We had a curious situation the other night. A driver left home and drove down some dirt tracks, following (the obviously wrong) directions his GPS navigator game him. Like I reported some time ago, these navigators sometimes include even horse trails as valid roads, and will try to take you down them if you’re not cautious.

Local Police Department received the call at 8pm, informing the driver was stuck in mud in an unknown location. He could see a railroad track which provided a first clue as to his whereabouts. Three units were dispatched to assist the officers searching for him. A while later, the control room talked with the driver directly, and he gave a set of coordinates that he managed to pull from his GPS navigator. We checked these but turned out to correspond to the point of departure (his home). The driver was found shortly after, before we could call him again and try to instruct him on how to get his actual coordinates from the GPS.

The main lesson learned from this: we are going to try and write a compendium of the steps needed to read the latitude and longitude from the most sold brands of GPS navigators. Looking back at some calls involving lost drivers or RTAs with undetermined location, such advice over the phone would have proven invaluable. I would recommend you study this protocol for your own departments, as one day you could find yourself in the situation where life depends on quickly finding a vehicle equipped with a GPS navigator.

Never forget. On a day like this seven years ago 343 brave firefighters gave their lives to save thousands. Here is a link to the FDNY tribute.

We were given a demo of the Pro/Pak portable foam generator by the sales rep, who came by our firehouse a couple of weeks ago. There is a serious intent on purchasing one of these, as it would help us off-load the pumper by 400 liters of foaming agent that we carry on top of the 2600 liters of water. One of these portable packs can deliver up to 10.000 liters of foamed mix for every 10 liters of agent! In reality, you would use medium expansion at 0.3% to 0.6%, which still provides a few thousand liters of foam. The unit is a bit heavy on the shoulder, but adequate for moderate work, such as car or garbage fires, or K type fires that are not involving other parts of the compartment or structure.

As you can see in the videos and photos, the unit is a self-contained shoulder-carried case, with three snap-on nozzles for different attack modes. One provides high-pressure, low-volume foam for long reach, the second provides also low-volume but higher concentration of foam in the stream, and the largest nozzle gives a good flow of medium-expansion, higher volume foam. The flow is controlled by the twist handle, and there is a selector for the percentage of foam mix. Using special foam agents, you can go from 0.1% to 0.6%, while standard foam requires a change in the selector by unscrewing it and screwing it back on turned 180 degrees, so that the mix ratios are 1% to 6%.

Here is a video of the unit in action:

And a picture of the demo – click on it to visit the Flickr photo stream:

I would really recommend you consider adding this to your arsenal for quick interventions, which do not require large volumes of foam projected at a distance. It’s excellent for quickly delivering a sizeable amount of foam with limited manpower and/or water supply.

Can Padro, located in near Barcelona (click for Google satellite map), is a huge fire training facility that teaches firefighters how to combat a wide range of scenarios they are likely to meet. They also have a driving track, where dangerous goods drivers take their mandatory courses, and police recruits learn how to drive defensively (but fast!).

We are considering a two-day course for our guys, which would involve LPG fires, boil-overs, fires on multiple floors, and victim search & rescue, and so we went for a visit. One of the lead instructors was kind enough to give us a tour of the facility, which has one of the biggest ship fire simulators I have personally seen. There are bigger ones, I believe the US Navy runs a full-sized one, but this one was very scary. Below is one picture in the photo set I’ve posted on Flickr, click on it to go and watch the whole set.

This time we got one of the drivers as he walked in the firehouse while happily talking on his cellphone.

This is what happens when the following conditions are met:

• You’re in a firehouse.
• You’re a probie…my apologies, “probationary firefighter”.
• You fall asleep.
• There are other bored firefighters around.
• They happen to have a CO2 fire extinguisher.

Kids, don’t try this at home, as a CO2 extinguisher at close range can freeze the skin!

I came across a new blog, Ladder The Roof, which aims at looking at firefighting from the lighter, more humorous side. While firefighting is a very serious business, like all jobs, has its moments when people do funny things, or events can be looked at with irony and humor. Check out the blog here, be sure to add it to your feeds, and spread the word!

Yesterday I went past the Barcelona Fire Department’s HQ on my way to catch a bus back home, and spotted these stickers on each of the doors. Now, are locksmiths really -so- stupid that they think a firefighter would need their services to open a door?

It’s not a native application (getting to know XCode is going to be harder!), but a so-called “web application” for the iPhone. A few times I’ve been at RTAs involving trucks carrying hazardous chemicals, and other times it’s out of curiosity that I would like to know what exactly is the well-protected container wrapped in warning labels carrying when such a truck drives by. If you want to dive right in without going through the introduction, browse your iPhone to http://the.firehou.se/hazmat – if you save it as webclip on your desktop you will get a nice orange flaming icon with it.

Hazardous chemicals and their classification

To cover the need of a unified system to classify and identify dangerous goods in transport, a unified number system was devised and adopted by the United Nations, and is now recognized by a number of countries, including those in the European Union and the United States. The commonly used label on trucks, train carts and other containers is an orange placard with two numbers – the top is the Hazard Identification Number (HIN), and the bottom the UN Number, uniquely identifying the substance. It looks like this:

In this particular example, the HIN is 33, meaning highly flammable liquid (the same number repeated indicates an increased danger), and the substance as the UN number 1203, which corresponds to motor spirit, gasoline or petrol. For example, diesel is not as flammable as gasoline (lower flashpoint) and carries a HIN of 30.

In addition to these placards, a container must carry hazmat (hazardous material) information placards, known as ADR labels in Europe, an example of which is shown below:

The HazMat web application

Without further ado, here is what the desktop looks like with the webclip shortcut added to it:

Once you launch it, Safari will show a very simple form with one field – the UN number. Enter it, hit ‘Search’, and get the basic HazMat information for the substance in question. To search another number, scroll to the bottom of the form.

I plan to add additional information like safe distances for various spill sizes and emergency response information. Feedback in the comments please. Enjoy!

The Los Angeles Times provides a great Google Maps mashup that tracks the huge fires currently raging in southern California in almost real time. What is impressive is the amount of resources committed, with one fire pulling in almost 1800 firefighters. Here is a screenshot of the map, click on it to go to the LA site: