Firefighters Grapple With Ethanol Threat
By Caitlin Kelly

It’s everywhere – from a recent answer on Jeopardy to thousands of tanker cars rolling past your community. Ethanol, first used in 1880 by Henry Ford, has recently become a major player in the national rush to manufacture alternative fuels.

Currently, 30 percent of all gasoline is blended with ethanol, and skyrocketing fuel costs are spurring rapid growth of the industry.

Ethanol has become the commodity most commonly shipped by rail, but many fire departments remain poorly equipped to handle a train derailment, tanker truck crash or storage facility incident involving the fuel, which requires the use of more technically demanding alcohol-resistant aqueous film-forming foam, AR-AFFF. Water doesn’t put out ethanol fires, and other foams don’t work either.

“The mindset of most municipalities is the typical Class A fire, where a Class A foam at 0.5 percent off a couple of 1.75-inch handlines and several hundred gallons of water will do the job,” said Bill Ballantyne, vice-president of the FoamPro division of Hypro LLC, based in New Brighton, Minn.

“Now they suddenly find themselves faced with a fire which requires AR-AFFF concentrate and flow rates of several thousand gallons per minute for a sustained period of time,” he said. “I would say that most departments have not thought about a preplan for such an event, let alone acquired the proper equipment and practiced that plan. My guess is that fewer than 5 percent would be able to handle a multiple rail car incident involving ethanol.”

The real potential for trouble, he said, is the transportation of ethanol from refineries to blending terminals. “It cannot be piped, so every gallon of it is transported by tank truck, rail car or barge. That means the threat of a major ethanol incident is not isolated to those communities that have a refinery or blending terminal. Now every community with a highway, rail line or port has to be thinking about and preparing for the ‘What if.’”

He suggests picturing a train with over 100 tank cars, each containing 25,000 to 35,000 gallons of ethanol, to envision the type of incident that could happen – “and you begin to understand the nature of the problem.”

Richard Sarudy, who for five years has been the hazardous materials coordinator for the Baltimore City Fire Department, is one of those who understands the challenge and has a plan to deal with it.

Living The Nightmare
Because Baltimore combines a major port and a large industrial area, he said, “I receive hundreds and hundreds of tank cars and three to five barges every week.”

And Sarudy has already lived the nightmare most firefighters can only imagine – an ethanol fire on a major highway – his first.

It happened on May 13, 2007, Mother’s Day, a Sunday afternoon, when a tanker truck carrying 8,000 gallons of ethanol flipped over on an on-ramp to southbound I-95, bursting into flames, killing the driver and sending a burning stream onto the street below. The ethanol ignited a row of parked vehicles.

The Baltimore/Washington International Airport sent its crash vehicle to the scene, as is the mutual aid practice for fuel tanker incidents. Sarudy, who was the coordinator at the fire, said the airport crash truck tried, but failed to extinguish the fire with its standard AFFF foam, which works well on jet fuel, but not on ethanol because the foam is not alcohol resistant.

“I got there in time to see the first foam blanket basically consumed,” he said.

The Right Kind Of Foam
The Baltimore Fire Department had the right kind of foam because it had preplanned for just such an incident, but firefighters were unable to apply it for some time because they lost their water supply. “A responding mutual aid company ran over a five-inch knuckle and blew our water supply,” Sarudy said. “There was a period of inactivity while we tried to get three sections to replace the two that were blown out in the middle.”

When they finally got their resources in place, he said, the fire was extinguished fairly quickly, but not easily. “It was out in the first 40 or 50 gallons of foam,” he said. “But the fire had burned for so long that the liquid itself had heated up to near ignition temperature, so we had to perform a cooling exercise to drop the temperature of the remaining liquid so that it would not auto-ignite.”

The wheel and brake assemblies on the burning tanker were glowing red hot, he said, and firefighters simultaneously applied foam and used water to cool down the sides of the container. “It was a little bit complex,” he said.

In all, Sarudy said about 370 gallons of AR-AFFF was used in a six percent mix with over 6,000 gallons of water.

Baltimore City Fire Department spokesman Kevin Cartwright, who visited his mother’s grave that day, saw the plume and 100-foot flames from the next county. “The fire was very intense initially,” he said, “and emitted a great deal of smoke.”

Ethanol fires do not produce smoke, but Sarudy said any ethanol that is transported in the U.S. is mixed with gasoline, usually 10 to 15 percent because of federal laws relating to alcohol, which is a consumable substance. “If they are going to transport ethanol as a fuel, they have to contaminate it so that it can’t be consumed,” he said. “It’s contaminated with that product which it’s going to be mixed with, which is usually gasoline.”

Because the gasoline has a higher vapor pressure than ethanol, he said, it burns first, making it difficult to tell whether ethanol is involved. “It presented like a gas or diesel fire with heavy heat and heavy dark smoke,” Sarudy recalled. “You’ll have a lot of thick smoke and a yellow flame so you won’t know what you’re fighting.”

Ethanol burns a clear blue, he said, and a tanker fire with a mixture of ethanol and gasoline is “going to lie to you for a few minutes.”

In addition to its distinctive flame, an ethanol fire smells like no other, according to Sarudy, who compared its “sickeningly sweet” alcohol smell to that of a barroom floor.

Risk Assessments
He said he learned quite a bit from the tanker incident.

“You rarely get to watch foam do its work because on a [gasoline] fire that thick black smoke is everywhere,” he said. “But I was able to watch the surface of the alcohol, and as the foam covered it, the flames just died.”

Given the growing prevalence of ethanol in gasoline and the huge volumes of ethanol now carried nationally by road and rail, Sarudy advises fire departments conduct risk assessments of their communities and to stockpile a healthy supply of AR-AFFF if warranted. In addition, he suggested they clarify their mutual aid agreements to know how much of the foam is readily available.

