Cow manure used to suppress vehicle fire

suppression of vehicle fire with cow manure
suppression of vehicle fire with cow manure
Screen grab from the video.

Check out this video of a tank full of liquid cow manure being used to put out a vehicle fire.

From Firehouse.com:

Water was not available and getting a fire apparatus on to a river side meadow was not an option, so a group of resourceful North Haverhill Fire Department [New Hampshire] members showed some ingenuity and used a John Deere track and a tank of liquid cow manure to put the fire out.

A Ford Ranger pickup truck, owned by the Grafton County Farm caught fire on Thursday, May 12 in a field that had been cut off by flood waters from the Connecticut River. County house of corrections inmates, helping with planting potatoes, were driving the truck when an automatic transmission line ruptured and sprayed fluid on the hot exhaust igniting the fire that consumed the truck.

North Haverhill Assistant Fire Chief Preston Hatch who was next door at his family’s dairy farm, Hatchland Farms, got the tone and saw the fire. Immediately realizing the location and fire apparatus was not going to reach the truck fire, he held the engine in quarters and, instead, summoned his own apparatus from his abutting farm – a huge 300-hp John Deere tractor pulling a 9,600-gallon tanker of liquid manure, ready to spread on the fields. The Hatchland Farms equipment was operated by farm employee Shawn Smas.

A wildland firefighter might have looked at this fire differently. The truck was already a total loss and had a huge fireline all the way around it with no potential to spread. A prescribed natural fire or a let burn strategy comes to mind, rather than filling the truck with sh*t.

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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.

4 thoughts on “Cow manure used to suppress vehicle fire”

  1. COW-abunga! I always knew that my Black Angus were multi-talented (besides providing excellent steaks and great breeding stock): now I can expand “Blackbull” into the business of putting out fires. Wonder if folks in the WUI will appreciate the “smell of success” like I do?

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  2. WOW. Why wouldn’t you let it consume itself? Like the post said there is a gigantic fire break around it! I’m sure the EPA will be please to find out that 9,600 gallons of manure were sprayed onto a concentrated location that is also right next to a river. Speaking of that, if the field was “cut off” due to flooding, how did the truck get over there and how did the semi-truck get over there?

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