Mortlake Fire Company
Tanker Shuttle Drill
28 September 2008

The day began with a "tailgate session" going over the plan for the day, distributing route maps for the drivers, going over the rules (such as no lights and sirens along the route, but to use lights to warn traffic at the fill and dump sites). About 20 firefighters from five departments participated.

The tanker shuttle course would be seven miles long round trip, simulating the run from a water supply in the center of our town to one of the furthest points.

Once the shuttle was established, the sustained flow was 500gpm. At the end of this page is the spreadsheets with the times that were recorded (some of the early times weren't) -- during the 96 minute time frame with good numbers showed 541gpm without factoring in issues such as water left stranded in tanks from not draining out the last drop. Both the practical sense "on the ground" and looking at the spreadsheet numbers shows we could've added one more tanker to the evolution and achieved 700gpm all other things being equal.

At the end of this is some more material I dug up out of my archives on tanker shuttles we've run in 1958, 1965, 1991, and 1999. Between those shuttles and this you can see the progressing technology -- and the shifting advantage from drop tanks (or portable ponds as the old timers called them) to pumping off into the booster tank and back to drop tanks. I have participated in drills and fires with 1000gpm+ being supplied by tanker shuttles in my area -- the rules of thumb I have are 350gpm and less can be handled by small ETs without breaking a sweat; above 500gpm needs to involve lots of big ETs and drop tanks start to become advantageous; above 700gpm requires more then one fill site; and above 1,000gpm requires drop tanks because pump-off has become excessively demanding of manpower and supervision. I've yet to see one break 1,400gpm and the math says that's the limit for what our current generation of equipment can do with 2 fill sites and 1 drop tank dump site.

And best laid plans go awry...

This is one of two access points we've had constructed to allow ready access to Blackwell's Brook after bridge improvements made drafting from the top of the bridges impractical due to excessive lifts. There was, however, a problem getting a prime established, so time for plan B...

Go back half a mile and hit a hydrant. This was along the planned route already, so it didn't impact the total distance. This is the western most hydrant in Brooklyn, sitting at the end of a three mile long 16" water main, installed around 1992 with the expansion of the correctional center across the street.

Engine 190, in the picture, carries 5,000' of 5" hose and was designed before when there was no expectation of ever having hydrants in the Mortlake district. Between the expansion of hydrants to cover most of the high value and life hazard structures, and the continued degradation of static water supplies as old ponds silt in Engine 190 is not scheduled to be replaced on the town capital improvement plan. When it is no longer economical to repair, it will likely be replaced with something considerably smaller and less expensive then an engine -- such as a small hose tender built on a chassis like an F-550 carrying 2,500' of 5", no water, and a 1000gpm PTO pump.

Thirsty tankers stacked up do to the original problem with water supply.

As stated earlier, we could sustain 500gpm+ with the apparatus and setup present, and one more tanker would've brought us to 700gpm. Going above 700gpm would've required more tankers, another fill site, and probably at least one more drop tank. Out of the 16 town area our dispatch center covers there are 1000gpm+ tanker shuttles run for fires on a semi-regular basis -- seems like every couple of years. All the ones I have seen have required at least two fill sites be established -- there's just too much time lost connecting fill lines to tankers, and limitations in the fill piping and venting of the tankers. Due to those limitations, even with a 1000gpm or 1500gpm available at the fill site, fill sites seem to reach a maximum around 700 gpm and that becomes the limiting factor.

Here additional 3" Storz and 4" Storz lines are being setup. 3" hose with 3" storz is becoming more popular in my area for fill sites -- it matches that 700gpm fill rate pretty well, in a line that is easier to handle then 4" and much easier to handle then 5". Newer tankers that can fill even faster can have one 3" line hooked up and flowing while a second 3" is connected. Another advantage to 3" Storz is it is not required to have the safety lock levers that is required by NFPA on large diameter hose, making for easier makes and breaks.

One important item is to fill one tanker at a time. It is better use of manpower and time to fill one tanker at a time at 700gpm, then two tankers at 350gpm and have them both leave and arrive the fill and dump site simultaneously. While the first tanker is filling, the lines can be connected to the second tanker so it can begin filling the instant the first is full (the person at the gated wye or water thief controls who is filling).

The dump site. Left to Right: ET-290, drop tanks from ET-290 & T-265, ET-190, and Ladder 190.

The blue (1-3/4") and orange (1-1/2") are "charged lines" -- they're standard structural hose one what is essentially a large booster reel, stored with 50psi. We're one of the very few departments that still use them -- since 1973 on reels, and back to the 1950s we kept an 1-1/2" line coiled up on top of our primary attack engine's hose bed.

Here they are feeding siphons to move water from the rear tank to the front one.

Canterbury had the only rear-only dump in the shuttle.

We ended up using only one of the jet siphons.

South Killingly is setup to primarily use cam-lock suction fittings. Why more departments don't, I don't know -- it's a well proven solution from industries that deal with moving large amounts of fluid frequently. Far superior to conventional threaded fittings and better then using suction gaskets in storz.

It did cause a small problem at this drill in not having enough adapters to put the second jet siphon in service. The dissimilar metals used in these two fittings had caused them fuse together over time sufficiently they couldn't be broken with spanners...had they come apart we could've adapted the second siphon to work with the the suction hose provided by South Killingly for the siphons. South Killingly carries slightly longer then typical hard suction (12' instead of 10') which work easier in jet siphoning from tank to tank.

Jet siphons use the "venturi effect" of fast moving fluids (provided by the 1-1/2" line here) to move a much greater volume of water through the suction hose to the next tank.

Cam lock equipped suction hose:

Ladder 190

View from the top.

