When the Simsbury Volunteer Fire Company formed in 1944, the members immediately faced several challenges in providing fire protection services to the town. Many areas of Simsbury lacked hydrants and getting enough water into the outlying areas to fight fires was a major concern. The Fire Company moved quickly and built a tank truck capable of transporting over 1,000 gallons of water which was an impressive feat in those days. Even today, Simsbury still has areas which are not covered by municipal water service, thus the need to bring water to the fire still exists, as it does in many suburban and rural towns.

One method of supplying a large amount of water for fighting a fire when a water source is remote to the incident is through a water shuttle operation. During a water shuttle, apparatus fill their tanks at a remote source, transport the water to the incident and deposit it in a collapsible drop-tank, and then an engine drafts from the collapsible tank to supply water for fire fighting operations.

The effectiveness of a water shuttle operation depends on several variables. Modern engines can be used to transport water but their booster tanks generally carry only from 500 to 1,000 gallons, but a tanker is specifically designed for this purpose usually having a 2,000 to 4,000 gallon capacity. By enlisting mutual aid assistance from the surrounding towns, a fleet of tankers can be brought to bear on the problem.

One or more fill sites each staffed with an engine to fill the apparatus shuttling water has to be established. If no hydrants are available the engines may be forced to set-up a drafting operation to supply the shuttle apparatus.

At the incident, collapsible drop-tanks carried on the tankers are deployed and an attack engine will set-up to draft from one of the drop-tanks. The attack engine drafting from the tank may supply hand lines, deck guns or aerial streams, or other apparatus. The more drop-tanks used the more storage capacity created and the more gallons that can be flowed.

To move water from any auxiliary drop-tanks to the attack drop-tank, hard-suction hoses with strainers equipped with jet-siphons will be run between the tanks. Typically, a 1½" hose line is attached to the jet-siphon and when the line is charged, it sends a small stream of high-pressured water through the hard-suction hose. This causes water from the tank to be drawn along with it and transferred through the hard-suction into another drop-tank.

The goal of a water shuttle is to provide an uninterrupted supply of water that is of adequate gallonage to support fire fighting operations. On the evening of August 14, 2006, the Simsbury Volunteer Fire Company, along with the towns of Avon, Canton, Granby and East Granby, held a drill to exercise our water shuttling capabilities. The aim was to establish two separate fill sites, effectively assign tankers to the fill sites to prevent delays so that a steady supply of water was always maintained, and to flow as many gallons-per-minute as possible over an extended period of time.

 

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Tankers from Granby, Canton, Avon, East Granby and Simsbury participated in the drill.

 

Photographs by Cliff Williams