On October 26th an 27th, the Alabama Fire College in conjunction with Shelby County EMA sponsored our 2-day Rural Water Supply Operations Seminar. This year, the weekend also included our "Commanding the Initial Response Seminar" for folks who had attended the water supply seminar in previous years. The classroom sessions for the seminars were held at the Shelby County Fire Training Center and Calera FD Fire Station 1.
The rural water supply seminar culminated on Sunday with the traditional, 2-hour tanker shuttle drill. Participants worked hard to try to establish and sustain a 500 gpm flow using two fill sites and limited resources. This was our fourth year in a row delivering the rural water supplu seminar in Shelby County. Instructors for the weekend were Mark Davis, Shane Darwick, and Tom Coe.
A complete summary will be posted in a couple of weeks.
Four Mile's tanker dumps its load of water at the dump site.
Chief McRee from Brierfield Fire/Rescue was the Incident Commander for the drill.
Kingdom's tanker dumps its 1,500 gallons and gets ready to run for another load.
Instructor Davis reviews drafting operations at one of the mini-sessions during the 2-day seminar.
Participants review the pros and cons of dump tank placement and arrangement during the dump site ops mini-session.
Students use a 400 gpm trash pump to fill a dump tank so that a pumper can draft and load tankers at 1,000 gpm.
Stan Merrett of ETT Fire demonstrates the use of the Water Shark suction strainer.
The trash pump fills the dump tank for the 1st time while the pumper waits.
First-arriving tankers set-up to operate as "nurse tankers" until the dump site can be set up.
The left, 5-inch supply line is coming from the dump site: the right line (with manifold) is set up to allow nurse tanker operations if needed.
Brierfield Tanker 206 operates as a nurse tanker while dump site operations are brought on line.
Crews at the lake fill site use 5-inch hose to load tankers.
