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Aggressive Water Supply Without Hydrants · B Shifter

• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the B Shifter Podcast.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: John Vance here today on the podcast, we are going to have uh Assistant Chief Matthew Dory from the Clay Fire Territory.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I used to work with Matthew years ago, and he continues to do good things at the Clay Fire Territory.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to be talking about water supply that doesn't come from a hydrant.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't necessarily have to be rural.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: They have a whole community there of residential, some of it pretty dense, no fire hydrants.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: So what are you going to do when you don't have a fire hydrant or you have extended lays?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: We are going to talk about that today and give you some resources to help you out, not only in command simulations, but as an incident commander, the considerations you need to have when you have that type of water supply situation.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Joining me on the podcast today also is Josh Bloom.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get to it.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: So give us a little profile just for folks who don't know about the Clay Fire territory so they know what where you're coming from and what the district looks like when it comes to water supply.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, again, thanks for having me, guys.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Clay Fire, we're we're five five stations right now, growing to seven here in the very near future.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: But we're a we're on two battalions, five engine, a ladder, two medics, and two BCs daily.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: So a staffing about 28 firefighters every day.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Our our area is pretty dynamic when it comes to water supply because we've got our metro area along our highways really close to campus, which fire hydrants every two, three hundred feet.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then we've got a whole battalion to the east of us that has no fire hydrants in it.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: So when we're talking about water supply within our area, our incident commanders and our engineers have to get really creative and think outside the boxes when it comes to making water on the fire ground to get that sustainable supply.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're have about 70,000 residents right now, growing to upwards 90,000 plus here with our merger coming up here in the very near future.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: So with the areas that we're taking, same thing.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of uh residential, commercial, industrial, campus life with uh Notre Dame being so close.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of a melting pot, middle America, suburban in the middle of Midwest with a university town will grow on the weekends up to a population with Notre Dame football, about 250,000 and about a five mile square radius.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it gets pretty busy on the weekends around here.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: You have adopted your department a pretty aggressive strategy when it comes to water supply.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: You have a staff tanker 24-7.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we uh staff one tanker every day, 2,000 gallon tanker.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: We manage it during the daytime with with our staff, and then we have part-time firefighters that come in and staff it at night.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're also pretty unique with that our rover position.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: When they're not roved out, they will staff a second tanker in our response area too.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it could be we roll out with two tankers on an initial alarm.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then with our mutual aid system, too, we've set up with our with the Mavis system that we part play with play in.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: We've added tankers to each one of our areas that don't have hydrant coverage that they're responding from mutual aid departments across state lines to provide us water.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it goes well.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then your engines are also set up with more than what the usual engine would have as far as water supply.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Give me an engine profile.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I make the joke that I would say that my engine's cooler than yours.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we were fortunate about 10 years ago to replace our whole fleet within a year.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: So everything all five engines are identical.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: You open cabinet one on engine 21, it's the same as engine 25.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: But the engines, they're unique because they carry 1,500 gallons of water with a 50-gallon calf system, and they also have two side dumps.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we can run those as tankers as well, if need be.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: So engine one gets there, those guys, or engine 21 gets there, they go to work, engine 22 gets there, they give them their water.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if engine 23 level ones, if we needed to shuttle water, we can have them getting the rotation for shuttling back and forth from a hydrant.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: As far as tanker operations go, there's a couple of avenues that I've seen people go, either nursing operations or port-a-tank operations.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Clay's a port-a-tank operation department, correct?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, uh, our normal water supply strategy, we've done a lot of work in this and what's going to work well best with our system.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: We've pre-planned a lot of our areas.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: We've actually have a document that really describes everything that a lot of work has gone into it to best serve our community for water supply because again, I said we're so unique.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Our everyday strategy is engine engine one gets there, again, they carry 1500 gallons of water.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Engine two rolls up, another 1,500 gallons of water.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: They'll tie in together, they'll nurse, and we call that gimme your water.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a standard play from IC1.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: They arrive on scene and say, come up, you know, you're gonna take a second line, go to the second floor, check for extension, and get all clears, but gimme your water as well.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the engineers will tie two three-inch lines together, and now we're sitting together with 3,000 gallons of water.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: When we get that tanker on scene, they'll they'll level one, they'll come up, they'll drop a port of tank, and then they'll go back and find the closest water source.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Whether that being a hydrant, we're also utilize wells in our area quite often as well, and you know, pun there.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: But uh within our water supply strategy and the help from our electeds and our community, they've put, geez, I think we're up to over two dozen well sites within our response area right now.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: We've got some pretty big wells.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these are 1,500 gallon a minute wells that we can get water from and fill tankers out of.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: They're strategically placed in our Granger area.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's a different, another unique area.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Chief, that you that that's your old hometown.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you're pretty familiar with that, but the community's split by railroad tracks, and there's a fuel storage depot right next to a school and right next to downtown area.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just the perfect concoction for something bad to happen next to a lumber yard as well.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: So let's throw that in there.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So like we've been able to put wells on both sides of the railroad tracks.