Kansas Fire Chief says nozzlemen have to ride on their trucks

Kansas Firefighter

Above: A Kansas firefighter makes a mobile attack on a grass fire from the truck. Screen grab from the KAKE video below.

Brad Ewy, Chief of the Cheney Fire Department in Kansas says their firefighters have to ride on their trucks while doing a mobile attack on a grass fire.

You take a fire when the wind’s blowing 30 miles an hour that fire’s going to be going 30 miles per hour and there’s no way we could keep up with it. We have to be on our trucks.

They (NFPA) don’t deal with grass fires like we had. The one we had in Medicine Lodge, the fire’s running 50 miles per hour. There’s absolutely no way.

There may or may not be a way to operate a nozzle safely while riding on a fire engine, but I would like to see the actual data or a BehavePlus calculation that predicts a 30 mph hour wind will cause a fire to spread at 30 mph, or a 50 mph wind will produce a 50 mph rate of spread.

Notice in the video that the crew does not take the time to cut the fence. They simply drive through it, even with the firefighter standing on the front of the truck.

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Author: Bill Gabbert

After working full time in wildland fire for 33 years, he continues to learn, and strives to be a Student of Fire.

16 thoughts on “Kansas Fire Chief says nozzlemen have to ride on their trucks”

  1. I was a rural firefighter in southwest Kansas for 9 years. Our wildland terrain was typically short grass and sage brush, or cultivated crop land. The fires are typically driven by a 10-50 mph wind. Flame lengths were typically 1 ft to 8 ft. Our department did not use front bumper platforms. We felt they were too dangerous. At that time NFPA did not have a workable solution. We designed our own trucks, on new chassis. Many rural departments had to use “recycled” trucks, due to budgets. Our trucks used a wrap around cage on the back, with the cross over behind the cab. The pump was independant of the power train on the chassis, so even if the truck engine stopped we still had 500 gpm of water available for self protection. Our trucks held 2200 gal. In a upside down T Configuration. We used a 3 man crew, no exceptions. Our setup was driver/engineer, 1 firefighter behind the cab manning a 6′ single jacket line, with a 100 gpm max nozzle for knockdown, and 2nd firefighter manning a reel line standing near back of truck for mop up. The primary truck was followed by a 2nd truck as final mop up/patrol. This truck was typically mutual aid or a less capable truck. The truck always chased the fire from the black. If the terrain was not conducive to “run & gun”, then different tactics were used which was rare.

    This worked for us. We all acknowledged the risks involved, and never took unnecessary risks. If the terrain was difficult to read, or we felt there was too many unknowns, we did not use run & gun. Our landscape is different than what most wildland firefighters see. Typical tactics seen on this site would not work. Our fires always moved fast, and only laid down or stopped due to rain or obsticle, unless we put wet stuff on the red stuff.

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  2. If this practice kills 1 firefighter (and it has killed dozens), it should be discontinued. We cannot sacrifice firefighters for property. Fires don’t spread at 30 mph, no matter how many times BehavePlus runs tell you they do. In fact the fire in question was about 30 miles long, but it took the better part of 2 days to make that forward spread distance (still impressive, but not a 30 mph ROS). The Borger Fire (part of the 2006 East Amarillo Complex) burned over 400,000 acres in 24 hours, the most acreage burned in a 24 hour period in U.S. history, and it was estimated to be spreading at 200 yards per minute (6.8 mph) at its fastest and at an average ROS of 5 mph with 11′ flame lengths. It was pushed by 60 mph winds. The hauling chart tells you that 11′ flame lengths are too much for effective direct attack by equipment including engines, and are at the upper end of the effectiveness of direct attack with aircraft. The reason so many departments do this is that they have not yet been outflanked by fire that has crossed their wetline behind them. This tactic only knocks down a fire. If they are outpacing the resources working behind them lining the cooled edge (if anyone is actually doing that), the anchor cannot be considered valid. Working an unanchored flank (and that is exactly what they are doing) will eventually bite them, if a collision or rollover doesn’t bite them first.

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  3. Out here on the prairie, we have seen some remote monitors used on grass fires. It all depends on how much water you have. A monitor coupled with a 400 or 500 gallon type 6 does not seem to be as effective as you would think. Kinda too much water in all the wrong places, always out of water.

    A front mounted monitor just does not seem to get the water down into the dead stuff. Kinda all show.

    Side mounted spray heads that are commonly used on road construction water trucks can be very effective, as part of a fire attack. Commonly single axle, so mobility is good, and a nice supply of water. Used as the pointy end of a spear, they work great, as long as the engines coming up from behind make sure of complete extinguishment. Otherwise, a leap frog affair of 5’s and 6’s works the best, with tenders following. Of course, retardant is terribly effective in grass, but we all know how often a manager will cut loose the funds for that!

    The thing I dont like about cages is how secure you have to be bolted in to them for the arrangement to be considered “safe”. All it takes is a wash out or a wind shift and bingo, the guy in the cage is gonna get exposed to super heated gasses.
    Bolted to the back in a cage is not the place to be when a engine gets burned over.