Most of the time, the tankers would start to dump into the rear drop tank. As that drop tank approached full, they would drive forward (while still dumping) to finish dumping into the front drop tank.

Time to take up!

Mortlake ET-190, Scotland ET-116, Canterbury ET-193, South Killingly Tanker 265 parked while the debriefing was going on.

And just after the debriefing, the sun came out. Actually, that was pretty good timing since it was fairly warm and humid for this late in September (Hurricane Kyle was just off the New England coast and headed for Maine).

Time to rinse and dry the trucks.

We've been doing these for a few years.

Sorry for the quality of the photo...I went to the station to take a hi-res photo of the original and it was missing from the wall with some others, so I'll have to track down who is (hopefully just) making a copy of this photo that was used in a circa 1958 Fire Engineering article. The inflatable "portable pond" in the picture was imported from England; it had been WWII surplus and was part of the emergency water supply system that had been developed to protect English cities during German bombing raids. If you're interested, the whole article on Rural Water Supply is here -- page 1 page 2 page 3

In the mid-1960s attention was made to the design of booster tanks for rural fire service. The 1965 QV Chiefs shuttle was one of the key tests that helped contribute to the first NFPA standards on tanker design with an eye towards moving water. Photo from a 1965 Fire Engineering article you can read here.

The results of the 1965 Drill. Dayville's tanker was a tractor-trailer unit which explains it's very large capacity for the time.
Gallon per minute per mile (GPM/Mile) is way of rating tankers to estimate the numbers needed to deliver water to a particular location -- 10 tankers rated at 70gpm/mile should deliver 350gpm to a point 1 mile (2 mile round trip) from the water source.

If we look at the 1965 tankers, they had a cumulative gpm/mile of 1046.7. With the 7 mile round trip of this year's drill, the 12 tankers that took part in the test forty three years ago would've delivered 150gpm. The full report of the 1965 Drill is available here: page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4

In 1991 we ran a pump-off style drill. Shortly after the 1965 drill, the need for the portable pond was eliminated with improved tank design came out and the volumes of water could easily be handled by pumping off one ET into the tank of the ET making the fire attack. The Brooklyn School at the time was 1.5 miles from the closest water source, and that was the basis of the town investing in 7,500' of 5" hose split between East Brooklyn and Mortlake. Today the school is hydranted. The school was the dump site for this drill.

Gpm/mile was much improved from modern tank designs and improved truck engineering -- the smallest tanker (Danielson ET-161) was delivering more water then Dayville's tractor trailer had been able to move a quarter century earlier.

These are all small "attack" Engine-Tanks primarily designed to initiate a fire attack. Most departments in my area run a similar ET as their first out piece, and often fires begin with the small ETs providing water and if necessary transition to a shuttle using the larger ETs with 2000+ gallon tanks. These five had a culmalative capacity of 1189gpm/mile, so they could've delivered 170gpm over the seven mile loop. That's 20 more gallons with seven fewer trucks then in 1965. The full 1991 report is here: page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4

In June 1999 we ran I believe the most complex tanker shuttle drill in our history.

7 Small ETs, 11 Large ETs, and 1 Engine participated in the shuttle. At the start of the drill all companies were in quarters and proceeded to the drill with traffic. This produced a drill that was more realistic to normal conditions, instead of a pure "tanker rating" exercise. This was a pump-off style drill, no drop tanks in use. Hampton ET-212 served as the base tanker, with a 1500 gallon water tank, pumping up the 5" line to ET-190 which has 1200 gallon water tank.

A total of 77,300 gallons were delivered in the course of two hours -- 650gpm average. However, looking at the numbers in closer detail showed we were using at the fireground:
0-15 minutes 250gpm
15-30 minutes 600gpm
30-90 minutes 800gpm
90-120 minutes 1000gpm

Participating in the shuttle were:

Looking at the spreadsheet, we were "tanker bound" during this drill -- at the dump site waits often exceeded 5 minutes, a number of times more the 15 minutes, and several times over a half hour. At the fill site, waits seldom were longer then 90 seconds from arrival to beginning to fill the tanker; and often were less then a minute. The fill site averaged 670gpm, near the observed 700gpm practical maximum for fill sites -- it could've come up a bit more if tankers were arriving slightly sooner, but not much since there weren't long periods of the fill site waiting. That we were filling at 670gpm and using 800-1000gpm at the height of the drill indicates we were working off the capacity of the tankers and soon would've started to see the flow diminish and a back log of tankers at the fill site develop. Sustaining the 1000gpm flow would've required at least one more fill site, and possibly another dump site.

Fill Site for the 1999 drill -- 4", 5", and dual 3" fills. Our SOP is the person at the water thief controls the filling of tankers -- one at a time. The next tanker can be hooked up, and as one tanker is filled and shut off, the next tanker begins receiving water.


The "Rural Hitch" coming off Hampton ET-212. This is a common setup in the area -- the 4" clappered, three way siamese is dropped at the end of the driveway (typically) and a 4" line laid up the driveway by the attack tanker. Next arriving ET will connect into the siamese and pump it's load up to the fireground. We pump off into the tank fill of the upstream ET.

This also allows a transition during the fire -- it can start as a pump off shuttle through the siamese. As drop tanks and a pumper are setup at the base of the driveway, the pumper can tie into the wye and switch water supply over to a dump style shuttle using drop tanks.

Tankers pumping off. There were three 3" and one 4" lines available for ETs to tie into. With four places available, it takes coordination from the dump site officer so only two at a time are pumping off, while another two (if available) are being hooked up.

And if you think 1000gpm is impressive, you should see what we do with hose in QV land. (Moosup, 2004 Kaman Drill)