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've been cut off you know hundreds and thousands of times with tankers trying to get back and forth.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: So now we've got water supplies on each side of the tracks within the different subdivisions.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that is subdivision community over there.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And one you enter one way and you get lost if you don't know where you're going.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we've been really fortunate with pre-planning those areas with strategically putting wells within that community.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny, not a lot of master planning went into that development of that community because there is a fuel depot there with absolutely no municipal water available to it whatsoever.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that with with with a pretty sizable uh storage capacity on a pipeline that goes between Chicago and and Detroit.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's yeah, it's crazy stuff to deal with there.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Josh, is that similar in coal rain and some of the areas around you?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you guys take a different approach as far as how you're gonna get sustained water during a structure fire, especially offensive operations?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: So the it's it's I think it's similar.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: We definitely uh in the region for the most part we'll tie the first two pumpers together to get that water to at least get the operation started.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then the same thing with here that here it's just in the alarm card for the tankers or tenders to be dispatched, and it's pre-planned, so every address that doesn't have sustained water is that you're just automatically gonna get that resource dispatched automatically.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to make sure that when while we're on here that we talk too about uh people who listen and and and watch this that, well, we don't have that problem, and it's like, no, everybody has this problem because if your water system's down, a fire line's down, you you name it, the closest hydrangea, you know, 4,000 feet away because you're you're in an area where there's a broken water main or whatever, then you you need to have you still need to have a plan.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe it's not totally pre-planned out, like this subdivision, this is what we do, this is where we set up, this is where we get water, but it needs to be in everybody's mind that if that becomes an issue, then how are we gonna address that?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't that an issue in Cincinnati a few years back?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a city that relies heavily on municipal water.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't their entire water system go down for a while, or am I confusing that with another large metro area?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think it's yeah, I mean, yes, every year, I mean, in the winter time, everywhere that it gets cold, just like you know, up in clay, right?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: The uh hydrant sprees or lines get broken, or or or we get the extreme cold, and then we end up with you know that rapid fall, and then we end up with lines broken, and we end up with, you know, no water in all kinds of areas.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: So like the village of Lachlan, one square mile, you know, little village does its own water and multiple times that there's been no water at all available in the entire one square mile, though they rely on hydrants, and they have a they have a pump system and and uh a gravity fed system and all that if those feeder lines are broken or whatever, then it doesn't matter.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, going all the way back to that, I remember as a kid tenders or tankers sitting in the firehouse and laughing because there was no water available, and it was like, well, we got 4,000 gallons now, and we just hope we can get it, because if we don't, it's it's gonna burn down, right?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: So I want I just want to make sure that we we talk about that.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: And from the blue part from the blue card perspective, because we get it all the time.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: Why doesn't Blue Card have a simulation that has where you where you have to use tankers or tenders or that there's no water supply?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, well, every simulation we have you could you could run that way.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: And just like we talk about with Maydays, right?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like every simulation we have, you could, you know, connect to a May Day as well.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: We'll we'll do that when we're running command training, when we're doing sims and about every every different SIM.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll myself or our training chief, we'll phantom in a tanker so that I see one or I'm sorry, I see two that they can utilize that tanker and tell them, you know, hey, come up and drop a port tank, just so that they're thinking, constantly thinking about water supply.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those things that, you know, in in in the blue card land, there's a hydrant every uh, you know, every every corner of the building.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in realistic world for us, that that that might not be the case.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll preload the scenario and say, hey, the hydrants that you see, they're out of play.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Put this in downtown Granger.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't on on the highway with hydrants every 200 feet around the building.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll phantom in tankers for the for the crews and make them think about that.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: So when they hear tanker 22 level one, they're like, okay, come up and drop your tank and go secure a water supply.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'll when they know that, we'll also get into prompting them if they if they don't think of calling we call them tanker plans.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a it's an upgrade of just getting more tankers to the scene.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's a box alarm just for tankers.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: So what's a good cue for an IC that you're gonna need more tankers?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: What what what's going through the IC's mind when it comes to requesting one of those tanker plans or a tanker task force?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's some tanker shuttle science that we call it.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And our water water wizard, I gotta give him credit, Ron Brentlinger.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: This guy is thinks outside the box, but with when with what NFPA recommends and the if the driver operator manual book, there's all these formulations to how to figure out your dump time and your flow time and your trip time and all this stuff.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: But easy way just to, you know, for quick math for it, it's your tanker capacity is 20% of your total round trip time.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we tell our ICs that one tanker is going to get you about 150 gallons a minute of sustained flow.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And really, if you're thinking about 150 gallons a minute, that's that's a hand line for a minute of flow, right?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Most of our handlines are flowing 150, 160 gallons a minute.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: So our IC is looking at the building, watching, monitoring the conditions and the actions of everybody and seeing what's happening.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: If they're getting it with the onboard tank water and if it's uh working fire, you know, especially in that our areas that are non-hydrated, nine times out of ten, they're just automatically calling a tanker plan because we know we're gonna need that water.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: When we start you know looking at, you know, building out that water supply system, it's how much water am I gonna need here need to do your build your there's the fire flow calculations and formulas that can be done with those are all uploaded in our pre-plans that the folks can, the battalion chiefs can look at those and access in their MDTs.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just forecasting and it's experience what they've done and seen before in the past, knowing that each tanker is gonna get them about 150 gallons a minute.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Where's their closest water source to?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what's gonna be that trip time?