    An old IMT safety officer who I respect greatly asked me if I would be comfortable letting my kids get in the bed of a pickup with some random guy bombing across the prairie at high rates of speed.

    Heck no I said, so he asked why would I be comfortable letting my firefighters do such a thing in a chaotic, hot, dangerous, low visibility environment. Honestly, I could not think of a good reason.
    Convenience, you bet. Safety? No way.

    Sorry for the long posts, but I feel strongly about this subject.

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  4. Having fought OK and TX grassfires in the past as an out-of-state assisting firefighter, I have observed the RFD’s whom use automatic front bumper mounted cab operated nozzles or a caged firefighter behind the engine cab during mobile attack to be fairly safe operation. Using front mounted standing firefighters with either a hardline or short 1.5″ soft line is asking for trouble even if the individual is strapped on to the brush bar. Saw a guy on a front bumper platform wind up in a barbed wire fence in dense smoke. Fortunately his heavy structure fire turn-out coat protected him from the barbs. Spray bars should not be used at all–too little gpm.

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  5. High winds, long flame lengths, very fast spread. I’ve been on some pretty wild plains fires. But how far will 1,000-2,000 gallons of water go anyway? Is driving cross country where obstacles can’t be easily seen due to smoke and fire, where those on the front are so exposed, and where relatively simple technology is so readily available (purchase or hand-made – but apparently not used) really worth the risk? Are we bound by tradition, a need to be seen as a hero, or just plain stubbornness?

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  6. Yep, basically all we do out in Eastern Montana. Oh, we get one in the timber once in a while, mostly grass, shrub and CRP though.

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    1. I guess, since you asked, our department up until about three years ago rode on the trucks. Never got anyone hurt either. Was an effective method of fighting fire, thats for sure.

      So then we quit. We now ride in the cab or walk. The fires still go out. In fact, in some instances, we are more effective than before, and now much safer.

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  7. Ride in the cab, or walk. Simple enough.

    Generally, the chaos does not stop until the wind event ends anyway. Generally just a waste of resources to fight a fire with those rates of spread, wind speed.

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  8. 20 mph ROS at the head. From my brief experiences on plains fires these guys rarely attempt a head attack until the flanks are contained. Only then do they attempt to methodically pinch off the head- which often coincides with impeding sundown and other diurnal factors that reduce fire’s ROS. (Remember the fuel is mostly pure grass.)

    I don’t know Chief Ewy, and likely never will. It is reasonable take the Chief’s comments as simply reality vs academia. The flanks will typically have slower ROS than machine predictions- although button hooking and spotting can make that a mute point. Regardless, ROS still a challenge for a walker.

    Not only in Kansas. This is the common method for running attack that has been used for decades throughout Oklahoma and North Texas. Is it totally safe? No. Is it totally unsafe? No. Can the risks be managed? Yes, with boat loads of wisdom. Is it effective? Yes- especially when organized in groups of two or three engines with a dozer/plow or two working together. (That’s why they do it.)

    Obviously the safer way would be to have specifically designed, pneumatically operated, spray bars on the four corners corners of the engines/water tenders. A two person engine company driving the rig and operating the spray bars is what I would expect.

    These, task specific, spray bars wouldn’t require much, if any, new technology. However, they would require dollars- something these small and largely volunteer fire districts don’t have.

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  9. Not to mention that at this time of the year in certain southern parts of Kansas, with the warm temps, you are walking along and also dealing with pissed off Western Diamondback Rattlesnakes. The Anderson Fire is not that far from a few places that they have Rattlesnake Roundups (or at least did in past years).

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  10. A Behave Plus run shows Fuel Model 3(Tall Grass) with a 1 hr. FM of 2 and a 40 mph wind (midflame; so about 45 mph 20 foot wind) and a 5% slope: ROS = 32 mph. Changing slope to 0 didn’t make a difference. So the ROS is almost always slower than the midflame windspeed, especially with more sheltered fuels but even in an open field of grass. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t want to be at the head of that fire!

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  11. quick calcls// fuel model 3, 80 degrees, 10%rh, no slope, unsheltered 50mph wind. outputs (aprox)48′ flame length- ROS 1831’per min(20.8mph)effective wind speed 34mph. these are very rough calcs

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    1. Thanks Scott. I switched to an Apple computer and no longer have BehavePlus. I looked for an online version that would do the calcs on the web rather than on my computer and didn’t find anything. That ability must exist somewhere on the internet without getting into proprietary agency computer networks. I think there are some smart phone apps that will also do the calcs.

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      1. IFTDSS has a module that uses the same equations and is available online. You would have to request an account, and I don’t know if they will provide that outside of state and federal employees. I’m not sure if it is supported on Safari, but if you have Chrome it works just fine. You can also download the Wildland toolkit app for a smartphone and make some very basic runs with that as well.

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