Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Florida Fire Equipment Used In The Everglades

By Lela Perkins


Battling blazes in swampy grasslands presents many challenges. There are rarely many roadways into these types of areas and when fires break out they can spread for many miles and endanger large amounts of wildlife and households living nearby. In order to combat this scenario from occurring there are a lot of different kinds of Florida fire equipment used to get deep into the grasslands and extinguish the conflagration.

Type one engines are primarily used for fighting structure fires, but they can also come in handy when grasslands or a forest are ablaze. A Type 1 engine is a fairly large vehicle that can hold 400 gallons of water in the tank. The engines carry enough hose to stretch them out for twelve hundred feet. The hoses can be over two inches round and can move about a thousand gallons per minute of water. These engines cannot easily leave a paved road and travel along dirt and rock. They usually park on pavement and take four firefighters to operate it well.

The drawback to the really large engines is that they usually have to stay on pavement in order to not break anything. Special engines that can handle the roughness of off road driving have been manufactured to allow firefighters to take large vehicles into the brush of grasslands. They can carry upward of seven hundred gallons of foam and water, but they normally cannot carry as much hose as the engines that have to stay on the road.

Firefighting companies also can have engines that are good to use for an initial attack inside a wilderness region. These vehicles can roll over shrubs and plants to get into areas that need workers and water to suppress fires burning in the wild. Only two firefighters at a time can comfortably ride at a time on these trucks.

Smaller carts can be used to get into tight spaces. They have a very limited water supply and are used more for surveillance than firefighting. A couple of people usually team on these carts and report back on where the fires are moving.

The movement of personnel and supplies to keep deep into the wild land is accomplished by using large helicopters with water tanks. These helicopters can land a crew of upward of 20 people into the fire zone where that can work to extinguish the blaze. The water in the tanks can be dropped from several hundred feet in the air to extinguish flames.

Aircraft can be used to drop water, too. These are generally planes with one engine that are small and maneuverable. They can swiftly fly back and forth to the fires with suppressant materials to extinguish the blaze.

Wild land fires are difficult to contain. Firefighters will use whatever they can to stop the fires from spreading and causing a lot of damage. Florida fire equipment used to handle wildlife blazes includes structural engines, helicopters and airplanes.




About the Author:



0 comments:

Post a Comment

 
Design by Free WordPress Themes | Bloggerized by Lasantha - Premium Blogger Themes | Best Buy Coupons