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's a big factor in our system.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: It could be buried deep within a subdivision that they have and they got to go, you know, travel two miles away to the closest well to fill.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then what's the fill time that's gonna be at those fill sites as well?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, is it winter time and is it on the road?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or that's one of the things we stress with our tanker drivers too, is try to get off the road when they're filling, filling up a tanker.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Try to find the optimal water source.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we always say the optimal water source might not be the closest water source.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'd rather go back to a hydrant than use, you know, just the 500 gallon a minute well.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's gonna take so long to fill, and we're gonna get bottlenecked and backed up where there's a hydrant, you know, a half a mile down the street.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we tell the guys find the optimal source, not the closest source.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: One thing to to to hit on is that the importance of all the pre-plans for the stuff that you know exists.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: So here in the county, I think it's probably been 25 years or more.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's been a tanker task force, you know, CAD car that the fire department, you know, they they build it out just like if you're requesting to engines, trucks, battalions, medics, whatever.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then they they they've tied that through pre-plans to addresses so you get a specific dispatch with the appropriate resource to a specific address.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then the other part of it was if there is the at two o'clock in the morning, how do we make sure that people remember and that they're not flipping through a book or trying to look at a computer or whatever?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: So in the pre-plans, all that's still available, but every make it trying to make sure anyway that every address that is either an extended hose light long driveway, or that there's no hydrants available anywhere that they're signed.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: So like the first engine drop your line here, the second engine drop your line there, or the second engine drop your line here, the third engine drop your line here.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: So there's just a sign, and then trying to mark the roadway as well to make sure that we don't pass that up because just like in all of all of suburbia, right?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like the second new company might not be from that jurisdiction, or the third new company might not be from that jurisdiction.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: So just making sure that everybody's on the same page with that, and then like anything, I think sometimes we we overlook the need for training for this, and it just becomes a yeah, we talked about it and went over it, and it's like, well, it's sustainable water supply for what we do fighting fire is obviously very important, so we we should be making sure that everybody's on the same page and that we're exercising that system.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then when you're running simulations like Chief Dori said, say, hey, there's no hydrants available here, let's exercise it in this room and see what that looks like.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: And and you could you know preload it out of you know, here's the closest site to fill, and here's where the the here's where we're gonna drop a tank, here's where the two trucks, you know, may or may not park, just to make sure that we're exercising the system before we have to use it.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: And for an organization like Clay, who does it more often, that is an exercise.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're if you're going to one or two fires a year where you're having to do this type of an operation, and it's that much more important that we train on it and exercise it, and not just train on it at the task level, but like we talk about task, tactical, strategic level, everybody's got to be on the same page.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the things that hold up new blue card users is one of the things we say with blue card is we want an uninterrupted water supply when we're making interior fire attack.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Does this count as uninterrupted water supply?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I argue yes.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking, we're we're tying 3,000 gallons of water together on that initial attack.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean 1,500 on the first, now you get another 1,500 come up.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can do a lot with 3,000 gallons of water.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then now we've got one or two tankers coming in on every alarm.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's another 4,000 gallons of water.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we're sitting with 7,000 gallons of water on scene.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Most fires, you know, in my experience, go out within the first thousand.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's sometimes with mop-up, most times with mop-up as well.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: So our system, that's an uninterrupted water supply.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: If a tanker's shuttling, it's uninterrupted.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: When it gets interrupted, is that's when the IC didn't forecast far enough ahead, and that fire now is you know, is bigger on that what they thought on arrival, and they missed some of the visual cues along the way that we missed that water supply.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe they didn't call the tanker plan early enough.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, and again, that just comes on with knowing your area, pre-planning those areas, knowing, you know, like Josh said, using the CAD and the MDT, that is what being one of the biggest technology upgrades that it's helped our system, especially with like identifying long lays.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've identified every every residence that has a driveway of a thousand feet or greater.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And those are pretty common in some of our you know, larger homes.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And up along the St.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Joe County River, or I'm sorry, sorry, St.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Joe River, it's it's over, you know, well over a thousand feet.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we know that, you know, it flashes up on the cat as a premise hazard.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, this is a long lay.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we've pre-planned what that looks like.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, engine engine 21 drives down the lane, engine 22 drives down the lane, but as they're driving down the lane, they're laying it out.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: So then engine 23 comes up and they're gonna be the relay pump that sends it down.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why we send the two engines down there off the get-go is we didn't block off access to everybody.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: I still got 3,000 gallons of water, and I still got a pump that's gonna pump that line.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: And our engines carry a thousand feet of five inch.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: So if it's greater than that, we know, but it everything has been you know wheeled off and GIS'd and measured out, and it's gonna give us that information off the get-go.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that first arriving engine captain's gonna have a good idea because it's smacked Ab square in their face.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, this is a long way and it's 700 feet.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the battalion chief's seen it as well, so they can start forecasting and planning those water supply needs prior to arrival.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: We we had Chris Ferrarin a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking about his 12 miles of large diameter hose that his company is able to supply.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I know at one time when I was uh with Clay, we had over two miles of five inch.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is that still the case?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you guys still have that much available to you?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a lot of five inch.