Technical Advice

[Aussie_Fire]

Good morning Team,

My name is Jesse and i operate an emergency services company in Perth, Western Australia.It is a private company that provide emergency services personnel, equipment and training to remote areas of the state mainly to mining operations. This includes fire fighter's, paramedics, security, nurses, doctors etc.
I'm currently updating our training material and was hoping to find a couple of experienced currently serving NYC fire fighters, preferably with high rise experience to bounce some technical questions off.
My background is as a fire and rescue / EMT operator mainly in underground (up to 1 mile UG) and heavy industrial enviroments.
Any advice on the following topics would be greatly appreciated as we are generally a little behind down here.

1. Electric vehicles, these are starting to push into mining (my main sector) in a big way. i was wondering if any of you have come across any effective agent to combat lithium Iron battery fires. anything that could prevent or help stop a thermal runaway? i have seen a few youtube clips on fire departments using giant fire blankets/tarps to try a mitigate. Is anyone aware of any agents or fire fighting media that is effective? i beleive the following link is of an Encapsulating agent called F500 which the manafactuerer make big claims on. However they sell this for $60,000 AUD for 1000L which converted for my americain friends is roughly $40,000 USD for 264 gallons.
Any coments or suggestions appreciated.

2. Dust explosions, we all know that saw mills, grain silo's, industrial bakery's can be high volitile if dust is ignited under the right conditions. I was wondering if any of you lads have come across a dust explosion caused by the dust generated from structural collapse?? It's concivably possible this could happend but i have not encountered it myself or worked with anyone that has. I was wondering if anyone from the US has encountered this??

I was wondering for structural fire fighting, do you guys use perculating hoses? or is this only used for wildfire? or have they been phased out in recent years replaced with non-perculating hose? also couplings, what are they made from (brass/Alumnium) and are they a fine thread??? I had the amazing opportunity to compete at an international mines rescue competition representing teamaustralia. it was held in salt lake city in 2007. We got to train at the reno fire science academy for 2 weeks and from memory we used fine threaded couplings. is this a national standard or does each state run it's own preference.

I appreciate your help in advance. I thought i would share a couple of pics of the West Australian mining sector. Theres even a pic of me and one of my staff in there on a site visit.

Stay safe folks, i hope to hear back from you.
All the best.

Jesse

 

[Captain784]

Jesse My name if Bob Rainey and I am a retired F.D.N.Y. Captain from Engine Co. 26 in Times Square, Manhattan. I have worked as a Firefighter in Tower Ladder 18, As a Lieutenant in Tower Ladder 21 and as I said as Captain in Engine Co. 26, all in Lower and Midtown Manhattan. In regard to your question about Lithium Batteries the FDNY now has our Hazmat Team and, one of our designed Hazmat support Engine Companies respond to all fires involving Lithium Batteries. Also assigned to respond is a open flatbed truck with a lift gate and overpack drums of a substance that form a airtight barrier around the burning, Lithium Batteries. The other option that has been used is full emersion of the Lithium Batteries in a tub or other water container, sizable enough to fully emersed the batteries until the Hazmat, unit arrives. My grandson is a Philadelphia firefighter who also works for the Insurance, Underwriters Labatory, and they are doing studies on the Lithium Battery problem.
Yes, I have seen dust explosions, occur during building collapses, but only when the collapse is caused by an advanced fire within the building.
I believe the "Bellows" effect of the collapsing building throws the flammable dust into suspension, and it then it is ignited by the already existing fire. In areas where flammable dust exists a "Deluge Quick Acting" high capacity, special sprinkler system is often used to suppress the progradation of the dust explosion.
Sorry but I have never heard of percolating hose. I understand it's possible use in Wilderness Interface firefighting, but I have never seen or used it.
I have been both a professional and volunteer firefighter and officer for over 50 years and still respond as a Safety Officer with my local volunteer fire department in a northern suburb of New York City. Captain Bob Rainey FDNY Engine 26 retired

 

[Aussie_Fire]

Good morning Bob,

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post. I'm blown away that i have heard back from such a decorated and experienced veteran. i was suprised and interested by all of your comments. First of all the lithium response, this is a concept that our state fire service are only just starting to discover, which is a lithium battery fire is more of a HAZMAT incident than a fire response as such. The current SOP's that they operate under are to basically let it burn out. Protect exposures and cool but not engage agressively. We have much more open spaces with a small central business district over here so can afford to do that i guess. I can appreciate though in NYC space is tight so it's hard to just shut down a raod while a car burns it'self out, not to mention the close by exposures and people that are exposed to emissions. The flatbed truck concept is very interesting.

