Fire_dept

Jeff Green | Jun 15, 2006

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SouthFrontenacFire department floods a field, but good

by Jeff Green

If, early one evening this month, you find yourself surrounded by fire trucks driving up and down the highway hauling water from local lakes, don’t be alarmed, they might only be flooding a field.

Crews from South Frontenac stations 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 joined with tankers from Kingston stations 2 and 3 to haul water to a field south of Inverary on Tuesday night of this week, all to prove a point to a single individual, an insurance underwriter.

They were demonstrating their capacity to maintain a constant water flow rate for a number of consecutive hours. In turn, the underwriter will improve the fire rating of the township, which will benefit all homeowners. Homeowners who live within eight kilometres of a fire station will likely see their home fire insurance rates decrease when it comes time to renew, as the result of the designation that will be achieved through this exercise.

South Frontenac Fire Chief Rick Cheseborough said that the fire crews have been training for this kind of operation for five weeks. The operation involves five pumper and eight tanker trucks and firefighters from different crews working together for many hours. It has also taken a couple of years to upgrade the stock of fire trucks that the crews are using.

The operation involves setting up four portable water reservoirs that hold 1,500 gallons of water each. A pumper at the reservoirs sends the water to a pumper at the fire site (or in the case of the demonstrations, a field) which sends out a steady stream of high pressure water. Meanwhile crews ferry trucks back and forth to nearby water sources, and bring the water back to fill the reservoirs. At all times, the location of all of the trucks is monitored so the operation can run seamlessly.

The operation in Inverary will be duplicated in each of the other three districts of the township by early July.