silverunicorn
Member
Finally had "the big one" for the year yesterday. Mutual aid assist (Bucks County Tanker Task Force) for Plainfield Township, Northampton County, PA.
Building fire at a plastics factory. They brought in raw plastics, and converted them to pellets for recycling.
Inital alarm was struck at approximayely 05:00. We were dispatched at 07:27 and staged at Northampton County 911 operations center until they called us in at 11:42. We were released at 22:17 and after clean up and refueling, it was 23:30.
These photos were taken during our response from the 911 center, which, keep in mind, was approximately 6 hours after the initial dispatch.
We were busy, but a slideshow of the videos I took is here:
Fire 08/02
News coverage can be seen here (with much better phtos and video than I have):
Hundreds Of Firefighters From 6 Counties Battle Fire At Plastics Plant - Regional News - Lehigh Valley Story - WFMZ Allentown
I have to give props to Northampton County on this. This was a MASSIVE incident. I am not sure how it was before we arrived, but when we were there, things seems fairly organized given the scope of the event. They had good dump sites esablished with easy routes to refilling. Food and water was readily available, with ES on 4 wheelers delivering to sitting trucks. There are always things that could be better, but all in all, I feel they did a VERY good job managing tis scene given the logistics of a fire this size. They had heavy equipment to break up the contents so they could be watered down, something that was absdolutely necessary in this situation. The fire load of this building was massive, and they did a very good job here from what I saw.
over 200 firefighters from 6 counties and 2 states assisted in the call. Our tanker hauled 34 loads (@ 3,000 gal each). There were 26 tankers at the call ranging from 1,700 gal to 7,000 gallons per tanker. Each truck made a similar # (if not more) trips as we did.
Feel free to ask any questions, I will answer what I can for you.
Chris
Building fire at a plastics factory. They brought in raw plastics, and converted them to pellets for recycling.
Inital alarm was struck at approximayely 05:00. We were dispatched at 07:27 and staged at Northampton County 911 operations center until they called us in at 11:42. We were released at 22:17 and after clean up and refueling, it was 23:30.
These photos were taken during our response from the 911 center, which, keep in mind, was approximately 6 hours after the initial dispatch.
We were busy, but a slideshow of the videos I took is here:
Fire 08/02
News coverage can be seen here (with much better phtos and video than I have):
Hundreds Of Firefighters From 6 Counties Battle Fire At Plastics Plant - Regional News - Lehigh Valley Story - WFMZ Allentown
I have to give props to Northampton County on this. This was a MASSIVE incident. I am not sure how it was before we arrived, but when we were there, things seems fairly organized given the scope of the event. They had good dump sites esablished with easy routes to refilling. Food and water was readily available, with ES on 4 wheelers delivering to sitting trucks. There are always things that could be better, but all in all, I feel they did a VERY good job managing tis scene given the logistics of a fire this size. They had heavy equipment to break up the contents so they could be watered down, something that was absdolutely necessary in this situation. The fire load of this building was massive, and they did a very good job here from what I saw.
over 200 firefighters from 6 counties and 2 states assisted in the call. Our tanker hauled 34 loads (@ 3,000 gal each). There were 26 tankers at the call ranging from 1,700 gal to 7,000 gallons per tanker. Each truck made a similar # (if not more) trips as we did.
Feel free to ask any questions, I will answer what I can for you.
Chris
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