I appreciate your experience with regard to dust explosion caused by structural collapse. I've spoken to a few state fire fighters over hear and they have never seen or heard of this phenomenon, though they all agreed it was concevibly possible. I think it most likely has something to do with our building methods over here. We rarely use masonary over here anymore except for in slabs/foundations. All our developers over here have itchy TNT fingers too so a lot of the older buildings that used brick and wood have disappaeared. mostly we use steel and cladding. This is a big help as i'm trying to write our training material based on real life experience, not on what a laboratory "says should happen".

As for perculating hoses this is great to dispell a urnban fire fighting myth down here. When speaking to peers, the few times perculating hoses have come up there seems to be a common misconception that everyone says " oh we don't use that in Australia, thats something that the americains use" so it's good to hear that in fact is not true.

I appreciate you taking the time to reply Bob. I only had one more question for now. How do you calculate your SCBA wearing duration?? i wondered if you used the metric system for SCBA purposes, or if you use imperial, what the units of measurement and calculations are?

Thanks once again Bob, all the very best.

Jesse

 

[RCL]

Hello Jesse. I'm Ron and I was a founding member of my department's Special Operations team, and also a Florida State certified Hazardous Materials Technician. A rough equal would be the members of FDNYs HazMat unit and the crews on the 5 Rescues. I retired as a driver engineer of the tower and heavy rescue, and acting officer for any unit in the city.
As far as the LiOn fires down here, the only real effective way of dealing with them that weve found is to totally immerse the batteries in water. And monitor. Most depts I know of, have made arrangements with the landfill, or a salvage or towing yard for a predug pit to be available. So in the instance of say a Tesla or an equivalent car with a battery fire, or involved with fire, well do a regular knock down with copious amounts of water, and have a wrecker (tow truck preferably a roll back) load the vehicle and transport it to the nearest pre dug pit, with a police and fire escort. The engine is either a 2nd special called, or the first already refilled its tank in case of a flare up enroute. The rollback drops the vehicle into the pit and the pit is filled with water. To date, I haven't seen anything really cost effective as an additive or replacement for copious amounts of water on LiOn fires. Smaller fires, like say a portable drill battery, well put it in a metal garbage can full of water. And leave it. Once were confident that the thermal runaway has been stopped, the battery goes to the landfill to be recycled. A lot depends on the resources a given dept. has or available to them. Were only 15 to 20 minutes from the landfill to deliver a battery for example, which has the capability to handle hazmat like that.

The percolating hose. Lol. I know what your describing. I think it was called a soaking hose or something to that effect. It was marketed for brush and wildfires, so that if the hose was dragged thru a hot spot or flames, the hose would not be damaged or burst. I remember at least 1 major fire hose manufacturer was making them but haven't looked in a while. In Florida, there's a State Fire Department that deals with wildfires, and they use standard forestry hose. Nothing special about it. Might have a special outer layer to make it stand up to the abuse of being dragged thru dirt, rocks and flames, but its pretty standard. I know they have a lot of lightweight hose. I've been to enough fires with them, and on enough brush trucks to say I haven't seen any in the last 20 years. Or more.
There's something else to consider. There's a National agency that supplies rules and regulations for just about everything in the firefighting world. NFPA or the National Fire Protection Agency. They have a rule or standard for literally everything. Most of, if not all Departments follow those standards. Including hose, and just a quick look at Key Hose which supplies a good portion of hose to the Departments, (Including FDNY) I didn't see any self soaking hose at all on their site.