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Say every engine carries a thousand feet and every tanker carries two thousand feet.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: But we can we can drop some canvas along the highway and relay pump it if need be.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: We had a pretty significant fire about four years ago now.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was up on our highway that we had pre-planned this building to burn down for years.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Old building, Bowstrung construction, added on, added on, added on.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Chief, you're familiar with any shawl construction in the area, but it was an old shawl building, and guys get there, nasty smoke chugging out, I see pulled them up pretty quick, went defensive, and next thing you know, it's through the roof.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: That hydrant lay was over 3,000 feet.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: So here we dropped 3,000 feet of canvas, had a Humat hooked up at the hydrant, so we pumped the hydrant.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: The relay pumped everything in, and we still, at that event, had to run 18 shuttle tankers.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: We had two separate water supplies set up, one set up off the 3,000-foot relay pump, and then on the other side of the building, 18 shuttle tankers in business keeping the water supply going.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, with a complex water supply issue like that, at what point do you set up a water supply officer and what does that look like?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Having a separate chief officer or captain in charge of the water supply on the scene?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, that that's one of the million-dollar questions.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: And we spent a lot of time talking about this with our senior staff and our battalion chiefs.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And when is the best time to set that up?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, it's like it's assigning a division boss.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: It takes that off of the IC to manage the strategy.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Let somebody else manage the water supply.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we said anytime three or more tankers are in shuttle, we'll set up a water supply officer.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: If we have any sort of long lay where we're doing that thousand greater than thousand feet where we got to put a relay pump in play, or anytime that we got multiple porta tanks.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: So if we're gonna start jet siphoning, we got two or three tanks down on the ground.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Just makes it easier for somebody standing in the front yard, standing next to the porta tanks, being able to manage that, telling them what tank to dump in.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're working with the engineer, the driver operator.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: I want them, you know, making sure water's coming out.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: They got the water, we're gonna get them the water, they send the water out.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we came up and said anytime three or more tankers, anytime we're long laying or anytime we're relay pumping, that's when we set up a strategic water supply officer.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's worked really well within our system because, again, that lets the IC focus on managing the actual strategy of the incident.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: We we've just created a class, we put all of our Mavis battalion chiefs through just to give them a foundation of what it looks like to be a water supply officer.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Had some great reviews from it because our system, again, we've got battalion chiefs that are in this in the two cities that we work with that don't have have to worry about drafting operations.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: But they could get assigned that position and something that they don't do, but we want to give them at least a foundation of what they need to need to be aware of.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's a a water supply tactical worksheet that that we that we created that I'll absolutely share with the beach shifter universe.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's worked really well with tracking tankers and capacities and how many times they've dumped, trip time and all the calculations, it just simplified everything.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: But that water supply officer, it's it I I've I've been the water supply officer and I've used the water supply officer.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And when I don't have to worry about calling for additional tankers, calling for additional resources, I tell the water supply officer, just keep me a sustained water supply.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Let them get creative as they need to be, setting up multiple port of tanks, getting using from different multiple water sources.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Again, if they got a relay pump, if they've got to do shuttle tankers, let them worry about it.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've provided them the training, the experience, they know what they need to do.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, is the IC, they're still requesting resources from the IC.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I need another tanker plan.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: So they're still making that call through the IC because again, they're still managing the resources of the event.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: But the big thing is when we get into when we implement a water supply officers, we want to get that radio traffic off of the main fire ground.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of chatter that goes on just with the water supply group.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll assign a separate tactical channel.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I know in the blue card world, one tactical channel for hot zone operations.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is more of our warm zone operations that this is this is support.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: We're supporting the incident by providing that unsustained, or I'm sorry, that sustained water supply.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: The water supply officer, and they're gonna have to manage two radio channels.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna have their two radios, but they're moving all of the tankers that are in shuttle to that separate water supply channel.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: So they know where they're at, when they're filling, when they're returning.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: They can tell them what tank to dump in, or if we've got multiple sites set up in different divisions, hey, I need you to the Bravo division, dump your water.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: I need you to go to the Charlie division to dump your water.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: They can coordinate that and be able to talk, and it's none of that's clogging up the main fire gun channel.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: When you have a water supply officer, I know one of the things pre-Blue Card that was very challenging was the lack of level one staging.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about the importance because of the bottlenecking you talked about, and especially with you know 11 tankers at a large commercial fire, you you don't want them bottlenecked up.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, what what does it look like when they come into the scene and then you getting them into the scene to set up and then coming back around to dump?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the coordination of that water supply officer.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna want to set up, you know, they're gonna develop their own water supply IAP, but it's got to make sure it coincides with the overall incident, incident IAP.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: So they'll set up, they'll tell them where to stage again, because we don't want to, like you said, bottleneck it up.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: And if we can get them to stage, you know, a block away, and that's and then once they go level one, again, that's on the water supply channel, they'll tell them, hey, tanker 80 tanker 86, come up and go to the Charlie Division and dump your water to engine 23.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it again, it it's clogging, it's unclogging any bit of uh craziness because again, too, the tankers are still driving.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: People are still walking around.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: The last thing we want to do is have a tanker hit somebody at night that or the engineer that was, you know.