm at the fireground if tankers/tenders are traveling several miles. Although we may be able to off-load or dump the water in less time than it took to fill that same tank, we must compensate for the time and distance we’re traveling in both directions.

If we join together several portable pumps, we can hopefully reach that 1,500-gpm flow (or whatever flow we’re trying to maintain). One of the easiest methods to gang the portable pumps together is to have all of them discharge their respective hoselines into a portable drop or folding tank. From that tank, we then have our rated engine draft water with a larger pump and fill the tankers/tenders.

Of course, this task should be practiced repeatedly before it’s tried under the stress of an actual fire, because there are several aspects to the operation that require time, manpower and coordination. We must transport the portable pumps to our water source, then unload them and hook them to hard tubes with strainers. Many times, portable pumps don’t start as quickly as we’d like them to. With several pumps running, we’ll need several hoselines, each of which should be held in place at the portable tank with a device that prevents the hoseline from flying around and creating unsafe conditions. If we’re going to then use an engine to draft from the portable tank, we need to set that up as well.

Water’s Not Always the Problem
All too often, a rural fire department relies upon a single portable pump to fill tankers/tenders. This method is a little faster than setting up several portable pumps, but the end result is far less than desirable if a large flow is required. The IC becomes frustrated because the needed water flow isn’t maintained. The excuse is then given that enough water wasn’t available; however, that may not be totally accurate. Water was available, but the correct tactics and resources weren’t used to obtain the needed flow.

Portable pumps are a great device to use when water can’t be pumped to a hoseline or to fill tankers/tenders. Keeping your portable pumps well maintained and practicing with them often may prove vital to your rural water movement.

Patrick Pauly has spent 40 years in the fire service. He is employed full time as a fire service education specialist at the Pennsylvania State Fire Academy, teaching on-campus classes and coordinating other training programs. He is also chief of the West Granville Fire Co., located in Granville Township in Mifflin County, Penn. Pauly is nationally certified at several levels and is a Pennsylvania state-certified EMT. He holds an associate’s degree in computer science technology.


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