Fire Engines Photos

Very interesting assortment nicely captured in one great photo, Bob. I wonder what happened to all the high expansion foam units which were once so fashionable? The idea does seem to have faded away…..

Ed: wasn't there a problem with it being environmentally toxic?

Added by Rob Johnson on 27 August 2023.

Ed Possibly, but all the talk about various foam compounds being toxic seems to me to miss the point that fires, fire gases and smoke from fires are all toxic too, as is the runoff from a lot of fires, whether they are extinguished by foam or plain water.

In addition, if you take the example of class A CAFS, everything points to extinguishing time being reduced by a half to three quarters compared to water. So pumps are belching out toxic diesel exhaust for far less time!

Added by Rob Johnson on 11 February 2024.

Having only known the use of foam to fight major aircraft or refinery type fuel fires, it's impossible to realise the idea of a water based fire fighting plan for such fires.It makes as much sense as throwing water on a domestic kitchen deep fryer fire. As for toxic from memory I think the main ingredient of foam compound was animal blood obviously with various others.

Added by Geoff on 12 February 2024.

Surely challenging to drill realistically with foam at any scale but agree, lesser of a few evils to actually put the fire out. Maybe will have to go back to the lovely organic foam.

Added by Peter McCombie on 12 February 2024.

Class A foam uses a solution which is chemically very similar to washing up liquid soap. It can be injected into plain water for a very modest expansion, or used with an air compressor for 4X expansion. So it is a very different foam from Class B, used for hydrocarbons and liquid fires, which you mention. This is of course still used for these types of fires.

Originally used for vegetation fires, because it “stretched” limited water supplies, class A has proven very useful in structure firefighting. With CAFS expanding to a 4X foam, it has been proven to knock out structure fires in between a quarter and half the time needed for the same LPM of plain water.

Added by Rob Johnson on 12 February 2024.

Peter I can remember time spent testing the monitor and sideline systems and calibrating the inductors of our vehicles against the big concrete wall at our test ground. I think we used a large metal bucket to collect it to measure the density and consistency of it. We used loads of it and I can remember lugging those heavy containers around by hand.

Added by Geoff on 13 February 2024.

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