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's where it comes with uh port of tank placement as well, is we want to make sure we get buffer zones to our engineers because we're all side mount pumps, and we want to set that up for the engineer that they're not having to watch their back with tankers driving around their back.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: So just with setting that up with level one, port of tank placement being huge, to give the engineers their buffer and making sure we're setting them up appropriately too, because when the tankers drive up, we don't want to have them to have to back and dump into a port of tank if at all necessary.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, some tankers only have rear dumps, but if we set everything up that we can just do drive-throughs on the opposite side, it just makes it so much safer for the incident operations.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Again, there's different ways to set up tankers or tenders, I've seen them in different configurations, but let's just talk about side dumps and rear dumps real quick and how important that is, and even having those remote controls in the cab so you can lessen how many people that you're gonna have involved in this and and just to make it quicker.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: So for for the for the person who doesn't know how that tanker is configured, just kind of go through that real quick.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I mean, all goes with your spec build, and you know, most manufacturers, if not all of them, they can do whatever you want.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: We set up our tankers with two side dumps and rear dumps, and you can control them from inside the cab so the driver never has to leave the cab.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's also controls both sides of the body for each one of the dump chutes, but we want to make it as easy as we can for that driver that they don't have to get out of the cab, especially when they're dumping water.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're on their headset, they're communicating with the water supply officer.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: And once they make their first pass and they're working with either the engineer if the water supply officer is not set up yet, or if the water supply officer is set up, they're working with them to tell them, hey, I want you to come in and dump on your driver's side.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you're gonna dump in a port of tank two.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the key thing is always keeping the port of tank closest to the supply or the draft engine, keeping port of tank one full.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't want to have them have to move extra water if they don't need to.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: If there's water on trucks, I want it on the ground.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to have any tankers in staging, or I don't want to have any tankers waiting to dump.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll have a tanker come up, drop an extra port of tank, and put that water in it.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a little bit of coordination with the water supply officer when they start dumping.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: But back to your original question with how we're setting our tankers up is take the time to spec your tanker out, which which works the best for your system.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, pump size, if you want your tankers to be able to pump water off as well.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: We went mutual aid to an incident a couple weeks ago to a department north of us, and our tanker actually got into the relay because they didn't have an extra engine.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Our tanker showed up, they needed water, and they didn't have a port of tank down, they were relay pumping everything.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: So tanker 22 pulls up and jumped in the relay operation and was in the middle of sending water down.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: So spec your tanker out.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: What's going to work best for your system and your community?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: How big of a pump you want on it, how big of a water tank you want on it, size and weight are a big thing.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: We've switched to all polybodies on our tanks now or our tankers now.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Road conditions are a big thing.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it's snows here.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: We get uh all the grime and crap on the streets, and rust is a big thing.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: So trying to limit that, and then what appliances are a big thing we're putting on our tankers.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's where the magic happens is how can we make water happen with what's on all of our trucks?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is it five-inch suction?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Is it six-inch suction?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is it multiple two and a halves?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is it water thieves?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Is it we just uh again?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Our I'm gonna give another shout out to Ron Bratlinger.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: He did a great job with uh really thinking outside the box with making even bigger water happen.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we put went out and purchased 90-degree drafting elbows where we can run six six-inch suction down the sides of the truck now to get back to the front of the truck, to hit those front porta tanks because that's the safest place we can be able to draft our water from.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Again, all of our pumps are rated from a draft.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: So when your pump says it's 1,500 gallons a minute, it can pump.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: You're not getting that at your front suction.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Your front suction is, you know, it can be your yeah, your five-inch pipe, but then when it goes back to the pump, it drops down to probably a three or four-inch pipe.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: So what's that that plumbing rated at?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we know that our front suction, we're only able to get 750 gallons a minute out of it.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: But that's where we start opening the auxiliaries and the other intakes to get more water into it.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: But if we can use those auxiliaries and get them back to the front, that's gonna be the safest, safest area to pull that water from because with the tankers going in and out.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so get out there, do your research, play around with stuff.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Again, this is a lot of just thinking outside the box stuff, and it's what's worked really well with us with making, and I say even bigger water happen.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: We can all make big water happen, but how can you make bigger water happen?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And bigger isn't always better when it comes to tanker size, too.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: At one point, your department was uh running about a 7,000-gallon semi that that really needed uh an operator with a CDL because it was high ranger transmission, uh, manuals, you know, and a very difficult truck.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: But but you guys determined at some point that that is not efficient at all.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and you came up with a sweet spot as far as tanker size goes.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about how that discovery happened.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we uh we had the so I'm gonna I'm gonna not date myself, but back when I started in uh 1997 as a cadet, and then up until probably early to mid-2000s, we had, like I say, a 7,000 gallon semi-tractor driven tanker.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't used very often, but because there was only a handful of drivers.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: My first battalion chief made me learn how to drive that thing, and I fought up and down that I'm not driving this tractor trailer, but I did once.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: I pulled it out of the building and put it back in its home.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: But this tanker would be utilized at that point.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: We use it as a shuttle tanker if we needed to.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's big, it's heavy, it takes forever to fill, and it takes forever to dump.