A few years ago, my deputy chief approached me to discuss the creation of a driver/engineer position at our department, North Port (FL) Fire Rescue. We already were fairly adept at pumping operations.
Calculating friction losses and achieving a desired flow among multiple simultaneous handlines were skills we trained on regularly. However, a notable portion of our city had areas where water supply was a real issue. We have a tanker with a portable pond, and we used it the best we knew how. As I thought about all the fires I had been to in these areas and then all the fires I’d heard about from other shifts, I realized that we basically were reinventing the wheel on every fire with such water supply restrictions. Not only that, but it was apparent by our performance that the wheel we were inventing was square.
I now had a starting point for some tactics that we gravely needed to improve on. Some of the homes in this nonhydrated area were upward of 12,000 square feet (sq.ft.), which poses a real problem. As I asked around at surrounding departments, I realized that all of us were struggling with this lack of knowledge or tactical ability and, in most cases, as with my department, we didn’t even know we were struggling with it.
Our tactics were based on short-term water delivery; sluggish replenishment of on-scene supplies; and, in many cases, as with larger departments, simply throwing engines at the fire until it went out. Typically, this results in greater or total loss of property, not to mention any potential life hazards associated with a lack of water supply. There were documented cases of surrounding departments arriving on the scene of larger rural events and launching deck guns until tanks ran dry and not having any real procedure for providing sustainable water.
More and more people move to Florida every year, stretching our zoning capacities and taxing our resources. Our departments are all growing in terms of stations, apparatus, personnel, and coverage area. Previously, departments were almost exclusively reliant on a municipal water supply system to provide for firefighting needs, and life was good. What little rural activity there was would be handled by a couple of rural stations, usually housing an engine and a tanker. Nurse tender operations would suffice, at least until more engines could arrive. Even so, without a real, definable, and obtainable water supply solution, houses and other structures were typically lost if they had any real fire involvement on the arrival of first-due units.
This can be the norm for many departments, and the general attitude is, “We did the best we could, but it’s way out in the middle of nowhere, so what do you expect?” Well, now with more and more structures, both residential and commercial, populating these rural areas, the expectation of our departments’ firefighting capabilities should increase as well.
So, how does a fire department that has never had to develop such a water supply capability do so? How do we catch up? Water supply comes down to three steps:
- How much water do we need (needed fire flow, or NFF)?
- Where can we get the water?
- How do we get the water to the fire?
Once we can answer these questions, we will have begun to shape our Alternative Water Supply System. After this, we can look at some common equipment needs to help us better access and move the water and then craft standard operating procedures to reflect this system.
How much water do we need?
There are many places to look for these answers. One of the best routes is to look at what’s expected of us. The Insurance Services Office (ISO) has set such standards, and we are all familiar with how and why we would follow its guidelines. Now without getting too deep into the weeds of ISO ratings, we will pull the basic ones that affect what we should be doing in our rural settings. First, we can define ourselves based on the concept that we are discussing zones of our coverage area that are within 5 miles of a fire station and beyond 1,000 feet of a credible water supply.
Once there, the ratings I will focus on are “Class 8B” and “Class 8 or better” (I am aware of the new split classifications, but again, this is not an ISO discussion per say. We are just looking to better understand how much water we should be supplying. For exact compliance information, contact your ISO rep.)
Class 8B is your ability to supply 200 gallons per minute (gpm) at the five-minute mark of your arrival and sustain this flow, uninterrupted, for 20 minutes. That seems reasonably attainable, but you better get those extra apparatus out there quickly.
Class 8 or better requires that you provide a flow of 250 gpm within 5 minutes of arrival and sustain that flow for 2 hours. This will require some sort of sustainable delivery system.
The next benchmark is what we want to supply to put the fire out as rapidly as we can. The smallest quantity you’re going to find from ISO on this is 500 gpm. This is for a residential single-family home, not more than two stories, and that is at least 30 feet from other houses. This is the most appropriate number to try to achieve for the favorable outcome of any structure fire, again, minimum. Consider what your on-scene flow requirements are: an attack line, an exposure (or backup) line, and a RIT line. Most of the attack line nozzles carried supply at least 150 gpm; with those three lines, you are up to 450 gpm, so adjust for variances in actual flows and take it to 500 gpm. This is a minimum starting point for what we want to bring to a structure fire.
