This article is the first of four excerpts from a new book, Class A Foam - Best Practice for Structure Firefighters, by Dominic J. Colletti. Larry Davis is the technical editor of this 240-page educational textbook (© 1998 by Lyon's Publishing, Royersford, PA). Ordering information is available on Lyon's Publishing's Web page at www.classafoam.com or by telephone at 610-792-3115.
Why should your fire department consider using Class A foam and compressed-air foam systems (CAFS)?
Photo Courtesy of Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Firefighters in Fairfax County, VA, perform horizontal ventilation during a coordinated aggressive interior fire attack. Safe live-fire training under controlled conditions, as shown here, is essential to a successful Class A foam/CAFS implementation program.
First of all, the use of Class A foam and CAFS can enhance the fire suppression capability of water up to five times. This means your department can increase its firefighting ability up to five times, thus dramatically improving the service it provides to its customers.
This book, Class A Foam - Best Practice for Structure Firefighters, is intended to provide you with all the information you need, to understand how and why Class A foam and CAFS do what they do, how to evaluate options that are open to you and how your department can benefit from using them. Before we get into technical details, however, we first need to discuss how these technologies relate to the service a fire department provides.
Across the country, the fire service is embracing the concept of customer service. Fire departments are finally realizing they are businesses providing services to a customer base that in one way or another pays for those services - even if only through donations. Your fire department is a business, even though some members may not believe it.
Just as other businesses within your community, your fire department exists solely to provide services your customers perceive they need. If people didn't see a need for the services your department provides, your department would not exist. And, just like any business, your department needs to constantly evaluate and explore new technologies that can enhance customer service and maximize costs/benefits.
In short, Class A foam and CAFS, when implemented properly, can significantly increase any department's ability to control fire, and thus maximize the level of service it provides to its customers. By increasing the firefighting capacity of plain water, Class A foam and CAFS enhance safety to life, the environment and property.
From a business standpoint, fire departments, like their private-sector counterparts, are facing issues that were unheard of just a few short years ago. These include:
- Tightening economic conditions that find traditional funding resources shrinking. Most suburban/rural fire departments must constantly deal with the threat of budget cutbacks as they compete with other services for funding. At the same time, the population protected is growing as more and more urbanites relocate to escape city environments.
- Departments are faced with increasing numbers of responses while the number of available career and/or volunteer firefighters is decreasing. Decreases in personnel are due to funding cutbacks and the need for volunteers to hold two or more jobs to meet personal financial responsibilities in a difficult national economy.
- Each individual's time is more precious than ever. As a result, volunteer firefighters find they have less time to dedicate to the business of the fire department. At the same time, fire department demands on the time volunteers serve have increased.
- Because of the cost of apparatus today, departments are faced with aging fire apparatus fleets that require higher maintenance and repair costs for each mile traveled and for each hour of pumping service.
- Firefighter safety has become a major concern of fire department management - as well it should. More and more of decreasing fire department budgets must be committed to improving the safety of personnel. This includes improved personal protective clothing, personal alert safety system (PASS) devices, increased levels of training and a host of other factors aimed at improving firefighter safety.
As if these aren't enough, fire departments must also deal with a society that is increasingly transient and better educated than ever because of easier access to information. As a result, people moving into your community:
- Expect the utmost in service and value for their fire protection expenditures - whether through taxes or donations.
- Are likely to question each fire department expenditure.
- Are more likely than ever to question the procedures used by the fire department to protect lives and property. This is especially the case in those communities where the threat of wildland/urban interface fire exists.
The use of Class A foam and/or CAFS can provide a fire department with an effective option for dealing with these issues. While the adoption of either Class A foam or CAFS is not a "cure-all" that can eliminate all of the issues listed above, these technologies have demonstrated, time and again, that when properly integrated into a department's fire suppression system, they can improve operational capabilities and raise the level of customer service provided.
These technologies are not replacements for personnel. They can however increase the efficiency and safety of existing personnel during fire suppression operations.
What Are Class A Foam And CAFS?