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it had a it had a pump on it, but pumping off a two, two and a half takes forever to move 7,000 gallons of water and it clogs up the dump site, and it really clogs up the fill site.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the aha moment.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's our little 2,000 gallon shuttle tankers just do laps around these big tankers.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: One of our departments to the north of us still has one of the one of those semi-tractor-driven tankers.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll ever so often for those big fires, we'll we'll special request it.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I use that, that's my that's just a safety buffer, 7,000 gallons of water if I need it.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's sitting there, but I'm not gonna use it unless I don't have to, because I know if I dump that water, I'm gonna send them home.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'm just gonna hook them up with a two and a half fill clamp just to keep that port of tank fill while everybody else is still doing doing laps around it.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we we looked at the you know, what's the benefit of this tanker and we found that you know let's get rid of it because it just it hindered us more than it helped us.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: The little shuttle tankers just again, like I said, they do did laps around.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a resource for us?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Do we still utilize it if we need to?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: We can, but we we chose to get rid of ours a handful of years ago.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: So let's uh switch gears back to long lays.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: We we touched on that a little bit.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, Josh, you you have some examples of some long lays that you know may take more than one pumper, or you might have a tanker shuttle situation with a source pumper and a long lay and a and a key pumper up at the site.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: So talk about some of those different configurations and things that you've seen, and maybe we can uh then bounce that off Matt too.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, our operation around here and what I've been exposed to anyway around here.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: The the the driveway piece is is a big deal.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: So years ago, I think it was actually even maybe made like national news that the giant fire in Madeira and Indian Hill and ended up being contractors' home, and it was like I don't know, maybe 20,000 square feet or whatever it was.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it looked like a giant, it looked like a giant castle.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that house sat well over a thousand feet off the road, and it was straight uphill, and the main road that it was off of was, you know, not even two full lanes wide either.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that piece of setting it up from the get-go and those first two companies making good decisions and not blocking the road becomes a huge deal.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then that consideration of of working with and training with all of your neighbors, because your organization might be familiar with that need in operation, but it's gonna take all of your neighbors working together as a team to to really get water to where you need to get water to.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: So just some things that I've seen over time, especially in places that are that are long lays, but there's hydrants available, but you're you know, relay pumping or or or whatever the case is is the well, the uh why the IFC was created when it was created about standardizing threads.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: I can't tell you how many times I've seen that on the long lay that oh no, we went back to threaded five-inch and trying to hook the source fittings for their what whatever it is, right?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: So the so that that whole parts is parts and pieces and components and standardizing equipment with everybody respond with is the deal because when that breaks down, it doesn't get fixed in in you know five minutes.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's gonna take a little bit.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like, where is the piece that we need to make this work to where we can hook up and get water where we need to get water to?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then the whole piece of the well, I have a thousand feet of hose and I'm gonna lay out a thousand feet of hose, but how much water is coming off of that hydrant?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: And and if you're not training your operators to understand that, like where do we put a pumper in line when we're relay pumping?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I I don't know that there's an exact answer, you know, to that, because you know, there's places that have really good water supply and there's places that have craft water supply.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it's oftentimes in these jurisdictions in these areas where we're dealing with long-lay addresses, yeah, there's hydrants there, but it's coming off of a six-inch main that is, you know, a hundred years old.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, well, you're you're gonna get 500 gallons a minute out of that, and good luck if you don't put relay pumpers in line, you know, every 400 or 500 feet compared to a capability of if you have more water coming off of the system.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: So that goes back to that you know, pre-pan pre-planning component as well.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: Just to go back on something that Matt said earlier about getting that water on the ground at the fire building and what we can do with that.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's a critical thing.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: So that that second new company coming in, it might be best to just put two trucks in front of the building and that they can use their water together, whether it ends up being 1500 or 2000 or how much ever water it is, and then get your sustained water from the street for that extended hose lay, you know, is another another option.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: And going back, I guess, to another piece that I said about the about the signs.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: At two o'clock in the morning, those signs are just like a little help reminder for people to we haven't talked about long lays in eight months, and now here we are at a fire.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: And where where are we supposed to lay off?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: What does that really look like?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because the time to figure out that you laid up short isn't when the fire is going on, right?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like I've seen trucks lay off and they pull to the front of the building, and it's like, well, you're we're 400 feet short, like you laid off all this hose, and we didn't account.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: We you whoever didn't account for the entire distance.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot of things that go into it, but it all goes back to the thinking, the thinking part of it, right?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's why we have a system and it's not one size fits all.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: And well, engine one always does this, and engine two always does that, and ladder one always does this, and it's like, well, in this case, it doesn't look like that because we're we can't do our job if we can't get water.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: So have pre-planning that and and and then obviously train, train, train on it so that you you you're confident that you're gonna have water when you need it, like I said, at that in the in that at two o'clock in the morning.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then we can't rely on the well, we got this one guy who's really good.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's fantastic.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: Then that one guy needs to teach everybody, right?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that at Clay, I mean that's that's yeah, he's that guy is the guy, but then we they they train everybody and the same thing.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, well, this guy can get water out of a rock.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, fantastic.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, teach him how to teach tell him to teach everybody else how do you get water out of a rock.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's another piece of it's another piece of what we do, but if if we don't have water, it pretty much so is going to shut our operation down.