Many smaller fires may be out before you reach this capability, but the idea is that your response to one of these fires begins with this as your NFF starting point. In saying that, one of the biggest concepts that we are going to have to warm up to is the allocation of resources. Creating this water supply system to meet these needs is going to require a larger contingent of apparatus and personnel than we have previously dedicated. Tasking one engine or one tanker with “water supply” simply won’t do. When in this rural setting, it’s good to remember that next to life safety, creating a sustainable water supply just jumped to the top of your list of activities and therefore justifies allocation of whatever resources are needed to achieve it. Don’t skimp or overload one unit. A large rural event can be an apparatus- and equipment-intensive event. Call for an armada (photo 1).
1 Mutual-aid tanker shuttle drop pond arrangement. (Photo by Justin Cammarata.)
Where CAN we get the water?
Typically, as I’ve seen with my own department and from those around us, we run to the nearest hydrant. However far away that may be, that’s where we run to. Then it hit me: We live in Florida, the swamp. You will trip over a retention pond on your way to the next retention pond in many areas. We have many natural water sources all around us, but for some reason we don’t consider drafting from them.
Most departments in my area, as we did, carry the obligatory 20 feet of hard suction hose per an NFPA standard. It simply rots in the rack on the back of the engines. Once I realized that we are going to have to use these natural resources, and 20 feet of hose simply doesn’t get close enough to access them, it became apparent that we were going to have to carry more suction hose. So, for the two first-due engines in our primary nonhydrated areas, we upped our suction hose complement to 40 feet and added floating strainers.
Drafting can be an art form. If your department hasn’t trained on it much and you are going to try and access portable or natural water sources, then you are going to have to aggressively train on this. Also start looking into appliances that will aid in your ability to capture this water in the volumes needed for your event. All strainers, low level or floating, are not created equal.
Now we need to evaluate this water source. How much does it provide, and can we get to it? There are a limited number of dry hydrants in our area, and none of them are maintained regularly enough. You really aren’t sure if they are viable at any time of year. Most times, even after you try to backflush it, you’ll still get muddy water coming out of your nozzles, which is not great for the pump. However, if it can be kept up, then it’s a great resource for obtaining water, and as ours are 6-inch pipe, they provide an adequate flow of water to maintain our flow needs. Some dry hydrants are made with smaller pipes or are choked down at joints or connections and will limit the total volume that you are able to draw from the water source.
Generally, dry hydrants can be located on a paved surface so there is little concern about an apparatus’ ability to access the hydrant. So, outside of both municipal hydrants (which many times in a rural setting are red tops with limited flow capability) and dry hydrants, we are left with gaining access to a natural source of water.
We will create two categories of water sources: primary and secondary. A primary source will be a source that we can reach with the amount of hard suction hose available on a first-alarm engine complement and can provide twice the NFF for the scene or at least a minimum of 1,000 gpm—so, for us, two engines with a total of 80 feet. A secondary water source is, therefore, any water source beyond 80 feet and accessible by a portable pump or a TurboDraft eductor and capable of supplying less than 1,000 gpm.
Now these water sources must be catalogued and monitored year-round. Plant growth and algae can quickly overrun any stagnant pond or lake, choking out our ability to access water from it. Often, your local public works department has machinery that can clean out any adversely affected areas. A benefit of our area is that lift is rarely a problem. Most of the state is at sea level, so any serious elevation problems come from drafting off bridges. Most banks rarely go beyond 10 feet of elevation to the water level. Muddy or soft banks are of greater concern and tend to be the reason for any long hoselays, having to keep the apparatus on pavement. However, don’t be afraid to take the apparatus off the road; just make sure to get out and walk the ground to evaluate it before driving onto it.
If you plan on using these water sources for some form of ISO qualification, then they have to be certified as credible waters sources—they have to be proven to withstand a 50-year drought survey. And if you were planning on using a pond on private property, then you’ll need to show a water usage agreement with the owner, proving you have access anytime, day or night, all year, and specifying who maintains the roadways or access points to the pond and keeps it clear from debris. Generally, these water sources will need to be able to provide at least 30,000 gallons of water for a two-hour period.
