Got the week off from Essentials, so I got to go to my own company's training night. We put hard-sleeve hose into a creek to draft into the engine, resting the hose on a roof ladder, and using a rope from the other side of the creek to guide it into place, then tie it off.
We then played with various nozzles, on 1.75" and 2.5" hoses. The nozzles affect how much kick you get when flowing water on a fire; the older nozzles produce a lot more backward force than the newer ones, and the old brass nozzle (that they used back around WWII, and keep around as a relic) takes 4 guys to wrestle.
It's easy to let a hose get away from you. I was on the nozzle at one point, and my backup guy wasn't paying attention to what I was doing, and I ended up coming close to losing control of it (and ended up spraying the guys on an adjacent hose, too). One good thing about the way nozzles work is that if your hand is on the bail, having the hose push back will naturally shut off the water; that would have happened for us had the hose slipped back another foot or so.
There are ways for one guy to flow water, though, by looping the hose around such that the top of the loop sits on the end about 2-3ft back from the nozzle, then put your feet/knees on the top hose, on either side of the nozzle. You do have to shut down the hose to move it very far, but when you need to do it, it's possible to do.
After shutting everything down and packing up the engine(s), we took the drafting engine to a hydrant and flushed out the pump; the creek wasn't that deep, and we ended up pulling a lot of mud through at various times. Our engines can sure flow the water.
All in all, this was a welcome break from Essentials, especially as I got to work with more of the guys from my own company.
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