Dust explosions. I haven't come across any, and we had a few places in the city that had large volumes of saw dust from pallet ( the wooden pieces under heavy items like cases of sodas) repair and manufacturing. There was several others nearby that wed be called to mutual aid, as we had at 1 point 1 of only 2 operational 100' aerials in the County. I have seen recently, a video on I think on Facebook, where a grain silo collapsed and as it collapsed caught fire and could be what your describing, as there was a very large amount of fire that seemed to start after the collapse of the silo. If I had to guess, the crews in the Midwest, in areas that do a lot of farming, would have better knowledge of dust explosions and how they deal with them. Not to say it cant or wont happen on the east coast, where NY and Florida are, but statistically, Id look at Iowa or the corn belt. Or places like that.

For structural fire fighting, theres a large assortment of hose to choose from from the different makers. Theyll put what ever couplings you want on the end. Storz, NST, quarter turn, as long as it meets NFPA. The newer hose is coming with composite couplings I think. Brass has pretty much been phased out due to weight, and probably price. The smart departments will actually match the hose on the rigs, to the nozzles and appliances, as from what Ive learned from sitting on spec committees, is that no 2 hoses are the same. Some have higher friction loss characteristics the others. The way a unit is piped is another major factor in the friction loss headache for hose purchase. A unit with out mention of names where the pump is under the truck, has alot of 90 degree bends before the water ever gets to the first length of hose. And that was backed up by the operators of that truck. The traditional pumps, that were on all of my rigs had very gentle bends this braided hose to help with friction loss.

SCBA wear duration. We use imperial. Id say 99.9% of the departments use a 4500 psi pack. Ive seen 5000 psi bottles as an option coming in. Most packs have somewhere in the mask a bar system or similar to show air usage. We had Scott NexGen packs and there was 4 colored lights. Red, yellow, green and green. I think those were the colors. At 100%, Both greens were on, at 75% 1 Green, at 50 % the yellow would slowly flash, and when the red was on by itself, it was less then 25% and flashing fast, and the vibra alert would go off which basically shakes your mask as a back up so you know your the one low on air. Usually 500 psi. I think that changed now. There was talk by the NFPA of changing the pressures around a little bit but I forget to what as I retired about that same time. Duration depends on a lot of factors. Size of the bottle, whos wearing it, what kind of shape are they in and what are they doing, environmental conditions.... What pressure cylinder. I thnk there may be some 2216 psi packs still in service. Some packs will have a time left display that gives you a estimated working time based on what you are doing, somewhere on the pack. All depends on the manufacturer. On my shift, we came up with a set of simulated real world aids, and each person could use it to get a ball park on how long it would take to completely empty a pack. On average with a 45 minute cylinder, we go for 35 minutes. Wed use a sledge on a large tire for 2 minutes, then crawl 100 feet following a hose, walk up a flight of stairs, and pull a hose pack up roughly 10 feet and then do it again. I think there may have been 1 or 2 more events in there, like carrying a set of dumb bells a certain distance, but the 2nd time around on the tire, and after, we would hit it 20 times instead of 2 minutes

 

[Aussie_Fire]

Hi Ron,

Thank you for your reply.
It appears as though the perculating hose were a fad that never took off from decades ago. This certainly does de-bunk the myth aussies have that Americans use them in building fires and the like. Not sure were it started but i'm glad to see that i'm getting it from direct knowledge.

The battery fires certainly seem to be a head scratcher. The problem we have in mining is that we only have access to hypersaline water for fire fighting operation's. We rely on bore water in the outback which is inherantly hyper saline. i read a case study a few weeks ago about one of the hurricanes you guys had in the lower Texas/Florida gulf where see water flooded an electric vehicle storage lot. The salt water being hypersaline and a superior conductor caused many to catch alight. This inturn liberates significant ammounts of chlorine gas. i have a salt water swimming pool that uses an electric current to add chlorine to the circuit (quite common down here).
I guess this is a situation where technology in EV's has jumped a head of the fire response capability. i have heard that even submerged vehicle can still be combusting up to a week or so after being submerged. These are probably very rare cases.

Thank you for your experience with dust explosions. They are fairly rare over here. i have turned out a a methane pocket underground once that flashed and scared the crap out of a few of the lads but never personally a dust explosion.

Thank you Ron for taking the time to share your experience.

Jesse