More detailed definitions are discussed in later chapters. For right now, however, you need to understand that Class A foam liquid concentrate is a chemical additive that when mixed with water forms a foam solution that is much more effective than plain water in controlling and suppressing structure fires. CAFS are foam-bubble-generating devices that add compressed air to a Class A foam concentrate/water solution. This makes the solution even more effective in structural fire control.
The use of Class A foam and CAFS significantly enhance our most fundamental firefighting procedure - the application of water to burning materials. These enhancements, which result in reduced flame knockdown and overhaul times, are especially advantageous in instances where available water supplies are marginal - where their use can mean the difference between putting a "stop" on a well-involved structure fire with available water, or a total loss. Class A foam and CAFS are invaluable in stopping fires and in reducing property damage due to fire. They can also greatly reduce water damage.
Another major reason why Class A foam and CAFS are becoming increasingly popular is that of enhanced firefighter safety. By reducing knockdown and overhaul times, the length of time firefighters are exposed to the hostile fire environments - heat and toxic products of combustion - in firefighting operations is reduced. This results in a direct reduction in risk to firefighters.
Last but not least is the positive impact that Class A foam and CAFS have on enhanced public safety. This is so even in those major fire situations that require "defend-in-place" strategies to protect trapped occupants.
To the layman, Class A foam and CAFS may first appear to be sophisticated technologies that are more intended for use by major fire departments where budgets and resources are such that they can readily adopt new technology. Such is not the case, however. From a cost/benefit standpoint, any fire department, regardless of its size or level of sophistication can benefit from this technology.
The Wolcott Story
In 1991, the Wolcott, NY, Fire Department decided to retrofit an existing brush truck with a CAF system. At that time, this Chevrolet pickup truck was equipped with a low-volume, high-pressure piston pump and 200-gallon booster tank.
The idea for retrofitting this unit with a CAF system came about because Chief Gary Lockwood and Assistant Chief Peter Gillette had attended a Class A foam and CAFS seminar held in Williamson, NY. And, during that seminar, Lockwood and Gillette were very impressed with the knockdown achieved when a CAF system was used on a fire involving a massive barn. As a result, they decided to host a similar seminar in Wolcott.
The Wolcott seminar provided the members of the department with a firsthand opportunity to learn about Class A foam and CAFS and to gain hands-on application experience in a live-fire training session.
Following this seminar, Lockwood and Gillette convinced the department to spend $12,500 to retrofit the quick-attack truck with a CAF system. Equipment installed on the Chevrolet pickup included a 125-gpm auxiliary engine fire pump and a 40-cfm underhood water-cooled piston air compressor. No foam proportioning system was installed - Class A foam agent is dumped directly into the booster tank.
The $12,500 expenditure stretched not only the department's limited equipment budget but also the personal credibility of Lockwood and Gillette. As a rural department, Wolcott has neither the population nor the funding base that many of the wealthier fire districts in New York have. As a result, a major expenditure such as this on a technology that is new creates a certain amount of skepticism among members.
Once the retrofit was complete and the CAFS apparatus put into service, Wolcott's neighboring departments had little or no clue to what was really happening. Their perception was that Wolcott was a group of radicals who had thrown their money away on a folly. This was further demonstrated when they nicknamed Wolcott's CAFS unit "The Washing Machine."
Ironically, as time went on and as Wolcott's "Washing Machine" proved its value at structure fires, neighboring departments saw the value of CAFS and started specifically requesting "The Washing Machine" for mutual-aid calls.
Wolcott Improves Its Customer Service
"It [the CAFS unit] allows us to provide better service for our customers," Gillette explains, following Wolcott's three-year experience in using the CAFS apparatus. "The CAFS unit arrives on scene five to six minutes faster than our full size pumper, and has achieved knockdown about 90% of the time," says Gillette.
