Support Training 7/22

After yesterday's call, finished work, then went to another training class. This class was on water supply.

Actually, we started class with a quiz on fire behavior. 40 questions, which we then went over and got scored. I missed 4 out of 40 questions, and if I heard right, got the highest score in the class.

Anyway, water supply. The easiest way to get water is to have it on your engine already when you get there. Modern engines like ours are quad-combination engines, meaning that they carry water (in a 500-1000 gallon tank), a pump, tools, and firefighters to a call. (There are also vehicles called quints that have a ladder as well.) I'm probably going to get this wrong, but engine 1-6-1 has the smaller tank of our two engines, at 500-750 gallons, while 1-6-2 has a 1000 gallon tank. (? I need to ask about that next time I'm at the station; I do know engine 2 has the larger tank.)

The next easiest way to get water is from a hydrant. We learned about hydrant systems (the water usually comes from the same source as drinking water, although some larger cities (i.e. NYC) might have separate systems). We learned about types of hydrants (dry barrel and wet barrel) and the layout of the mains that they're connected to (grid, loops, or dead ends).

Lastly, there's rural water supply. We discussed (argued :) about whether a vehicle that supplies water to an engine is called a tender or a tanker. Out west, tankers have wings and drop water or foam onto fires from the air. The "standard" term for our vehicles is a tender, although Lancaster County dispatches them as tankers.

Regardless, tankers (to use our term) go to the water, fill up, bring the water to the fire, and empty the water either into an engine, using hoses, or into a portable pool, that the engines then draft from. They then shuttle back and forth until no longer needed. We discussed determining how much water (in gallons per minute) you'll need to put out a fire (typically the square footage of the fire, i.e. if a 10x10ft room is involved, you need 100 gallons/min flow to put it out), and discussed how many tankers you need to support that (one tanker can provide G/T gallons/min, where G is the tank size, and T is the time to load, transport, empty and return to the load point, i.e. a complete round trip; divide your needs by what each tanker provides to get how many tankers you'll need dispatched).

We had a substitute instructor tonight, which was nice in that he went on a few more tangents than our usual instructor, talking about things outside the scope of the class but very much of interest (to me, anyway).

We finished up a little early, so the instructor offered to give us a tour of one of Schoeneck's engines. We got about halfway through that, when the host company got a fire call, at which point class ended, and we stepped out of the way to let them get going. Quite exciting, getting to watch them go, rather than be hurrying to get ready myself.

Tomorrow we start working w/hoses, getting them connected to hydrants and engines, and learning how to put them away for next time. Can't wait!