Evergy, a utility company in Kansas and Missouri, decided to make community risk reduction (CRR) a reality. CRR is part of the company’s problem-solving approach to reduce risk for the communities it serves. As a result of a transformer fire in November 2012, Evergy’s former 835-megawatt gas- and oil-fired power plant experienced a catastrophic failure of a plant transformer.
Lessons learned from this fire motivated Evergy to build better relationships with first responders near its six coal-fired plants. Evergy’s vice president of generation, John Bridson, initiated a comprehensive loss control program. This would eventually include more purposeful relationships with the company’s fire department partners. Target tours and preplanning inside electrical generation stations with plans for F500 trailers were part of his vision for this program. A year later, Evergy hired me to help assist in the building of these relationships. Back in 2013, I did not even know I was involved in the principles of CRR. Further education in CRR helped me formulate a plan. Already in play was Evergy’s plan to build trailers that hold a special encapsulating agent called F-500EA. Unbeknownst to me, F-500 encapsulating technology had already been in use at our plants for 10 to 15 years. Because of the intense heat put off from stagnant and flowing turbine oil fires, it is imperative we cool and extinguish hard-to-control three-dimensional fires inside our plants.
After further study and help from Hazard Control Technology, based in Georgia, I was brought up to speed on encapsulating technology. I participated in a two-day learn-and-burn class. I was impressed at how F500 cooled flammable liquid fires. My experience in the aerospace industry provided many opportunities to fight aircraft fuel fires. Jet fuel fire heat was incredibly intense, and the ability for F500 to cool this type of fuel made a believer out of me.
1 The Weis Fire and Safety Foam Commander, which is Evergy’s Fire Trailer #4. (Photos by author.)
After returning, I wanted to share my experience with other firefighters via Evergy’s F500 trailer program. Contracting with Weis Fire and Safety, Salina, Kansas, Evergy moved forward and built a total of six of trailers. Most of Evergy’s coal-fired plants are centered on the border between Kansas and Missouri. Five of the six trailers surround the Kansas City, Missouri, metro area bordering both states. Weis came up with a design called the Foam Commander. The Foam Commander is a multipurpose trailer used for protecting high-value assets, like turbines and transformers at the plant. Additionally, the Foam Commander could be used by neighboring fire departments as a shared resource. This plan brought together a unified goal of plant protection while building valued relationships needed for solid emergency action planning.
Fostering relationships takes time and finding common ground with your neighboring fire departments is what we wanted to accomplish. I knew I had a challenge. The concept of a Foam/F500 trailer is not a standard response vehicle. A typical industrial response incorporates fire trucks, squads, and aerials, not a trailer pulled behind a fire department vehicle. I knew to help sell the trailer it had to look good. Two totes on a flatbed trailer would get the job done, but the optics aren’t impressive. Weis’s attention to detail in operation as well as presentation helped me start the conversations on trailer response. Over time, many hours of conversations, demonstrations, fire conferences, station visits, and hazmat meetings, the word began to spread. Spreading the word is one thing, but using the trailer on the scene is another. I knew that once we had some real on-scene success, the word and conversation would spread among departments.
2 Evergy’s Fire Trailer #3 in service at a hay bale fire.
THE EVOLUTION OF BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
A few years into the sharing program, Chief Mike Baxter, who protects an Evergy plant in Lawrence, Kansas, came up with an idea. Wanting to become more familiar with the trailer technology and its application, he and I moved the trailer to the station near the plant. This made the trailer more physically present, which naturally became easier to access for training and mobilization. Now instead of an afterthought, the Foam Commander is part of a response posture that can be selected by the chief to mobilize for more difficult fires. Already, Consolidated Fire District, in Douglass County, Kansas, has responded with the trailer on numerous calls both in and out of district. Word of the trailer and its effectiveness has spread to neighboring departments. Through networking and mutual-aid agreements, the F500 trailer has been requested for neighboring communities in Kansas and Missouri.
FIRES THAT MADE A TURNING POINT
Having a new tool in the toolbox is always a bonus. Being ready to deploy and use that tool at an opportune time is a waiting game. That time came when a tractor-trailer pulling thousands of very tightly packaged envelopes caught fire on a nearby Kansas interstate. The quantity and packaging of this payload presented a problem when trying to extinguish the fire. Baxter was ready to deploy this shared resource. F-500EA immediately reduces the surface tension of the water. This makes the water droplets smaller, creating more surface area to absorb heat and better penetrate the pores of solid fuels. Envelopes, being a Class A fuel, needed good penetration and rapid cooling to extinguish the fire.
Another opportunity came on a hot summer day at the Metropolitan Topeka Airport Authority in Topeka, Kansas. A fuel depot contractor on a routine fill of the underground tanks mistakenly hooked up to the wrong tank, which was already full. Several thousands of gallons of jet fuel spilled out of the tank vents, creating a hazard to the nearby runway. Emergency crews responding to the scene immediately sprayed traditional aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) to the pooling fuel on the ground. Because of the Kansas wind and heat, most of the AFFF had dissipated or blew away. State hazmat agencies were called in to assist. Relationship building soon paid off when one of the on-scene officers remembered the Evergy trailer. Someone in the group had my phone number. The timing worked, and between Baxter and me, the F500 trailer deployed to the scene. Nothing was on fire on our arrival but because F500 encapsulates the fuel, separating it from oxygen, the fuel is rendered nonflammable, and the hazard was eliminated. Later, state environmental personnel tested for soil contamination and volatility, and the remediated soil fell below permissible levels of concern.
Out of the ashes of a disastrous fire, Evergy has found a better way to protect its people and property internally and externally. Building relationships, sharing resources, and being a good neighbor have been the results of an effective community risk reduction plan at work.
DAN ATKESON has spent 33 years in the fire service. He served six years with Sedgwick County (KS) Fire District 1; 17 years on an industrial fire department for the Boeing Co. in Wichita, Kansas; and 10 year as a loss control specialist and fire administrator for Evergy, a utility company in Kansas and Missouri.