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, that's absolutely correct.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I've referenced our our water guy a couple of times, and he does fantastic with preparing our engineers and sharing that knowledge and doing big water drills and litter water drills, you know, on a monthly basis.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we always say we want the smart working engineer, it's just not the precept poly anymore.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: They have to think about where is the water coming from, where are they going to send it and how are they gonna sustain it?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: A couple things to tag on to what you said, Josh, is talking about the long lays.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that's really worked well for us, especially with our mutual aid companies coming in at our 900 to 1000 foot section of five inch, that's a red section of five inch.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: So everything else is yellow.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we tell everybody, hey, if you're laying out, or if you're coming into relay pump, look for the red section.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you're gonna jump in at.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's your thousand foot mark, that's where we got to put another pump at.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then tagging on with the long lay stuff is I guess thinking a little bit further into that, but with cul-de-sacs.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: We have a lot of cul-de-sacs within our community.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we were the 90s, 2000s, boom, of residential construction where everything's a subdivision on a cul-de-sac with no water supply.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: You lay a cul-de-sac out and you could cut off every bit of access for second, third arrivers or truck companies or everybody else.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, pre-planning those cul-de-sac lays, if you're gonna lay that out, make sure you lay it to the fire street side when you're coming in and not blocking out the whole entrance exit for the uh later arriving companies.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it goes in almost that same concept of where we're positioning engine one goes to the scene, engine two is gonna lay that out, engine three is gonna be the pump, but then making sure you're tucking that pump engine, your in your portal tank, inside the access street and keeping that main drive open so tankers don't have to back in, they can just pull up, dump their water in, and it's sending out.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the tanker is just always on that constant loop and and looking at that.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: So trying to cut down on you know, backup, start stuff, getting in another truck, keep those tanker drivers in their in the seats so they don't have to move.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the tactical considerations here that we talk about with long lays because of the massive setbacks that we have, plus lakes, everything that we have is hydrated, but that hydrant could be more than a thousand feet away on the road down the lane.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is we found new residential construction where they're either placing boulders, gates, other obstacles at the end of the driveway that would limit access to any pumper, or would only allow us to send a mini pumper down there.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: My part-time department at Chanhasson, we have a peninsula, and we know that a mini pumper has to be the primary pump because of the the driveway, the setback, the lanes that we have, and then we're gonna have to pump to that.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing we were really fortunate with with the city of Minnetonka was Minnetonka was set up as like a horse community.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: We had a municipal horse arena, big five-acre lots, especially around our main station or city hall.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, those all started subdividing, and then we started seeing flag lots come in.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: So where it's a shared driveway, but a house behind a house.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: And again, very fortunately, our city passed an ordinance that if you're going to build a house behind a house on a flag lot, that second house has to be sprinklered.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: There, there's there's no option, there's no you have to sprinkler that second house because we recognize how hard it's going to be to get any firefighting forces down there.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, also in Minnesota, we tried sprinklering every house over 4,500 square feet, and that only lasted one year because the Builders Association has a very powerful lobby, and we, the fire service, came up with 4,500 feet kind of randomly.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we had to prove in court where why that number's magic, and we and we really couldn't.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: But for one year, we had every single uh residence built with a sprinkler system in it, so that was good.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: So just look at that pre-planning, and I think getting your crews out into areas where you're going to have these long lays so you can look at it.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're really good at getting into commercial structures, but looking at the residential structures, and we all have the ones that we drive by, right?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're going to work every day and you're going, man, if that thing goes, that's going to be a bear because of the the challenging driveway it has.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, I'll I'll see S curves with retention ponds and all kinds of things on the way into these uh residences that will cause obstacles for uh for a pumper getting up.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think taking a good look at those and then talking with your crews on how are you gonna get it done if you have to get it done.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that you know we we ended up doing just on long lays is one of the skid loads, you know, with with a two and a half or three inch just to get to the back of the building, because we know it's gonna be so far on these these bigger buildings, which that's a that's a whole other topic.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing I wanted to mention too, because it came to mind if you if you're a blue card instructor and you go to residential six, especially the instructor guide for residential six, residential six, that simulation is all structured around water shuttle and using water shuttles.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not you you do not have a hydrant at all in residential six.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a really good simulation to start off with, with everything that we're talking about today.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, it's a house at the end of a cul-de-sac, too.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you the the management of apparatus moving in and out, like uh Chief Dory was talking about, uh, you could practice that there as well.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: If we could share that uh document, if if Clay would wouldn't mind, we could share that just as a you know, because I'm sure there's so many organizations that well every organization has this challenge, no matter what.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, yes, if you think that sustained water supply, I mean sustained water supply because you have a hydrant system, then you don't have plan B because far too often we don't have sustained water and what we believe to be a pressurized, you know, city municipal system because of break failure, you know, whatever it is.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I I think also when you're talking about relay pumping and and municipal water, we had this in clay and we also had it here.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: My city was five different water systems that all joined up when the city was in.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: Incorporated.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we have some very small mains in some areas.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: I know Chief Dory has an area that what is it like three inch mains or you know, so some very, very low pressure, very, very low capacity mains.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: So know those areas.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I I know when when I was with Clay, it was, hey, we're just gonna shuttle up there.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're not even gonna tap into a hydrant because the at the time that the system was so bad.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: So really know the capabilities of your municipal water system, I think is very important as far as that pre-planting goes too.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's absolutely knowing where your water's coming from and who's providing it and knowing the capacities of those systems, like Chief Ann said.