The CAFS unit has been used for initial attack on every fire to which it has responded. However, in one case involving a detached garage that was fully involved and "gone" on arrival, the CAFS unit was held in reserve while a tanker shuttle was set up to supply plain water for firefighting. Once the fire had been knocked down, the CAFS unit was used for overhaul and to apply a foam blanket to prevent rekindle. This building was so extensively damaged upon arrival, the initial size-up cost/benefit analysis did not warrant the use of foam.
After having responded to over 30 working structure fires with the CAFS unit, Gillette cites the following direct benefits of the CAFS unit:
- Fire control. Wolcott has stopped structure fires which, based on previous experience with plain water, would have resulted in total losses.
- Water damage. The water damage associated with structural firefighting has been virtually eliminated.
- Rekindles. Wolcott has never had to return to the scene of a fire to extinguish a rekindle where the CAFS unit was used to secure the fire. In the past, when plain water was used, rekindles due to hot spots were not uncommon.
- Maintenance costs. Since fewer tanker shuttles are now needed, this results in less wear and tear on full-size pumpers and tankers which reduces expenditures for fuel and maintenance.
- Scene and ice control. Since less water is usually needed with CAFS, tankers are required less frequently and for shorter periods of time. This reduces the risk of accidents and helps eliminate fireground congestion. An additional safety benefit is the reduction of road icing associated with tanker shuttles in freezing weather.
- Personnel exposure and time. With the faster knockdown provided with CAFS, department members not only spend less time in the fire environment, thus reducing their exposure to hazards, but they also are required to spend less time on overhaul. This translates to firefighter safety and a decrease in the time volunteers spend at the emergency scene.
"Part of our public relations strategy was to increase department donations through publicity of superior customer service we give with the CAFS unit...it worked," says Gillette. In October 1994, Wolcott took delivery of a new 1,250-gpm pumper built by 3-D Manufacturing of Shawano, WI. It is equipped with a Hale 1,250-gpm midship pump, a 1,000-gallon booster tank, Class A and B foam tanks and a 200-cfm Hale air compressor. Once again, Wolcott had stretched its budget, and while deleting some of the "bells and whistles" the membership really wanted on the engine, invested in a high-capacity CAFS.
When asked to justify the additional expenditure of $35,000 for the new CAFS, Gillette explains that over the 20-year life expectancy of the pumper, the CAFS represents a cost of only $1,750 per year. And based on the proven benefits of the retrofit CAFS unit, the annual direct and indirect savings to the community and the department would far exceed the $1,750 annual expenditure. As Gillette explains, the purchase of the new CAFS pumper provides a high return on investment, a win-win situation for both the department and its customers.
Placing Customers First
The research process used by Lockwood and Gillette that changed Wolcott's firefighting procedures is a classic example of that used by leading privately owned companies to enhance customer service. After researching Class A foam, Lockwood and Gillette asked themselves "What business are we in?" and "What business should we be in?" They both saw a discrepancy between where their level of service was and their opinion of where it could be. They viewed Class A foam and CAFS as a tool to bring Wolcott's customer service to the next higher level.
Lockwood and Gillette, as sworn-in management, are entrusted by and accountable to department members to properly handle department funds. However, they stood back and envisioned of a higher level of customer service their department could supply with Class A foam and CAFS. This was so even knowing that the department's financial condition might not support a major change like CAFS.
Nevertheless, they attacked the customer service equation backward. First and foremost, they considered their customer's view of what type of service their fire department should provide. They considered their own department's wants, needs and financial capabilities second. In doing so, Wolcott made a change in customer service capability that leading-edge corporations envy and try to match. What Wolcott did was meet the "concealed or secret need" of their customers. Simply, they took steps to provide that level of service customers truly want and desire but would never think of requesting. Using Class A foam and CAFS, Wolcott exceeds customer expectations for structural fire suppression service.
Dominic J. Colletti is the national OEM accounts manager at Hale Products Inc. in Conshohocken, PA. He is a volunteer firefighter with the Royersford, PA, Fire Department and previously served with the Coram, NY, Fire Department. Colletti has over a decade of experience in the research and development of Class A foam and CAFS application for structure firefighting. His e-mail address is [email protected]
