Putting out fires.

Putting Out Fires

I had survived fire fighter training and I brought back pictures to prove it. Eight year old David was awestruck by the photo of me and my coworkers confronting a fire. We were dwarfed by the oil fueled inferno.

“Cool,” he said with a big grin. Wrong. I assure you, it was NOT cool. Let me describe some of the training the firemen put themselves through.

 

 

My first training day of fire fighting occurred during basic training in the Navy. It is a dire emergency when a naval ship catches fire. A ship carries thousands of gallons of fuel, lubricating, and hydraulic oil. Many of the boats also carry bombs, artillery, and other things that go BOOM. When a fire breaks out, the sailors can call the fire department or put out the fire themselves. Oh, wait, the fire department is not in the middle of the ocean.

The fires we were trained on ranged from small oil puddle fires to large oil tank fires. Think of a large doughboy backyard swimming pool full of diesel, with a fifty foot flame on top spewing tons of black smoke into rural San Diego County. We were shown the wrong way and the right way to extinguish a large oil fire.  The wrong way, hitting the burning oil with a solid stream of water, tends to be much more exciting, since larger flames will erupt and try to eat you. Most people are excited enough with the fire as is, and prefer attacking the fire with a spray of water, or better yet, a spray of foam.

The worst fires are inside the mock-up ship compartments. We had to crawl into these spaces with stuff on fire. This is where I learned very quickly that Hollywood displays interior fires very inaccurately. A fire creates dark smoke. Smoke obscures your vision. You might see the end of your nose. You will not see the end of your hand. Breathing is a problem and it is best to have some sort of breathing apparatus. Otherwise, the Navy would be notifying the next of kin.

After I left the Navy, I went to work at a small power plant. The fire department is closer to the power plant, but if a fire breaks out, it is a good thing to hit it quickly, before it gets bigger. Accordingly, we received some fire fighting training. I only had to use my training once. I was working outside with a welding mechanic near a large fuel oil tank. Actually, the convenient source of combustion was a waste oil vat, about the size of an eight person Jacuzzi pool. The sparks from the welder set this pool of oil on fire. This was black gooey fuel oil that didn’t really burn fast and furious. But it did start to burn. The flames started to spread. The welder and I had an impromptu contest to see who would panic first. Eventually, one of us used the handy-dandy fire extinguisher to put the fire out.

The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is much larger and much farther away from the nearest fire department. By default, the operators were the fire brigade. The plant management hired an experienced fire fighter to train us and act as the Plant Fire Marshall. The decision was made to send us to the same fire fighting training grounds used by professional firemen.

One such training ground, near Bakersfield, was set up to train firemen to attack oil field fires. The biggest challenge of the day was a mock-up of an oil tanker at a fuel loading facility. Diesel oil was pumped out of a pipe onto a tanker truck. The diesel oil was splattering over the tanker truck and surrounding ground. The diesel was on fire. I’m talking a big fire, with flames shooting at least fifty feet in the air. The goal of this exercise was to send a team up a metal stairway to a valve at the end of the oil pipe. The instructor would close the valve, stopping the flow of fuel. Did I mention that the stairway is completely engulfed in flames?

Four teams with fire hoses would approach the fire at different angles, to push the flames away from the stairway. Each team consisted of three or four men, with the lead man holding the hose nozzle. One of the hose teams would climb the stairway to push the flames away from the valve. On our first attempt, the man holding the end of the hose was a young man with zero fire fighting experience. He found himself staring at a huge wall of fire and smoke and concluded he had enough. He let go of the hose nozzle and hastily retreated. I am glad to say that I was on a hose team on the ground, so I didn’t see anything. Fortunately, a safety observer did see what was happening and stopped the fuel supply. My hose team, and the others, pushed the fire away from the people on the stairway. Nobody was hurt.

The instructors regrouped us, putting someone else on nozzle. The young man that dropped the hose was assigned to help hold the hose. The fire was relit and we made a successful attack.

But we were not done yet. Yours truly was the “nozzle man” on the next team to ascend through the flames to reach the fuel valve. We reached the top the stairs, with water spraying all over the place, burning diesel fuel spilling out, and the valve in sight. We were all wet and covered with soot. The instructor placed his hand on the valve and paused for what seemed like a long time. Finally, he closed the valve and stopped the flow of burning oil. Then he smiled like the Cheshire cat. I suspected the man was crazy before, but now I knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Firemen do think differently than normal, sane human beings. Diablo Canyon is located in the California countryside. Every now and then, the California countryside catches on fire. I was on duty in the Control Room when one of these wild land fires started on the hill above the power plant. This fire was bigger than we could handle and we immediately called for the California Department of Forestry, also known as CDF. When my shift was over and I was on my way home, I was asked to help a CDF crew refill their water tanker with one of our fire hydrants. So here I am, chatting with the CDF fireman while filling his truck. The brush fire is burning above the power plant, from one end of the plant to the other. This is a least a quarter mile long.

The friendly fellow says, “Nice little fire you have here.” I could only shake my head in disbelief.

The wives of the firemen may be just as crazy. One day, a traffic accident along the access road started a fire. A fire brigade team and the plant Fire Marshal responded to the scene. I stayed on duty in the Control Room.

The Fire Marshal calls me on the radio and asks, “Mike, please call my wife and tell her I’ll be home late from work.”

“Okay, I can do that.” I called his wife and explained that her husband was fighting a fire along our access road. A sane wife would be concerned about her husband’s safety. This lady laughed.

“He’ll have fun with that one,” she said.

Someone decided that big smoky oil fires were sort of polluting the atmosphere. The solution was to train using propane fires. Propane burns very cleanly and very hot. Sometimes, the flame is invisible. There was one training exercise near Cuesta College that used propane for a big fire. The goal was to shut off the gas by closing a valve. Of course, the fuel valve was right in the fire. On one approach, with yours truly on the nozzle, I was feeling downright hot under the fireman suit jacket. My shoulder was much hotter than it should have been. I asked for an orderly retreat. Apparently, a small finger of hot gas or steam was reaching through a gap in the water spray and hitting me. My skin was just red enough to convince everyone we did the right thing.

Diablo Canyon eventually hired professional firemen to staff a permanent Fire Brigade. Most of the power plant operators were more than glad to have them on site.

Even though I left the Operations department and fire fighting, I will always have a profound respect for the men and women who don those yellow suits and air tanks, and rush into dark, smoky and burning buildings to rescue people and protect property.