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're getting water from the city of South Bend, City of Michaelca, City of Niles, the University of Notre Dame, a couple of private systems.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: So of course they're all different steamer sizes and connection threads.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: And on the the back end of our Humat is almost looks like a zombie because we've got so many attachments that we can plug onto it and take on and off, but have it all right there, ready to go at a moment's notice.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just back up real quick too on Humat because we talk about it in Blue Card.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: We I've implemented it a couple of departments, but a lot of people don't know what it is.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: What is a humat valve and and how how does it work?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, hydrant assist valve.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm sure everybody grew up with seeing that old four-way valve sitting the back of their tanker that nobody used and nobody knew.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: Looks look like a boat anchor.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: But how we use ours, those are our everyday hydrant valves.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: If it's greater than a 200-foot lay, we're gonna hook up the Humat valve and we're gonna consider pumping it.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what it does is when we're doing that forward lay, if we need to pump that hydrant to get more water out of it to cut down the friction loss, when the engine comes up to pump the hydrant, they can pump directly through the cumat.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have to stop the can once the hydrant's flowing, we don't have to shut the hydrant back down.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: We can continuously flow right through it.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna hook the hydrant up and go to the engine, we're gonna take a stickaloopah hose back around the hydrant, and then as that's coming back in back to the engine, it's boosting the pressure that's coming from the from the source hydrant and boosting it down the line to send the actual fire, but it's uninterrupted.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's the biggest thing.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: Is once water's flowing, we don't have to shut it down to keep it going.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Chief Dory, was there anything else that you wanted to hit on today that we didn't get to?
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: No, I appreciate you guys for inviting me on.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate the conversation.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if there's anything I can ever do to help you or anybody else out, please let me know.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're experts at this, but we've done it a little bit, and you know it's the world we live in.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we gotta we gotta know it and we gotta play in it.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: All right, before we go, timeless tactical truth from Alan Bernicini.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: And this timeless tactical truth says every time I say it can't get any worse than this, it does.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: Every time I say it can't get any worse than this, it does.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: I have watched, heard, witnessed people overextending their booster tank, thinking, ah, we're gonna get it with the booster tank, and they don't make any plans if they can't get it with the booster tank.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning that, you know, you're talking about the give me your water or that second pumper coming in or laying into the pumper.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: We have to be thinking plan B, plan C, plan D.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's your experience with that?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so if well, number one, try not to try to do things to prevent yourself from getting into that position of of the if not this, we don't have a solution, or we don't have a plan.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like always try to avoid that.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: We always talk about plan A, B, C, D.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like, make sure you have that.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: But an example of that, and I saw it uh I saw it several times on incidents I ended up at mutual aid, was they're trying to run two aerial devices with inappropriate, inappropriate setup for water supply, you know using using tenders or tankers, and it's like yeah, you're constantly gonna run out of water and you know, it's low water for three minutes and be out of water for three minutes.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it it it just it never went it never went anywhere.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: And if if if you make the decision to call for the resource to help you, then it's too late.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: So it just goes back, I think, to specifically for the water supply part of it.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: Pre-plans, know where your challenges are, and then have a plan B when plan A doesn't work, like we kind of talked about with the this isn't just rural water supply or there's no no hydrants in the area.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: What is the plan for every fire department all across the country that does have hydrants when when the system is down, when there's some sort of system failure, water main break, you know, you name it.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, oftentimes we know, well, we could we have a water main break, we can still get some water, but you're only getting 20% of what you were you thought you were gonna get.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: So a thousand gallon a minute hydrant's only giving me you know 300.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you can only do what you can do with what you got.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: So water is kind of like the people.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: You can only do the work that you have the people to do the work for.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you can only put out the fire that you have the water the the the correct amount of water and sustained water.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, if you have that mindset of how like of the or you or you're thinking how much how much worse can it get, or when you it this is bad, I didn't think it could get any worse.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well that that likely goes back to the you weren't thinking about something before this incident happened.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: And if there's no other takeaway for people from what we did today, it's put this on your radar that having plan B for water supply is a real thing, whether you're in the middle of a metro city or you're in rural Midwest US America have have a plan and know what that's gonna look like, and then make sure you're training your people on it.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: Don't try to if you haven't trained your people, don't try to pull something off that that you haven't.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, just another example of that is I I saw it here locally not too long ago.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was a box truck on the highway on fire, and they the first engine told the second engine, send me your water, and they pulled off five inch off the first engine, a hundred feet of five inch, and sent uh the 500 gallons that they had on engine two to engine one, but they didn't consider all the water that they lost pushing through 100 feet of five inch.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: So that's just another one of those pieces of you know, train your operator.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: So that's one of those.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, this is bad.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_02: Engine one's running out of water.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, now it's even worse because you only have two engines here, and now you have a whole bunch of water sitting in that five inch you can't do nothing with.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, having a plan and training to the plan.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that wraps up this B Shifter podcast.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, check our show notes.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can get all the downloads that Chief Dory was talking about as far as water supply and anchor shuttle information there.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: And make sure to tell your friends and subscribe if you haven't already to the B Shifter Podcast.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for being here.