Once the water sources have been categorized, you can begin to assess how to use them. Maps should be made that reflect where these sources are in the response area and that identify what gpm they can provide and which delivery system is best used from them—i.e., relay pumping within a certain distance or a tanker shuttle beyond a certain distance.
In Figure 1, the area zoned for “Relay” has a large flowing waterway along the top edge and turning down the left side. Now, the roads that make up this area run up and down in the grid pattern you see. From top to bottom, most structures on these roads we can access using a relay from the source at the top of each roadway. The structures in this zone are primarily residential, ranging in size from 2,500 to 9,000 sq.ft. There is also a church, which is approximately 12,000 sq.ft. in this zone. The area zoned for “Series” does not have a close enough water source to lay in from. However, this is also primarily residential, and the homes are smaller, ranging from 1,500 to 3,000 sq.ft. Most of these can be handled with a series pumping operation. The zone to the right, “Tanker Shuttle,” is an area comprised of primarily residential, some commercial, but with structures that can range from 3,500 to 13,000 sq.ft. There is no accessible, year-round water supply within range of a relay. The nearest hydrants or natural water sources can range from 1.5 to 3 miles away, one way.
Figure 1. Basic Response Map
How do we get the water to the fire?
Now, most times, these house fires are still room and contents at the time of our arrival. The majority of these fires can be extinguished and overhauled with tank water on scene of the first alarm. This is when we can use a technique called series pumping. The normal practice for these fires has been to start attack flow with the first engine and bring up one engine or tanker to nurse the attack engine. This is similar but more organized and better able to use all the water available on scene.
Basically, as apparatus arrive, they position in line with the attack engine, connect forward with supply hose, and push their tank water forward. So, the receiving engine will fill its tank and then pump using the water received from the apparatus before it. As all units fall in line, the only apparatus without a full tank of water is the last apparatus in line. Once that apparatus is empty, and if the fire is still going, that apparatus will make the trip to the water source and refill. Each apparatus that empties will repeat this and then return, plugging back into the series and pushing their water forward.
This tactic is only meant for fires with 10,000 to 12,000 gallons total water flow. However, the last fire we used this on wound up totaling 23,000 gallons of water usage. It was a 2,000-sq.ft. single-story residential home with a fully involved garage on arrival. We set up for a series pump and should have had no issues dealing with this fire. However, what we didn’t know but would discover later in the attack (due to some low-hanging electrical wires and waiting for the power company to shut down the supply) was that the house was a hoarder house. The interior fire load was immense and so the NFF was much higher than anticipated. Even so, we were able to keep up with demand, including eventual deployment of a 2½-inch interior attack line running simultaneously with our two 1¾-inch attack lines.
Note that units are using 3-inch hose as the supply line (photo 2). There are 300 feet of supply hose on the ground; that would equal 300 gallons of unusable water on the ground if it was 5-inch hose vs. 100 gallons for 3-inch hose. Three-inch hose will easily supply the fireground flows that would be used for this tactic. Also note, for this fire, two apparatus used lines for fire attack, and each was interconnected to the other to either supply or receive water, depending on which direction water came in from (Figure 2).
2 Apparatus lineup in series at the Basket Street Fire, interconnected with 3-inch hose. (Photo by author.)
Figure 2. Series Pumping at Basket Street Fire
We did bring in our spare tanker for this fire, so on the two tankers were 6,000 gallons, each engine carries 1,000 gallons, and each aerial carries 500 gallons. This tactic is the workhorse of most fires that departments like ours typically encounter. It can be done with first-alarm apparatus and a couple of supplemental apparatus if deemed necessary, without any special equipment and without taxing the resources of the rest of the city and surrounding departments.
In Part 2, we will look at water delivery and what that means for our resource and mutual-aid capabilities.
Kyle Dent is an 18-year veteran of the fire service and is an engine lieutenant and the designated water supply officer for North Port (FL) Fire Rescue. He designed, developed, and implemented the department’s Driver Engineer Program as well as the Alternative Water Supply Strategy and Tactics plan. He is a Florida state certified fire officer, fire instructor, live fire instructor, and driver/pump operator.
