Water Restrictions

[loopylou]

Went to a job recently where a very large hayshed was on fire. 3 Apps + a Tanker arrived on scene fairly quickly, and in my opinion with the resources we had, could have knocked it down and had the job over by nightfall. Instead we did some exposure protection and watched it burn for 4 days till the rain came, which used the assets of 10? brigades and a lot of man hours (catering IMT etc..) It was really enjoyable seeing all that smoke pollution (and a large shed burn down) for the sake of saving water.

[CaptCom]

that's crap...there is no restriction on water if it's in the action of fire fighting....I agree with you, what a waste of resources...

as far as I'm aware, the only restrictions we have been given is in the area of cleaning appliances....certainly not in the act of extinguishment...imagine if the media got wind of that! 

[JC]

that's crap...there is no restriction on water if it's in the action of fire fighting....I agree with you, what a waste of resources...

as far as I'm aware, the only restrictions we have been given is in the area of cleaning appliances....certainly not in the act of extinguishment...imagine if the media got wind of that! 

There are no restrictions at all at incidents, granted you should be wasting water, but you use what you need to stop, control and extinguish the fire. Captcom is right, only the washing of vehicles is affected by restrictions (only using buckets etc.) I do believe all brigades should incourage the use of portable dams or similar during training to recycle water.
And yes that is an extreme waste of resources. Wonder what the owner of the hayshed thought. Not happy Jan.

[medevac]

LOL



im sure this is not the reason that hayshed was left to burn down....

do u really truly believe that all those vollunteer man hours and resources would be tied up on a job like that if not necessary?

[JC]

I would hope it wasnt the case either. Who knows.

[allan]

Excuse a Victorian for speaking, and with my limited experience with haystack/shed fires (only three):
1. Are they not very difficult to extinguish (once they've got really going)? As they tend to smoulder within and reignite (spontaneous combustion - all that wet hay). Need to be pulled apart, bale by bale and separated, all with FS attendance for when it goes up again! 
2. I have been told at CFA training session that animals will not eat smoke-logged hay(can any farmers confirm this?). Hence hay is wasted anyway.
3. How does farmer now get rid of the stuffed hay? Burns it! So suggestion certainly to we CFA types was to let it burn to save the cleanup/ salvage time!

But I must admit multiple days (as in the above example) seems to be just as bad!

[5271rescue]

I can tell you its better to let them burn out safer for crews,down here in the southeast we tend to get there spray a few tanks get the farmer to do a earth break around the shed. One appliances will monitor it for a few days or if its large then a few CFS/private units will also do that job.. May be your job was in a urban area where smoke would have been a problem...We each do things different

[Alan (Big Al)]

Can confirm that animals won't eat hay if it's been smoked logged, we had a grassie one day didn't seem that bad stopped it from the next paddock that was full of bales but it didn't matter the smoke went through that paddock and stuffed all the hay!!!!