Consolidated Fire District Fights Fire With Foam

In seconds, the unsuspecting Subaru sedan was in flames, the victim of a training session at the Nevada County Consolidated Fire District's Station 88.

But in even less time - about 20 seconds - the fire was out. Whereas in the past such a fire would take much longer to douse while expending several hundred gallons of water, this mock blaze required just over 200 gallons.

Consolidated's $225,000 difference?

Soap foam. Or rather, a custom-made engine that can spray foam in all directions and traverse the county's more remote roads because of its shorter chassis.

It wasn't always a good deal, said Consolidated Battalion Chief Tim Fike.

Having a compressed-air foam system on an engine sometimes requires four extra feet of chassis length to fit the air compressor.

Consolidated's system is more compact because it's run off the transmission - a design Consolidated worked out with the manufacturer.

"It helps from the Nevada County line on up," said Fike.

Compressed-air foam helps wherever his crews go. A fire that claimed a trailer home on Waterfall Lane last Wednesday required 750 gallons of water mixed with air and foam. In the past, such a fire would have used up to three times that much water.

"That's if they could even (extinguish) it with water," Consolidated Engineer Mike Stewart said.

Said Fike: "We expect to have less property loss. This is what it's all about."

There's also improved safety, he added. During their recent car-fire demonstration, no one had to exit the engine cab as one firefighter drove toward the blaze while the other plastered it with foam from a remote-controlled turret on the front bumper. The turret can fire 350 gallons of foam solution per minute.

Fike helped manufacturer Boise Mobile Equipment in Idaho design the engine, which also gives crews the versatility to cover wild- land fires and medical emergencies.

Consolidated's engine can produce 4,200 cubic feet of foam with two gallons of foam concentrate and 625 gallons of water. Compressed-air foam can extinguish a fire six times faster than plain water, according to Consolidated literature.

The principle is that foam and water covers more surface area than just water, and that foam sticks to surface areas longer - although it is biodegradable. Consolidated can also use the stuff to "pretreat," or basically smother, surfaces with foam and use it as a retardant. It also speeds up "mop up," the lengthy time spent after containment making sure the fire is out.

Foam isn't a recent innovation. It was used on aircraft carriers in World War II, and some fire departments have been using it more than 15 years. The cost of buying the engines with the CAFS equipment and the length of the chassis on them has been an issue for some rural districts however.

North San Juan Fire Chief Boyd Johnson's department bought a $120,000 engine - that's smaller than Consolidated's - two years ago. The fact that it was a demonstration model allowed the district to acquire the engine at a discount. CAFS accounted for $45,000 of the price.

Compressed-air foam helped crews extinguish a fully involved Victorian house fire in Camptonville with 2,000 gallons of water, Johnson said, estimating it would've taken 8,000 gallons otherwise.

The technology wasn't easy to sell to some district residents at first, Johnson said.

"We think we can get that big punch pretty quickly and not have to invest in that big truck our district can't afford," he said. "Smaller is faster for us, and the fact that it's cheaper, we have no choice, really."

Other districts have embraced the technology, or will soon.

The 49er Fire Protection District expects to get a water tender with a compressed-air foam system next week, Ophir Hill has had such a setup since March, and Rough and Ready has a variation on the system - a Humvee that hauls air canisters that help make the foam mixture.

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