He said he has 750 gallons of AR-AFFF on a foam tender and nearly 1,200 more gallons in the department’s foam depot. In addition, he said every engine company in Baltimore carries 10 gallons in two five-gallon pails.

Since last year’s tanker crash, Sarudy said firefighters from five out-of-state departments have called him to learn from his experience.

“Once you go and dance with the fire a little, it becomes less of a mystery,” he said. “It becomes a face you can define, and it’s less scary than we were told it would be.”

Huge Amounts Of Ethanol
Ron Lamberty, vice president of market development for the American Coalition of Ethanol, an industry group in Sioux Falls, S.D., predicted “as E85 [fuel that is 85 percent ethanol] becomes more prevalent, you’ll see more fire departments being prepared.” Currently only 1,400 fuel pumps offer motorists the choice of E85, with the largest number in Minnesota, he said. Estimates are that only 7 million American motorists now drive vehicles that can use the fuel, ranging from some Mercedes models to the Chevy Impala and all Chevy trucks, including the Tahoe, Silverado and Suburban.

There were 1.6 billion gallons of ethanol produced in 2000 and 4 billion in 2005, with 100 producers operating in 20 states by 2006.

The huge amounts of ethanol transported by truck or rail are being carried from manufacturers to petroleum distribution terminals, where it is added to gasoline. While most ethanol manufacturers are in the Midwest, close to the cornfields that supply the fuel’s base, 100 more are scheduled to open nationwide, spreading the challenge of fighting a major fire into more regions. One plant, making 48 million gallons a year, is scheduled to open in Baltimore in August 2008, according to Sarudy, and another one, of equal capacity, is expected to open nearby in 2009.

Ethanol derailments have been reported in Missoula, Mont., Columbia County, Wis., Portland, Ore., and Ontario, Canada.

On Oct. 22, 2006, 23 Norfolk Southern tanker cars carrying ethanol derailed and exploded on a bridge in New Brighton, Pa., 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. Press photos showed a pile of cars dangling over the bridge like Lincoln Logs. The 83-car train was traveling from Chicago to New Jersey when it jumped the tracks. Fifty local residents spent the night in a makeshift shelter for fear of possible explosions.

Norfolk Southern spokesman Rudy Husband would not say exactly how much ethanol the firm moves annually, but said the railroad carries fuel from 20 facilities in 22 states, most east of the Mississippi. “We’re always in communication with first responders,” he said.

To help firefighters prepare to handle rail fires, The American Association of Railroads pays for classes at the Transportation Technology Center, Inc. near Pueblo, Colo., which has trained 34,183 emergency responders since 1997. Those trained in 2007 included firefighters from Tuscaloosa, Ala., Marietta, Ga., St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo., Columbus, Ohio, and Pittsburgh. The five-day 40-hour classes simulate train, truck and barge incidents, and 80 rail cars “are used to provide realistic training exercises,” according to TTCI’s Web site.

One TTCI instructor, who would not speak on the record, said very little research has been done on large-quantity ethanol fires because it’s such a new product. He said firefighters represent about 10 percent of the center’s students, with about 1,200 to 1,500 of them taking the $1,200/week classes each year.

New Techniques
Ed Plaugher, director of national programs for the International Association of Fire Chiefs, said ethanol’s properties remain largely unfamiliar to many fire departments even as it’s being shipped in 8,000-gallon tanks.

He warned that ethanol fires require new extinguishing techniques. The foam must be layered gently as any void in its surface renders it useless, he said, and application rates and techniques are different. “The stuff is really expensive,” he said, “and there’s a tough learning curve.”

David White, publisher of Industrial Fire World magazine, tested 43 different foams against ethanol fires, and only one, AR-AFFF, was effective. “The others didn’t even come close,” he said.

More Work To Do
The half-dozen makers of AR-AFFF foam have more work to do as well, according to Ballantyne. “AR-AFFF concentrates need to be more heat tolerant,” he said. “Make no mistake, these fires are far more difficult to extinguish than hydrocarbon fires.”

The Consumers Council of Canada, a public interest lobbying group in Toronto, is pro-ethanol, but is also calling for more research in the name of public safety. “The government,” it said, “has an obligation to do more to address the many unanswered concerns regarding ethanol’s safety.”

Ballantyne said the U.S. also needs to assess the public safety implications of increased ethanol production. “It was our federal government that passed the energy bill,” he said, “and I would think a high priority for [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] would be conducting a needs assessment and reporting back to Congress what impact this bill will have on the fire service and what it will take to become compliant in this area.”

Plaugher said IAFC has been asked by the U.S. Fire Administration to deliver a training course under contract to FEMA. The course, he said, will address a wide range of issues dealing with ethanol, from where one might encounter it to placarding to its characteristics. The new program is expected to be ready in late spring, offering instructor and student guides and a Power Point presentation and distributing free materials through the Department of Transportation to every fire department in the nation.

“I think it’s important we get information out in a steadfast, pragmatic way, not overreact,” Plaugher said.

White urges fire departments to save costs by pooling their resources and creating “foam banks,” an approach he said has worked well in Dayton, Ohio. “It’s a good model as it doesn’t break anyone’s bank,” he said.

He said he would also like to see ethanol manufacturers become more responsive, as the chemical industry has been for many years. “We live in a litigious society,” he said. “These people need to come to the forefront and become a responsible partner.” Providing training materials and being readily available to answer technical questions would be a good start, White suggested.

In Ballantyne’s opinion many fire departments are not prepared because they are simply not aware of the potential problem.

“The first need is to create awareness,” he said. “Second is education, helping them understand what they need. Third is getting the funding to acquire the required equipment. Simply burying your head in the sand and saying ‘It will never happen in our community on my watch’ is not an acceptable approach.”