Waxahachie looses a Tower
- Thread starter J. Forbes
- Start date
HILO
Member
That was an Ennis Truck on MA. I dont understand why there was so much water, I'm no FF, and I know better than to spray a chemical fire with water. It was a good think they saw the fire coming and got down and out in time.
HILO said:
Take it they did not have a protocol on this. We have chem plants here & all we can use is foam.
It's an extraordinary situation. I chock this up to 'doing the best we could' in regards to training and equipment, and of course the situation.
FireEMSPolice
Member
Hoff
Member
Not a fire fighter. Heard of a product called Cold Fire. Would this be a prospective application of the product?
Station 3
Member
It looks like there was enough time to move the truck. Looks like they will be ordering a new one soon.
HILO
Member
I dont see how they had enough time to move the truck, they came down, got out of the bucket, and teh flames were washing out towards them. The out riggers were still down, it takes a moment to get those up. It was parked in the wrong place thats for sure, along with water on chemicals from the other side. They are lucky they got away.
Bigassfireman
Member
Very expensive lesson learned, but at least it appears nobody was injured. Someone sure is going to have a lot of explaining to do.
Grotonems5
Member
Those ffs must have balls of steel, because my stomach sank just watching those chemicals wash that fire towards the truck... they saw it and hung around... I would have been running for all I was worth!! Hope no one was hurt... truck is replaceable...
Retired1
Member
paff2
Member
So the question may be. Why does a chemical plant have a sprinkler system and not a foam system? It appears most of the water came out of the building and appears to be coming from the sprinkler system.
Of course I am a Fire Chief, but a place like that would scare the @## out of me if it was in my first due.
Of course I am a Fire Chief, but a place like that would scare the @## out of me if it was in my first due.
CenTexPSE
Member
With all of the explosions and not knowing exactly what each chemical was, i would not have been that close to begin with.
Hoff said:
I believe that Coldfire could be very effective here. The racing community uses Coldfire for fuel fires and it is very effective. NHRA actually mandates Coldfire for onboard systems in Nitromethane cars. I aslo works on exotic metal fires, it's good stuff.
I fought and worked in these type of areas most of my career and a lot of planners at the time went with regular sprinklers at the time. Product changes at unknown times and what may have been good at the time of the initial construction may not be good now. Foam systems are also limited to the amount of product stored in the tank, how old and last time it was tested. When the foam runs out (which is surprisingly quick) it just flows water and washes the other product away.
A lot of these places also have runoff containment somewhere on the property if the room is available.
One of the Gasoline storage and distribution plant has sub-surface injection built back in the 70's, deluge system in the truck filling area and automatic fixed monitors with foam attached around the property. The main deluge system had a 500 gal tank if I remember correctly, auto monitors had wither totes or 55gal drums attached and the sub surface had nothing in them. We had to have the foam that was stored on site delivered to the injection stations so we could feed from there. Our nearest large quantity of foam (not from an airport) was 35 miles away where they had 15,000gal available to move in 15min, but still took time to get here, so we were on our own until then.
Another town that was built later with the same operation like ours was not constructed with subsurface, auto monitors but had a deluge system on the filling racks.
About 6 years ago we had a chemical plant go up like this and we did the same thing by drowning the living daylights with water to contain the fire until we could get enough foam and an ARFF vehicle to the place. We had to reposition rigs several times due to changes in the wind and the flow of water. I do remember wading through waist deep chemical impregnated water trying to keep the storm drains open to facilitate the drainage to the creek behind the plant.
While we were doing the suppression and haz-mat there, we had the surrounding division team and the county wastewater commission take care of the runoff by stringing booms and such as the incident progressed.
A lot of these places also have runoff containment somewhere on the property if the room is available.
One of the Gasoline storage and distribution plant has sub-surface injection built back in the 70's, deluge system in the truck filling area and automatic fixed monitors with foam attached around the property. The main deluge system had a 500 gal tank if I remember correctly, auto monitors had wither totes or 55gal drums attached and the sub surface had nothing in them. We had to have the foam that was stored on site delivered to the injection stations so we could feed from there. Our nearest large quantity of foam (not from an airport) was 35 miles away where they had 15,000gal available to move in 15min, but still took time to get here, so we were on our own until then.
Another town that was built later with the same operation like ours was not constructed with subsurface, auto monitors but had a deluge system on the filling racks.
About 6 years ago we had a chemical plant go up like this and we did the same thing by drowning the living daylights with water to contain the fire until we could get enough foam and an ARFF vehicle to the place. We had to reposition rigs several times due to changes in the wind and the flow of water. I do remember wading through waist deep chemical impregnated water trying to keep the storm drains open to facilitate the drainage to the creek behind the plant.
While we were doing the suppression and haz-mat there, we had the surrounding division team and the county wastewater commission take care of the runoff by stringing booms and such as the incident progressed.
TCO
Member
I would say that the driver was following orders of the O.I.C. I'm really surprised That they didn't lose more equipment.
theroofable
Member
Since our department doesnt have a ladder, and I have never operated one, I would have to ask some questions. Can the outriggers be raised while the ladder is going down? I would assume that there is a safety to prevent this, but in that situation I would try and move it with the ladder partially raised. Im sure nobody anticipated this happening, and it is easy to say what could be done. That is a really bad situation, but atleast they got down in time.
MPD 818
Member
theroofable said:
Depends on the year make and model of the truck. I think most newer trucks have safety shutoffs that prevent you from raising riggers while the ladder is still up, driving with ladder up, etc. Just for sake of discussion even if you could get the riggers raised a little, and get the ladder down part way you still run the risk of tipping the truck over, snagging an overhead power wire, injuring personnel, etc etc. It also looked like the truck had several supply lines hooked to it, while it does not take much to undo those, it would still have been one more thing to have done to move the truck.
I am glad the guys had the good sense to get out of the way and say to hell with the truck. That is how a lot of good people get hurt, worrying more about the equipment than themselves.
As for truck placement, not the best, but that is one of those shit sandwich situations where a lot of decisions are made on the spur of the moment and it is easy for everyone else that wasnt there to arm chair quarter back it.